Research Guides: Art and Design: Graphic Design

Graphic Design Resources

Encyclopedias and Reference

The following links will take you to encyclopedias and reference manuals to help you get started on your research. Here you can find general background information, definitions, and history on many graphic design terms and concepts. Searching in an encyclopedia can also help you find a topic for a paper or project.

Online

The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers
A comprehensive guide to international developments in graphic design. From pre-industrial printing presses and medieval typography to computer graphics and avant-garde stylistic advances, a wealth of entries elucidate technical terms and detail movements, media, advertising, corporate identity, posters, packaging, and magazine and book design, placing graphic design in the wider context of the history of fine art and illustration.
An Introduction to Information Design
This invaluable guide provides a creative, informative, and practical introduction to the general principles of information design. With chapters on understanding the audience, structure, legibility and readability, selection of media, experimentation, and multi-platform delivery, An Introduction to Information Design gives a complete overview of this fundamental aspect of visual communication.

Grove Art Online/Oxford Art Online This link opens in a new window
Premier online art reference sources searchable in one place: Grove Dictionary of Art, Oxford Companion to Western Art, Encyclopedia of Aesthetics, and the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Other features include: "images only" search; timelines of art; resources for educators; subject guides on visual art topics, and Benezit Dictionary of Artists search (we have the print set). Note: Access is limited to 3 simultaneous users. If you can't gain access, try again later.

Print

Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy; Michael Bierut (Foreword by)
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks NC1001.S52 2009
This book offers students, novice designers, and battle-toughened professionals alike an insider's guide to the complexities of current graphic design practice and thinking. It contains all you need to know to survive and prosper in the complex, ever-shifting world of graphic design. Set out in A-Z style and written in a realistic, conversational, and insightful way, the book provides advice on the fundamental topics and issues that face designers in their daily lives. It looks at everything from kerning to presenting, from budgeting to dealing with rejection, from annual reports to interface design.
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design by Clive Edwards (Editor)
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks NK1165.B59 2016
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design provides a comprehensive guide to design, with entries on key topics in the history and theory of design, addressing a range of design forms including graphic, textile, furniture, metal, ceramic, fashion, stage and film, vehicle and product design, as well as national histories of design and key design movements. The Encyclopedia provides up-to-date peer reviewed coverage of the last 250 years of design history, with global coverage by leading international design scholars and design historians. Complete with a comprehensive index and full cross referencing, The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Design is the definitive guide to Design.
Graphic Design, Referenced by Armin Vit; Bryony Gomez Palacio
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks NC997.G565 2009
A visual and informational guide to the most commonly referenced terms, historical moments, landmark projects, and influential practitioners in the field of graphic design. With more than 2,000 design projects illustrating more than 400 entries, it provides an intense overview of the varied elements that make up the graphic design profession through a unique set of chapters: principles - defines the very basic foundation of what constitutes graphic design to establish the language, terms, and concepts that govern what we do and how we do it, covering layout, typography, and printing terms; knowledge - explores the most influential sources through which we learn about graphic design; representatives - gathers the designers who over the years who have steered the course of graphic design in one way or another; and, practice - highlights some of the most iconic work produced.
The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design Designers by Alan Livingston; Isabella Livingston
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks NC997.L54 2012
A comprehensive guide to international developments in graphic design. From pre-industrial printing presses and medieval typography to computer graphics and avant-garde stylistic advances, a wealth of entries elucidate technical terms and detail movements, media, advertising, corporate identity, posters, packaging, and magazine and book design, placing graphic design in the wider context of the history of fine art and illustration.

Finding Articles

Use databases to find academic articles to continue your research. Below are the most helpful databases for finding relevant articles on graphic design.

Note: If you are looking for collections or databases of images, take a look at the Finding Images guide (follow hyperlink or find the green tab to the left). This will take you to the Images guide. Once on the guide, click the "Image Databases" tab. The first box you will see, "Art Images Databases" contains links to collections of various high-quality/high-definition images from museums and galleries around the world.

