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Associations

AIGA
A professional association for design, is committed to furthering excellence in design as a broadly-defined discipline, strategic tool for business and cultural force. AIGA is the place design professionals turn to first to exchange ideas and information, participate in critical analysis and research and advance education and ethical practice.

Art Directors Club
A premier organization for integrated media and the first international creative collective of its kind. Founded in New York in 1920, the ADC is a self-funding, not-for-profit membership organization that celebrates and inspires creative excellence, connecting creative visual communications professionals from around the world.

Color Association of the United States
The oldest color forecasting service in the US. Since 1915, the Association has been issuing color reports in elegant, fabric-swatched booklet form. The Color Association is the only forecasting service that selects its colors through a committee panel of eight to twelve industry professionals.

Graphic Artists Guild
A national union of illustrators, designers, web creators, production artists, surface designers and other creatives who have come together to pursue common goals, share their experience, raise industry standards, and improve the ability of visual creators to achieve satisfying and rewarding careers.

IDAF
Recognizes, promotes and protects the profession of interior design.

Organization of Black Designers
A non-profit national professional association dedicated to promoting the visibility, education, empowerment and interaction of its membership and the understanding and value that diverse design perspectives contribute to world culture and commerce. The Organization of Black Designers (OBD) is the first national organization dedicated to addressing the unique needs of African-American design professionals.

Society for Environmental Graphic Design
An international non-profit educational organization providing resources for design specialists in the field of environmental graphic design, architecture, and landscape, interior, and industrial design.

Workbook
Provides art directors, graphic designers, corporate art departments and publishers with resources for their creative needs for assignment as well as industry contact information.

Books

Art & Fear
by David Bayles and Ted Orland
Explores the way art gets made, the reasons it often doesn't get made, and the nature of the difficulties that cause so many artists to give up along the way. The book's co-authors, David Bayles and Ted Orland, are themselves both working artists, grappling daily with the problems of making art in the real world. Their insights and observations, drawn from personal experience, provide an incisive view into the world of art as it is expeienced by artmakers themselves. This is not your typical self-help book. This is a book written by artists, for artists – it's about what it feels like when artists sit down at their easel or keyboard, in their studio or performance space, trying to do the work they need to do.

A Visual Dictionary of Architecture
by Francis D. K. Ching
A Visual Dictionary of Architecture is a remarkable, on-of-a-kind compendium which uses a combination of textual definitions and hundreds of superb line drawings to illuminate a comprehensive body of essential terms in architecture, including important interrelationships between building components. Grouped by themes, such as history, systems, structures, forms, construction, environmental issues, and behavior, all terms have their visual complement and can be readily accessed in a number of different ways.

Design Connoisseur: An Eclectic Collection of Imagery and Type
by Stephen Heller and Louise Fili
Type lovers and history buffs alike will enjoy this gallery of vintage typefaces, ornaments, letterheads, and trademarks. Exquisite graphic design artifacts comprise this unusual collection culled from type and typography books from 1900 to 1940.

How to Grow as a Graphic Designer
by Catharine Fishel
A great insight into the lives of working graphic designers and the struggles they go thru to get to the top. A ton of inspirational quotes that can really be helpful when stuck in a slump. It's a great book for any student designer or designer that justs want to hear what others think of their craft.

Life Style
by Bruce Mau
Each day, the average Western citizen sees, assimilates, and recognizes 16,000 logos. Chances are that Bruce Mau has been involved in the creation, evolution, and/or devolution of many of them. But calling Bruce Mau a graphic designer would be akin to calling Mae West a playwright--technically correct, but oh-so-limiting.

Pour Your Heart into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time
by Howard Schultz
Since 1987, Starbucks's star has been on the rise, growing from 11 Seattle, WA-based stores to more than 1,000 worldwide. Its goals grew, too, from the more modest, albeit fundamental one of offering high-quality coffee beans roasted to perfection to, more recently, opening a new store somewhere every day. An exemplary success story, Starbucks is identified with innovative marketing strategies, employee-ownership programs, and a product that's become a subculture.

The Collins Big Book of Art: From Cave Art to Pop Art
by David G. Wilkins
A beautiful, unusual and engaging compendium of art history, providing an accessible entree into the world of art for everyone, regardless of their experience.

The Business of Graphic Design: A Sensible Approach to Marketing and Managing a Graphic Design Firm
by Ed Gold
The best part of this book is that more than half of it is interviews with successful designers, and examples of their work. They are quite candid, and talk about how they became a designer or started a studio, and how they run their business and deal with customers. Highly recommended.

The Business Side of Creativity: The Complete Guide for Running a Graphic Design or Communications Business
by Cameron S. Foote
Updated edition of an industry standard furnishes all freelance graphic designers, art directors, illustrators, copywriters, and design-shop principals with the tools needed to move ahead in the design business. From getting launched to running a multiperson shop to retiring comfortably this book covers it all and includes sample business forms.

The Elements of Typographic Style
by Robert Bringhurst
This lovely, well-written book is concerned foremost with creating beautiful typography and is essential for professionals who regularly work with typographic designs. Author Robert Bringhurst writes about designing with the correct typeface; striving for rhythm, proportion, and harmony; choosing and combining type; designing pages; using section heads, subheads, footnotes, and tables; applying kerning and other type adjustments to improve legibility; and adding special characters, including punctuation and diacritical marks.
 
