(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best graphic design books

Hey, I'm a CG Lighting artist by trade, I'll let you know some good resources that have helped me.

As a lighter, your goal is things things, Setting the mood/atmosphere, Shaping (making sure you can make out forms of the scene), and Leading the eye (I feel like there is a fourth, but I can't think of it this morning lol)

Some good books to read:

Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter

Light for Visual Artists (hard book to find, but worth finding a copy)

Digital Lighting and Rendering(new edition coming out soon)

Great resources to start and help train your eye, studying films is the next step. Picking apart scenes to understand how and why they lit the scene the way they did, studying photography is a great place to look as well.

Also if you can afford it, TD-U has a fantastic online course from a couple of great instructors to help you on your way of understanding CG Lighting. If you can afford the class it will be a great place to start. I took the class last year and it was an AMAZING resource, I didn't know anything beyond the technical understanding of lighting, this course really helped me understand the artistic side of lighting. The instructors are great and very helpful.

anyways, hope that helps, if you have any questions feel free to message me.

It’s actually not that complicated, but it does require that you do some serious studying. Just reading about these concepts or watching videos isn’t going to get you there. You need to apply what you learn as well. Maybe you can start by analyzing lighting situations in your daily life. What is the light source? What is its temperature/colour? Where is it coming from? Etc. Then go one step further and try to apply light/shadow to observational drawings done from life. The best way to do this (at least in the beginning) is with a setup you can control, i.e. a still life. Yes, this kind of exercise is boring as heck, but it will help you understand 3D form much better than with using photos. Photography is not great for learning this stuff cause it tends to leave out certain shifts in value that you can only really observe from real life. Which means you now have a flat reference image, which inevitably leads to a flat drawing. Learn how to draw from life first, and then you can use what you know (i.e. what you learn through drawing from life) when you draw from (photo) reference. That’s how artists like Mr. Blaise (btw, amazing source of inspiration seeing as you are into animals) here can take a relatively flat reference image and give it a truly 3D feel. They only know how to do this because they have observed how light and shadow work in real life, and have put this information down on paper time and time again.

In the image of the leopard for example, the subject is backlit, so the light source (probably the sun) is somewhere behind the animal. That means what you are actually seeing is (kinda) the “shadow” side. You might not think of it as shadow, cause we have a tendency to think of shadows as dark or light. But in reality, there is light within shadow as well (and no, thats not just my KHIII-addled mind talking), coming from all sorts of secondary or environmental light sources. All this does affect the perceived value of the shadow. For a more dramatic effect, you might choose to make the shadow side appear darker in value, or the lights brighter depending on what kind of feel or style you are going for. But until you have a working understanding of the physical nature of light and shadows, you won’t really know how to make these choices. There can be a whole array of factors to deal with in a given lighting situation, which is why I recommend doing simple still life studies to start. I also highly recommend this book as a resource on the topic of light and shadow. They teach this stuff in just about every beginning drawing class, but I found that this book in particular really presents the material in a more straightforward manner that is very easy to digest. Once you move onto colour, it also has extensive info on that as well. Anyway, hope that helps a little!

Sounds like you really want to help the guy develop professionally; and you also really want to use his work because you think it would sell. Great.

Numbers are hard to put out there without seeing his chops or the style you are asking for. Perhaps a base of, say, $500-$2000 per illustration with rights included so you own them, but with him cut in on the calendar (and other calendar year products) profits; so there is real potential and investment on his side. Then you have this great art to monetize in perpetuity and your friend has seen the light of using his talents — and, if you use the opportunity to teach him, become more comfortable with the process of doing so.

Those are opinions, this is advice:

Tell him you are interested and want him to write a quote. Tell him to base it on the Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines and Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers. It's okay to mention you expect consideration for your part in this opportunity for him, but let him know you want the ownership at the end of project. If he gets the books and builds a good quote in a few weeks, good sign — have him Xerox the pages he used to make the quote and you will learn as much as he.

