This summer, we published a summer reading list scavenger hunt challenge with a variety of new and well-received fiction, non-fiction and educational books for your entertainment. We asked our readers to scope out all the books on the list by visiting their local bookstores, thrift shops, book exchanges and even in your own home or a friend’s bookshelf! Many of you were up for the challenge and had numerous successful finds!
Now, it’s fall and we’re offering a second challenge for the design community! If you’re a designer, a student learning design or an art professor who is a knowledge junkie like me and prefers reading books about your field of study, then you’ve come to the right place! Even if you simply want to expand your creativity and knowledge of the design industry, then this is the fall reading list for you!
With more than 100,000 public book exchanges registered with the Little Free Library organization, wherever you live and go to school, chances are there is one of these free book exchanges nearby. Check out their website for a map to see where they are near you.
So, How Does the Scavenger Hunt Work?
It’s super simple! To participate, print out this list of our carefully compiled, informative and well researched fall reading list for designers and take it with you anywhere you may go where books are sold, traded, or given away. See how many books you can find from this list. If they don’t have the book you want in stock – no worries, simply go check out another local bookstore and see what you can find!
How many books from this list can you find?
Please feel free to share your book hunt with us on our social media pages and use the hashtag: #DomtarFallReading
Here’s a List of All the Books in the Scavenger Hunt:
DESIGN INSPIRATION & EDUCATION
The Business of Graphic Design: The RGD Professional Handbook
by RGD
Paper of Choice: Lynx®
Used as a text in many design programs across Canada, this Handbook is the first and only comprehensive Canadian guide to maintaining a graphic design business. The Handbook is the basis for one of the sections of the Online Test as part of the RGD’s Certification Process.
This is the go-to book for new and seasoned design entrepreneurs alike; it covers sustainable design principles, marketing design services, hiring and managing creative talent, administering a design business, sample forms and agreements and more.
Transformers Legacy: The A
rt of Transformers Packaging
by Jim Sorenson & Bill Forster
Remember the thrill of tearing open a gift on Christmas morning, discovering a brand-new Transformer in a shiny new box? While the toys were amazing, what made the packages stand head-and-shoulders above the myriad competing action figures on shelves was the stunning box art. Transformers: Legacy collects hundreds of beautifully airbrushed paintings from the iconic first decade of The Transformers. Hasbro, Takara and private collectors opened their archives, yielding an unparallel level of quality. This book is chock-full of extras, including never-before-seen artwork from toys that never were, original design sketches, catalog artwork, and more.
Description Source: Amazon.com
Thinking with Type, 2nd revised and expanded edition: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students – October 2010
by Ellen Lupton
The best-selling Thinking with Type in a revised and expanded second edition: Thinking with Type is the definitive guide to using typography in visual communication. Ellen Lupton provides clear and focused guidance on how letters, words, and paragraphs should be aligned, spaced, ordered, and shaped. The book covers all typography essentials, from typefaces and type families, to kerning and tracking, to using a grid. Visual examples show how to be inventive within systems of typographic form, including what the rules are, and how to break them.
Thinking with Type is the typography book for everyone: designers, writers, editors, students, and anyone else who works with words. If you love font and lettering books, Ellen Lupton’s guide reveals the way typefaces are constructed and how to use them most effectively.
Description Source: Amazon.com
The D!Lab Guide to Imagination and Design Thinking
Check out the gallery piece printed on our very own Cougar® paper
The D!Lab Guide to Imagination and Design Thinking provides a research-informed roadmap for teachers, students, school leaders, policymakers and businesses that value design thinking as integral to real-world problem-solving.
Description Source: St. Andrew’s Episcopal School
Graphic Design for…
by Andy Cooke
This guide explores ways in which graphic designers can successfully collaborate with other creative professionals and sectors, whether it be a more sophisticated logo for a product, a better-designed lookbook for a fashion brand or a more intuitive wayfinding system for a museum. The book features exceptionally conceived design solutions across a variety of industries–from architecture and product design to art, fashion, and film.
Description Source: Amazon.com
Books About Printing
Kate Spade Brand Book
Designed by Sydney Applegate Lang
Print Production Management by Stephanie Friese
Paper of Choice: Cougar® 130 lb. Cover and 65 lb. Text
The Kate Spade Brand Book proves without a doubt that uncoated paper can beautifully enhance vivid colors. This elegant and colorful book takes the much-loved branding and products created by Kate Spade New York and presents them in a tangible way that can only be described as a visual treat. If you’re a fan of all things Kate Spade, like myself, this book is sure to be an inspiration and a useful tool to spark creativity.
Designing for Print, the Art and Science – January 2018
By Marina Poropat Joyce, Chris Do (Foreword)
Check out this beautiful gallery piece, printed on our very own Cougar® paper.