Art and Architecture Source This link opens in a new window
Covers a broad range of subjects in: fine, decorative and commercial art, design, as well as architecture. Access over 600 full-text journals and 220 full-text books; includes over 63,000 images.
JSTOR This link opens in a new window
An archive of important scholarly journals, eBooks and primary sources in 75 disciplines. Offers high-resolution, scanned images of journal issues and pages as originally published.
Project MUSE This link opens in a new window
Includes 400 scholarly journals in humanities, social sciences, and mathematics and over 50,000 ebooks primarily from university presses.

Graphic Design Journals

The following are links to specific academic journals which are published and peer-reviewed by experts in the field. If you want to narrow your search to a specific time period or genre, finding a journal that publishes in that area can help.

Graphic Arts Monthly
Magazine featuring commercial printing and graphic arts, including digital technologies.
Journal of Design History
Journal of Design History is a leading journal in its field. It plays an active role in the development of design history (including the history of the crafts and applied arts), as well as contributing to the broader field of studies of visual and material culture. The journal includes a regular book reviews section and lists books received, and from time to time publishes special issues.
Design Quarterly
Articles on interior design, engineering, art, architecture, urban design and computer design for professionals and students in the field.

Search the entire library catalog here.

Materials on fine art topics are found under the "N" subclass on the 3rd floor of the library.

NC1-1940	Drawing. Design. Illustration
NC845-915	Graphic art materials
NC997-1003	Commercial art. Advertising art
NC1280-1284	Printed ephemera. Imagerie populaire
NC1800-1850	Posters

Featured Books

Looking for an interesting research topic or project? Currently, the featured books section holds some of the newest additions to the library's collection of graphic design texts.

Pop: How Graphic Design Shapes Popular Culture by Steven Heller; Tom Brokaw
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks N72.S6 H392 2010
Pop culture is often maligned as fleeting, but history shows that sometimes what is pop in one culture has time-honored resonance in later ones. This book is an attempt to show that pop culture, especially as seen through the lenses of design, illustration, satiric and political art (and other things), is integral to a broader understanding of who we are and where we are going.
PosterAnnual by Graphis Inc. (Created by)
Call Number: CFL Floor 1 East - Oversize NC1800.G7
Graphis is committed to presenting and promoting the work of exceptional talent in Graphic Design, Advertising, Photography and Art/Illustration. In addition to the Platinum, Gold and Silver winners, Graphis also embraces rising talent, all of whom have an equal Archive presentation. In our hardcover Annuals, Platinum and Gold winners receive full-page exposure, Silvers are also presented and all Merits are listed. Up to 500 entries from each competition are included in the online archive for future reference, where everyone gets the same presentation.From 1998-present.
The Designer As... by Steven McCarthy
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks NC997.M365 2013
The role of designers in communication and visual culture is evolving, from designers serving as commercial 'hired guns' to assuming the more empowering roles of design authorship. It has become standard practice in design education to teach designers to develop their own voice and create self-initiated projects. The role of the designer can expand to being the author, producer, curator, network facilitator, activist, consultant, entrepreneur... the list goes on and on. In this book, Steven McCarthy, a professor of graphic design at the University of Minnesota in the USA and expert on the subject, provides an overview of the phenomenon of design authorship and interviews many international designers who have taken on different roles as authors or producers of their own projects. 'The Designer as...' is written to give design practitioners a consolidated overview of text and images that have been important in the development of design authorship.
Publication Design Annual by Society of Publication Designers Staff
Call Number: CFL Floor 1 East - Oversize NC975.P83
Stunning full-page layouts present everything from products to people, and objects to events, in ways that make each palpable and unforgettable. You’ll find featured work published in a wide range of mediums and created by journalistic, design, and publishing talent from around the world.From 1955-present.
Typography: The Annual of the Type Directors Club by Collins Design (Created by); Type Directors Club
Call Number: CFL Floor 3 Book Stacks Z243.A2 T9a
The Type Directors Club is the leading international organization whose purpose is to support excellence in typography, both in print and on screen.