Have a schedule carefully set up in case he flakes. First few concepts in two weeks to develop rapport and trust — then full concepts in four, line work completed and the first few finals for approval at six-eight, finals for approval weeks eight-twelve, revised finals in sixteen. Add your slide time in secretly and only give it away harshly. Expect 12 new paid works after a life of casual attention to be a bit overwhelming for him; and if you really want to be a hero put him in contention for the next year ... but you have no responsibility to.


Because this is one of those amazing chances to really make someone's life better.

(edit: fixed studio-artist level deadline times)

When I did my TESOL program, I found that where I really was lacking was... how to teach it. Activities that actually work, ya know? Learning a language at home alone is very different than trying to learn in a classroom. For that, I enjoy following along at eslcafe.com and I also watch some stuff on pinterest.

As for understanding English, that's actually what your TEFL/TESOL is going to teach you. I don't know about TEFL, but the TESOL had one section for the actual teaching, another for grammar and a third section for... I forget. But I'm pretty sure there were three sections.

I think you should also consider TESOL instead of TEFL. Here's the basic difference with some super sterotypical examples to illustrate the difference:
TEFL = Teaching English as a Foreign Language (like teaching English in China)
TESL = Teaching English as a Second Language (like teaching English to Mexican immigrants in the US)
TESOL = Teaching English to Speaks of Other Languages (all inclusive -- includes both teaching it as a foreign language, or teaching it as a second language to people who need to speak the local tongue)

TESOL, at least last I checked, isn't accredited in the US, so, if you're in the US, you'll want to compare whether you want to get a US-Based but not accredited degree, or, get one abroad. It's accreddited in Canada, and I got mine from onTESOL.com which I highly recommended and they put me through my paces, it was not just pay and here's a certificate. Though it's Canadian, everyone locally has recognized it so far.

If you have a BA in Linguistics I really don't think you're going to need to learn more about understanding the structure of English, or how to pronounce it. But, if for some reason you do, I actually recommend The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: http://www.amazon.com/The-Deluxe-Transitive-Vampire-Ultimate/dp/0679418601 This was actually my textbook in a middle school class I had where the teacher was obsessed with diagramming sentences. The sentences were (possibly not all age-appropriate) interesting and turned dry grammatical study into something that could produce a few chuckles and keep you interested.

With you coming from a very helpful area of study, I really don't think you need it. HOW to teach is going to be what helps the most. The classroom... is very different than just sitting down and studying. Particularly when, like me, you're obsessed with making sure everyone is getting knowledge out of the activity, not just the student actively doing whatever it is (like a presentation or reading or whatever).

If you're interested, PM me and I'll let you know about an online job I worked briefly at teaching english in an online classroom. It was nice because I wasn't freelance, actually an employee. I ended up leaving because nearly immediately I got a better job offer elsewhere, but I get the impression that they're nearly always hiring. :) If you're interested, I'd be glad to dig in my old job search notes and find it.

Perhaps try Know your onions by Drew De Soto and How to Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy.

For what it's worth, the main things I've seen throughout my career that were surprises or turnoffs to new designers when they got out into the real world were:

1) You're not doing work for yourself. It sounds obvious but most people don't even think about the fact that you design for yourself when you're learning, but when you get into the workplace you design for someone else, which isn't nearly as fun. There are clients that will let you have creative freedom, but the majority will just want you to execute their ideas, no matter how bad they are.

2) It's a people job. Some folks are drawn to design because they're introverts and they envision being able to isolate themselves and be creative all day, but that couldn't be further from the truth. If you're freelance, you have to be super extroverted to drum up business for yourself - there's more face-to-face meetings and phone calls than there is actual designing. If you're in-house or agency, you generally will be working as part of a team and there's just as much confidence and extroversion needed to be successful.

3) The hours can be long and the pace can be fast. Design is deadline driven 99% of the time. That means coming up on hard deadlines you may not have a social (or indeed family) life. Most of my work days are 8-5 or 6, but deadline weeks can be 7-midnight and through the weekends. You are the last stop on the line which means you typically inherit everyone else's delays and have to compensate for them by working fast. Working fast often means you don't have the leisure of much brainstorming and concepting. Request like "I need this 18x24 poster in 30 minutes" are not uncommon. You need to be able to handle stress well, prioritize tasks efficiently and be able to turn out work that doesn't necessarily meet your own standards of perfection.