The Savvy Designer's Guide To Success: Ideas and Tactics for a Killer Career
by Jeff Fisher
Now every designer can reap the benefits of having the perfect mentor. In this career guide, Jeff Fisher shows off his winning personality with ideas and solutions to nearly every career dilemma, including: - Building a recognizable and reputable firm - Presenting a professional image all the time.

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
by Edward R. Tufte
A timeless classic in how complex information should be presented graphically. The Strunk & White of visual design. Should occupy a place of honor – within arm's reach – of everyone attempting to understand or depict numerical data graphically. The design of the book is an exemplar of the principles it espouses: elegant typography and layout, and seamless integration of lucid text and perfectly chosen graphical examples.

Industry Links

Communication Arts
The leading trade journal for visual communications.

Design Addict
A resource for modern, post-modern and contemporary design of the 20th-21st centuries where you'll find information on designers and producers, on furniture, lighting, dinnerware and accessories.

Design Dump
Your total Graphic Design Resource including: graphic design books, graphic design magazines, latest news, original articles, graphic design resource links, design conference updates, graphic design competition listings, and much more.

designerID
The first tool created specifically to help designers make meaningful connections worldwide. Build your career one connection at a time, easily networking with other designers in your market and around the world.

Design Is Kinky
Intelligent discussion about web design.

design:related
A social-based site that brings together creative people from different disciplines (and parts) of the design world. With the integration of portfolios, inspirations, job postings, and community, design:related serves to motivate designers to share ideas, inspire, and be inspired.

Design Snack
A user-controlled web design showcase, providing the members with the power to decide which sites are showcased and which sites are not.

Dexigner Design Portal
Connects the design industry with news, announcements, designers, galleries, and more.

Firm List
Global Guide to Web Design Firms

HOW Design
The graphic design community's trusted source for creative inspiration, business advice, and tools of the trade.

Printernational
Offers information, background and tutorials about all aspects of design for print and everything related to it.

Netdiver
Devoted to tutoring, empowering and stimulating creativity as well as excellence in design projects by the international community involved in the industry and beyond!

Under Consideration
Dedicated to the progress of the graphic design profession and its practitioners; at times intangible, its purpose is to question, push, analyze and agitate graphic design and its practitioners.

Urban Collective
A monthly submission site dedicated to showcasing the creative talents of designers from all points of the globe. Original works are submitted and displayed on the Urban Collective website and this inturn leads to worldwide exposure to fellow designers.

World Wide Design Directory
A global directory of selected design companies and professionals which helps designers to showcase work, provide information about services, share news and in return attract visitors and get design leads.

Magazines

Architectural Digest
International magazine of interior design.

Baseline Magazine
Baseline sets out to reflect all aspects of type, including its design, history, use, and links to the graphic, art and craft scenes.

Black & White Magazine
A journal for collectors of fine photography.

CMYK Magazine
Quarterly collection of student work in the fields of advertising design, illustration, and photography.

Communication Arts
Creative resource for graphic design, advertising, photography, multimedia development, illustration, and art direction.

Computer Arts
A one-stop shop for professional advice on creating digital art and illustrations.

Create Magazine
Provides creative professionals with an insider's perspective on the people, news, trends and events that influence the local advertising and creative production industries.

d/visible magazine
A non-profit online design magazine aimed to deconstruct the design of things that impact our daily lives.

Fast Company
Covering work and life in the new economy.

Garage Magazine
A semi-annual review dealing with graffiti, photography and graphic design. It's celebrating the creativity of emerging artists and those who have already carved their place in history, it's contributors are both famous and unknown. Printed in Italy with both English and Italian text.

GD USA Magazine
Provides information about subscriptions, contests, advertising, and more for the magazine GD:USA, featuring news for graphic designers, illustrators, and other creative professionals.

HOW Magazine
Contains ideas and techniques in graphic design that explore the studios of art directors, production designers and computer graphics professionals.

I.D.
International interactive design magazine.

Metropolis
Explores the ways design shapes the world; covers the broad spectrum of design disciplines and issues.

Outdoor Photographer
Offers tips, camera and equipment reviews, and articles from the print magazine.

Print
Graphic design magazine.

STEP Inside Design
Explores the impact of design on all facets of our lives; how we work, learn, move, communicate, and play. STEP takes readers behind the scenes to meet the creative problem-solvers that make it possible for us to move through the world in brilliant and dynamic ways.

Surface
American fashion, design, and lifestyle publication with a bi-coastal perspective.

Trend Hunter
Gadgets, art, design and style in a modern social context.

WIRED
Chronicles the emerging future in culture, politics, business and technology. The voice of the digital revolution.

Parsons: The New School of Design New York, New York
A global institution of the visual arts and design.

Pratt Institute Brooklyn, New York
Houses schools of Art and Design, Architecture and Information and Library Sciences that are internationally known for their excellence.

The Art Institute Online Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Earn a degree or diploma while attending class anytime - day or night - to fit your busy schedule. Choose from our broad range of academic programs to find one that inspires you including Advertising, Fashion, Graphic Design, Interior Design, Interactive Media, Media Arts, and Animation.