Best Graphic Design Portfolio books to start your graphic design career
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I worked on newspaper layouts for about 4 years. The same type of project for a routine rotation of communities for about 250 days a year and 8-10 hours a day.
Finding a certain niche within a graphic design career can make many graphic designers barmy. They want a challenge across their careers and working on various types of graphic design projects is their bread-and-butter as it were.
Other graphic designers want to push boundaries within one niche. Some of my coworkers had worked in the newspaper industry as graphic designers for 20+ years. Some for even more.
It’s not a horrible experience to be passionate about one niche over the other in graphic design careers. But when you want experience and no one is offering or has the opportunity to offer you the experience you want, it can be difficult to find graphic design ideas to venture into another niche. Finding good graphic design projects can be a hassle.
If you are in a class or are working in a graphic design career, you might be given graphic design projects, either regularly or at least consistently. Each project might give you feedback for your designs or the copy related to the work. Usually, these graphic design projects are focused on a certain area or topic related to graphic design, such as publication layouts, illustrations, infographics, digital formats, etc. Many classes cover certain niches within graphic design careers but you might not have had the chance to enroll in the class or could afford to take the formal classes many graphic design careers ask for in a bachelor of arts degree.
These books should help you find various topics of graphic design that could help you produce various graphic design projects with plenty of graphic design tips and ideas.
Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming is a great book for beginner graphic designers. The main focus of this book is to think creatively with your graphic design projects. You won't necessarily follow thru on these graphic design projects, unless it's something you want to take further on your own. Ellen Lupton focuses more of her energy on helping graphic designers approach and brainstorm different ways to execute a project.
Examples are plentiful throughout Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming but not overwrought with commentary. You have a special section at the end where renowned graphic designers can comment and answer Lupton's posed questions.
While I mention Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming is great for beginners, it is also great to re-establish or re-think approaches to graphic design projects for even the seasoned graphic designers on your team. If you feel stuck or blocked for a graphic design project you're faced with, execute one of Graphic Design Thinking: Beyond Brainstorming's ideas and see where it takes you or if it helps you create something new.
Graphic Design Exercise Book - Second Edition
Graphic Design Exercise Book is another graphic design project book without any connected graphic design topics. It is solely focused on graphic design projects.
I also enjoy Graphic Design Exercise Book because it has very little influence on how or what you create. It might go more into the methods behind the graphic design projects, but it doesn't allow much commentary on the examples throughout the book.
Graphic Design Exercise Book offers many types of graphic design projects to choose from, so you can choose which area you would like to concentrate on as well as which graphic design project within that concentration area.
Graphic Design Exercise Book also delves into music and digital formats to choose from as well, compared to many of the other books.
Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills
Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills is great to find a lot of different graphic design projects. This book goes through various types of graphic design projects, such as branding, product design, publication and more.
You can start where ever you want in Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills. It doesn't matter if you want to only do one section or if you want to do everything. It also, typically, goes from easiest to hardest. That being said, each project relies on certain aspects of your abilities as a graphic designer. Some graphic design projects take you through the whole process, while others might just ask you to brainstorm ideas.
Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills is one of the best books for graphic designers that is focused on graphic design projects rather than a connected graphic design topic. Especially if you are more self-taught in graphic design, this book is great to increase your graphic design portfolio.
Stand Out
Stand Out is probably the best book to use when looking for graphic design projects for your graphic design portfolio. Not only does Stand Out offer examples of each project, it also offers ways to present and create your graphic design portfolio.
Stand Out is more of a stand-alone for portfolio creation. If you are about to enter a graphic design career and you need help narrowing down your graphic design projects, Stand Out is a great transition book.
Stand Out is also probably one of the shortest books on this list. If you are crunched for time, Stand Out would be my go-to for a quick way to present my graphic design portfolio with the best selections to show. The best part about Denise Anderson's construction of Stand Out is that it's easy to see projects completed by her past students to get a glimpse of how someone should present their work to an employer.
Creative Strategy and the Business of Design
The best part about Creative Strategy and the Business of Design's projects is that they are backed with graphic designers that support the project. Each project is placed between short descriptions of other graphic designers that you'd find influential to each project.
I also am partial to this book because not only does Douglas Davis offer projects to enrich your graphic design portfolio, he also offers valuable graphic design ideas and tips to help you start a graphic design business. Creative Strategy and the Business of Design offers you new ways to approach graphic design projects and clients.
Creative Strategy and the Business of Design gives you both short and longer projects to help you hone in on both the process of starting a graphic design business and to enrich your graphic design portfolio. By completing these graphic design projects, readers create a system for each client and type of graphic design project.
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