4) They won't always go with your idea. In fact they almost never will. I've seen a lot of young designers deeply frustrated that the lovely draft they sent to the client comes back as a rejection or covered in red ink. You have to be able to not take things personally, to listen and take criticism positively, and to act on alternative ideas quickly.


All that said, it is a fulfilling career if you really have a passion for visual communication, the wage is pretty good (in larger firms and agencies at least) and you can live on it comfortably, and there are upward movement opportunities into roles such as Art Director or Creative Director. Hope some of that helps.

In addition to the fine critique others have given you, I have a core list of books that i adore and highly recommend.


Basic tips on working with type I like this book because half of it lays out all the "rules" and then the other half breaks them all - in a good way. Really laid back, easy to read, and good advice.

A good book on just some basics and a little history of typefaces This one's a little more in depth, but still a great book on type.

If you're interested in learning a little history

More history

And also, a wonderful book that reads a little more like a novel than a text book: Just My Type I absolutely love this book. It shows you some history, but at the same time everything is in layman's' terms and very easy to understand. Simon Garfield is a colorful writer and goes through lots of effort to show you all the things about type you might not ever notice.

As far as your type site goes, parts of it are really slick, parts are a little awkward. As others have said, legibility is (for the most part) king when working with type. I've made a couple of critiques on some screen shots for you.

Anyhow, you've got a lot of great advice from everyone here to work with. Just keep practicing and of course looking at examples type and analyzing why it's good or bad. Best of luck!

I've been on a total typography book binge recently!

• Letter Fountain - This book is AMAZING! It's comprehensive, gorgeous and heavy. Note: There's a lot of overlapping information in all these recommendations, so if you buy just one book on typography from my list, make it this one.
  
• Designing Type by Karen Cheng - This book is a great one to get if you are designing a typeface yourself. It takes a close look at all of the letters and characters (serif and sans-serif) describing their key features, comparing and contrasting notable variations of significant typefaces and basically serving as an excellent reference.
  
• Logo Font & Lettering Bible by Leslie Cabarga - This one is a lot of fun, with a focus on practical tips, ie: software tips and tricks. If you're interested in illustration or decorative typefaces, this is the one to get. (I know if you judge this one by its cover and Amazon's 'look inside' preview it may not look the best, but the actual printed volume is attractive, dense and a joy to browse.) [EDIT: The paperback has a much nicer cover! This is the one I have.]
  
• Book Design by Andrew Haslam - Everything you might want to know about book design, naturally! I haven't read much else on this subject, but this seemed excellent to me. A great mix of history and practical advice for designing all kinds of book.
  
• Stop Stealing Sheep and Find Out How Type Works by by Erik Spiekermann and E.M Ginger - Smaller, but full of good information. This was one of the first 'proper' books on typography I read and I think it serves as a great introduction to the subject. If you only have a passing interest in the type, try this book. It reads like an opinionated personal essay. Perhaps skip it if you are looking to get hands-on quickly.
  
  Finally, I strongly don't recommend Type Matters! If you see it in the store you may be tempted - it's a very attractive leather-bound book with sexy black and red illustrations - but I found it to be overly simplistic. It also looks like there's quite a lot of reading to be had, but the vast majority of the text in there is all repeated sample copypasta. (And if I wasn't disappointed enough in the book, the elastic came loose on my copy!)