The most in-depth & up-to-date guide to designing for print & print production for graphic designers. An indispensable guide to designing for print written in an easy-to-understand format while not skimping on knowledge. From an educator: “There’s no better book on graphic design print production out there.” About the Book: This book is a 208-page celebration of print! The pages are printed on eight different papers! The cover is laminated for durability. The book is printed in eight different ink colors to showcase many different printing techniques, including state-of-the-art digital foil and digital UV printing! 84 photographs 116 illustrations and charts.
Description Source: Amazon.com
Another great book from Andy Cooke – People of Print
A dazzling array of work created for paper and beyond, including posters, flyers, packaging, fanzines, self-published books, textiles and fashion, and exhibition design. Fully illustrated profiles, in-depth interviews and a comprehensive reference section make this book an inspirational resource for all graphic designers and illustrators who appreciate the value and craft of print.
Description Source: Thamesandhudson.com
Editing by Design: The Classic Guide to Word-and-Picture Communication for Art Directors, Editors, Designers, and Students – Illustrated, January 2021
by Jan V. White & Alex W. White
An Industry Classic, revised for the Modern Age
This classic guide to winning readers for designers, art directors and editors has been completely updated to be applicable to both online and print publication design. Because it has truths about effective visual communication that transcends ever-changing technology, this book has been in continuous publication since 1974. Revised with the careful attention of widely respected author and professor of graphic design Alex W. White, Editing by Design, Fourth Edition, describes how both word people and design people have the same task: to reveal the true core of each message as plainly and compellingly as possible. It is a book vital to creators of today’s online and print media.
Description Source: Amazon.com
Left to Right: The Cultural Shift from Words to Pictures – 2016
by David Crowe
The Picture Book takes readers on a journey through our increasingly visual culture–a journey that asks us to consider how technological change has influenced the way we think, the way we see, and the way we communicate. The trend in mass media communication is toward the visual and even our written language is becoming more and more visually driven. Non-text elements in this book showcase the latest ideas in sending clear messages without words–messages that can be understood universally, by everyone who can see, regardless of the language they speak.
Description Source: Goodreads.com
AUTHOR’S CHOICE
The Definitive Guide On How To Launch Your Own Magazine
by Samir Husni
Paper of Choice: Lynx®
“The only way to engage your readers is to provide them with that experience in which they can lose themselves. Readers have to feel like a magazine was designed and curated with them in mind–and we have to make that happen.” – Dr. Samir Husni, Mr. Magazine.
This book is a treasure trove of information from the man who founded and directs the Center for Magazine Innovation at the University of Mississippi. If you’ve read our interview with him in the Fall 19 issue of Paper Matters, then this book is an excellent follow-up to our conversation; if not, then read both and let us know what you think.
Description Source: Domtar Paper Gallery
Interaction of Color
by Josef Albers
Josef Albers’s classic Interaction of Color is a masterwork in art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors and students, this influential book presents Albers’s singular explanation of complex color theory principles.
Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, Interaction of Color first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten color studies chosen by Albers, and has remained in print ever since. With over a quarter of a million copies sold in its various editions since 1963, Interaction of Color remains an essential resource on color, as pioneering today as when Albers first created it.
Description Source: Amazon.com
Now Try Something Weirder
With 233 (to be exact) hints, tips, and pieces of advice, Now Try Something Weirder shows those in the creative industry how to have great ideas (every day).
Description Source: Goodreads.com
Ways of Seeing
by John Berger
John Berger’s Ways of Seeing is one of the most stimulating and the most influential books on art in any language. First published in 1972, it was based on the BBC television series about which the Sunday Times critic commented: “This is an eye-opener in more ways than one: by concentrating on how we look at paintings . . . he will almost certainly change the way you look at pictures.” By now he has. Designer Greg Bunbury says the book was responsible for a “pivotal shift” in his design studies. “I began to understand composition and context in every ad I saw,” he says. “I recognized the inherent tension that advertising creates, and how to replicate it. But most importantly, it made me want to create meaningful communications: images worth seeing.”
Description Source: Barnesandnoble.com
For the Love of Design – October 2022
Prolific author and co-chair of the MFA Design School of Visual Arts Steven Heller shares his love of design with the world through essays, interviews, and profiles.
From the design director of the New York Times discussing how during the pandemic he created the most effective front pages to a collage artist talking about why cutting and pasting scraps of material into dynamic compositions, each story and narrative brings to light ambitions and aspirations they are couched in love for the thinking, making, and doing of design. For the Love of Design is here to show that graphic and other design activities are not just ways of making a living but living a life.
Description Source: Amazon.com
Do you have recommendations that you believe should be included on this list? Feel free to contact stephanie.barker@domtar.com for feedback and .
Also, please don’t forget to share your findings with us by using the hashtag: #DomtarFallReads
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