First I think you need to learn how to set type. This is a personal favourite book of mine that helped reinforce some of the basics I learned. It's laid out in a very simple and easy to digest manner. https://www.amazon.ca/Type-Matters-Jim-Williams/dp/1858945674

Here is a great tool for learning kerning and tracking. http://type.method.ac/

Below are a couple sites I found that have some decent tips for beginner designers. I think you could learn a fair bit from them, and after doing so go back to your work and really compare what they're saying to what you've done.

https://speckyboy.com/the-10-golden-rules-of-simple-clean-design/

https://designschool.canva.com/blog/graphic-design-tips-non-designers/

As for the work itself I'd say you need to really grasp the fundamentals before you can make anything that's going to look good, and it really shows here. Simplify your logo, and you might think it's simple enough as it is but it isn't. Remember that every single aspect of design must be thought through. Is there a reason you use such harsh sharp lines? Why the thin outline to suggest where the Huskies face is? Can you do without it? Should it be thicker? Also, especially when thinking about a logo, always make sure it is scalable. How would it look on a billboard, how would it look on a button? A good logo works in both, and yours right now does not. The colours you have chosen do not speak to a football team. Pink? Cyan? Why? To me pink, especially the one you've chosen, is wishy washy. It's feminine and soft, not something I want to think of when I think of a bunch of hardened warriors smashing into each other with intent to hurt. Not something I want other people to think of my team. I know why you did it, because they're ears, but you don't need to have that pink there to show they are ears. Just the shape alone can accomplish that.

Most of your images really clutter the design and don't seem to serve a clear concise message. Your choice of typefaces are really poor for what you're trying to achieve. Both of these things can be fixed but have to do more with a personal sense of design, and that is something you develop over time.

For instance the "Synergy driven ad". The typeface does not emit strength. It's a very poorly designed typeface that has weak attributes about it. It's thin, curvy, and round but not robust. Take a look at this Houston Texans logo you'll see something that exemplifies great design choices for both the logo and a great typeface that has the attributes you're talking about.

http://www.sports-logos-screensavers.com/user/Houston_Texans.jpg

As far as the text goes, it is laid right overtop the image in black. This makes it extremely hard to read. Remember that the function of type is to transfer information in an easy to digest manner. Your type should always be legible. In this particular case you could have made the typeface white, larger, and picked a more robust typeface, so perhaps a bold sans serif or perhaps a slab serif.

Here is a wonderful little website that has a bunch of unique typefaces that are all free. Start there and look all around the web and you'll find out just how many better typefaces there are.

http://www.losttype.com/browse/

As far as the wolves go, really ask yourself if they fit. Why that picture? Why not huskies since we're the huskies? Why not wolves hunting in a pack? How about no wolves and just the type speaking for itself? etc. I'm sure you asked yourself some of these, maybe even all of them, but the questioning shouldn't stop anywhere close to there. I think you could've accomplished just as much and then some by instead having the logo with those words. If this is about the huskies then let people associate it with the huskies and not a pack of wolves. In fact, there is no logo on the page to begin with.

This is a documentary every graphic designer should watch and you're no exception to the rule!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feZ3Mr42Ki4

I hope you don't get offended by anything I've said. I hope all of this stuff is helpful. Good luck!

Timothy Samara books are good for beginners - Making and Breaking the Grid was the book that finally helped me understand grid systems, while Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual was my Freshman year design textbook. The Story of Graphic Design by Patrick Cramsie is also a great GD History book.

In terms of things that are less textbook and more actual books about graphic design, I enjoyed Just My Type a lot. Design Is A Job gives some great advice on the business side of being a designer - pitching to clients, dealing with contracts, etc. How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer has some really interesting interviews with some of the best designers in our field.

And I would be terribly remiss if I didn't mention two of my absolute favorite novels, which happen to be about graphic design. The Cheese Monkeys and its sequel The Learners are fantastic stories about a design student and his experiences both in school and in his first job. Plus, they're written by Chip Kidd, who is an absolutely amazing designer (imho).

But, in case that wasn't enough, I'll also leave you with this link to a previous thread on this subreddit about great GD books.

Good luck and happy reading!

In addition to the questions I just want to point out that 2500 words is too short for Amazon. I'd recommend going back and boosting it to over 3000 words at the very least (likely up over 5000 words would be better) before posting it to Amazon. Amazon doesn't like content that is too short and you could get in trouble for 'poor user experience.'

1. Grab GIMP (it's free) and look on free stock photo sites for available photos or sign up to a trial with a paying stock photo site. Look up tutorials on YouTube and build your own cover. You don't need to buy a professional cover from a designer (and could work against you because of both reader expectations and the cost of working with a professional designer) and as a bonus you'll learn a lot of new skills along the way. It's really not hard to put together a quick cover that is too market, just be sure to research what others are doing in your genre and play to the market expectations. Also research what is not allowed on Amazon (not too much butt, no undressing, etc.) and make sure you don't cross any lines.
   
2. It's important to remember there are two types of anonymity, anonymity in your personal life and anonymity from Amazon. It is impossible to remain anonymous from Amazon, they need to know your real ID and any pertinent tax information (variable depending on your geographic location) in order to pay out. With your personal life anonymity will come from using a pen name which is only linked to your Amazon publishing account by virtue of the name that you put into the book you're trying to publish. So you can use your personal account if you'd like, or you can set up a new one just for publishing, just bear in mind that you can ONLY have 1 Amazon publishing account. This account will house ALL of the books you publish through Amazon regardless of content or pen name. Everything you're going to put up on Amazon goes up through that account.
   
3. Amazon allows you to set up Print-On-Demand, so you can get a physical copy of your book (though to be honest with a 2500 word story it's going to be a leaflet and you're probably not going to want to get a physical copy because it would be cost prohibitive - hell I'm not even sure if Amazon allows paperbacks that small - to put it into some perspective a short novel is 50000 words, so like 20 times longer than your story). As for getting it into sex shops there is no built mechanism for doing that. You'd have to order a bunch of copies and try to negotiate with the stores yourself for getting it into there.
   
4. Download this book: https://www.amazon.ca/Building-Your-Kindle-Direct-Publishing-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6 and use the instructions to build your book for kindle. This is the easiest way I've found that makes a good looking book without going through specialized software. Otherwise you can use Kindle Create or Canva or Vellum or some other book creation software to take care of the grunt work for you.
   
   As a final note I'd really recommend reading the FAQ and sidebar on this subreddit and then doing searches to get a lay of the land. This subreddit has a wealth of information on it and spending a couple hours here getting yourself familiar with everything before publishing is really going to help you out a lot.
   
   Oh and congratulations on your first story!

Thanks for all your feedback. Should have started by saying that we've already signed a contract that includes scope, contingencies, etc. and he's already paid a portion up front. We've agreed on a rate that includes a certain number of hours on training his admin assistant on how to update the site and if I have to maintain it beyond X number of hours or X number of days, I'll be paid an hourly fee. I have a good working relationship with this company. I used a contract template from this, it seemed pretty comprehensive but I guess I won't know if it missed something important until it's too late.

After reading the feedback from this thread and some addition research, I'm building on a dev site on the client's server that is password protected. Since I am new to this, I wanted to just make absolute sure that I wouldn't fuck something up moving it from my server to his after I've done a shitload of work and he's approved it. GoDaddy has a default, ahem, LANDING page (will remember to use that from now on). I'm just going to leave that as is unless he asks for something because there was nothing in our contract about creating custom graphics.

I'm not too stressed but I do want to make sure that I'm doing things efficiently and securely to best serve him. And I agree, if it goes to shit, well, then lesson learned and it probably won't be the last. Thank you for your feedback, I really appreciate it.

I'll be the 3rd person to recommend Understanding comics. It is required reading.

The big thing is practice. Practice. Practice. Then go practice. I've been working kinda on comics for a while and sometimes, I can churn out a panel like nobodies buisness. The pose aligns just right and its super easy. Other times, a single panel takes me hours, because I keep finding I'm doing it wrong.

But you know what? the next time I do a scene like that, I do it a bit faster. I rarely go online to find references. Instead, I stand up from my pen and paper, and make whatever stupid pose I'm trying to draw and mentally take inventory of where all my limbs are, how my body looks and feels. A mirror may help.

In regards to asking the artist, a quick google claims that
>This book has includes an extensive interview with creator Masashi Kishimoto, step-by-step details on the process of creating a Naruto illustration, 20 pages of notes from the author about each image in the book and a beautiful double-sided poster!

That might be worth checking out.

>About how many drafts would you guys predict that it took that whole comic, and what sorts of panels would you all say take more drafts to perfect than others?

That's a really hard thing to guess, because of what goes into the comic. there are 3 steps in my mind that might count as 'drafts.' 1st, the overarching story. The script to that was probably passed through a few editing hands before any art got started. It really depends on the project on how much script you should have. I've been focusing on just the next strip on my current stuff. I have notebooks with outlines for twenty odd chapters for other stories that can't see the light of day until i finish rewriting them.

(I saw a comment here recommending to find scripts and try drawing the first few pages, then compare work. I'm so gonna do that!)

2nd. the page itself. Panel layout, camera angles, action poses, there is SO MUCH that goes into each page, I can't do it justice. A lot of good books have been suggested, so check out those. Duck into a bookstore and see what they have. I have fond memories of draw comics the marvel way! and I love How to make webcomics

I do end up drawing and redrawing the pencils several times, before I ink it.

3rd, you'd be surprised how much rewriting can go into every line of dialogue. For me at least. I write what I want to say, then I remove every word I can get away with, then I have to cram it inside of a bubble. Sometimes, writing a sentence takes longer then drawing a panel!

Closing remarks: I have 2 final pieces of advice: 1st: Invent your own process. Figure out how you want to do it. Each of us is shaped by our environment, by our upbringing, by the books we've read, by the artists we admire. And then, none of us have exactly the same tools. Make a process that works for you. (Start making. And then, when you're comfortable, experiment! I recently bought a calligraphy dip pen and have been using that for my inking. For so long, I had thought it an outdated piece of technology, but now I love it so much! but you don't need one. I did a lot of comics with paper and a ball point pen. They weren't pretty, but they were mine.)

Finally, (because I doubt you're even reading this far down!) practice does not necessarily equal practice. All the anatomy lessons, perspective practice, the realistic images, those are good fundamentals. I wish I had them. But if you want to learn to make comics, come up with a story, not too long of one, and draw it. Play with what you can do. Learn to tell a story. And, ya know, you'l get to a point where you need a cool city scene, and all that perspective practice flows into the panel. Or you'll want to emphasize how beautiful your villainess is, and your anatomy floods down your pen. Everything you learn is a tool in your toolbox and the fundamentals are very useful, although they don't seem to be, they are part of the path.

TLDR: Confucius say: Make some comics. They you will know how to make them. Also, read books.

Oh, sure. First reddit comment of the day just after waking up. I knew I shoulda had a bit of caffeine first.

Scott Adams' is the guy who wrote Dilbert, a near-genius, and a serial entrepreneur. He's a self described 1%er and likes talking a lot about the psychology of winning. His latest book (How to fail at almost everything and still win big) talks a lot about his story of success. Early on, he references a lot of 'winners'. Invariably, most winners attribute their success to luck, circumstances, or some other uncontrollable variable. Why? Because the people asking them are almost universally less successful then they are.

Unfortunately, the secret to losing weight is eating less. Going out on more dates happens when you ask more people. Successful business owners keep going in debt for a new idea and convincing other people to finance it. Obama got his job because he's incredibly charismatic, he made a ton of friends in the Democrat Party, and he was at the perfect nexus of Progress & Diversity that often propels people in that party forward. He worked his ass off to get that nomination and eventually the presidency.

Success is based on working hard in the right way, not in getting lucky. At least according to Scott Adams.

Quick edit: And don't take this as an endorsement of Obama, his policies, or anything of the sort. I detest the man and everything he stands for. But I don't think he made it because he was lucky.

Coming from a background in art & software development, the easiest way to prevent and manage disputes is clear precise written communication. Whether it's construction, graphics, art, or anything I do for clients, following these procedures has vastly enhanced my work.

A clearly written contract does help immensely beyond mere dispute resolution, it also greatly assists in clarifying the relationship between the service-provider and the customer. It's far from a contentious or litigious document if written properly, but rather a proper description - and even a means of guaranteeing your work (At Bob's Construction, we not only guarantee our work, but also guarantees it by contract).

Beyond a contract, there are perhaps even more important documents, including a project proposal, budgets, change-order sign-offs, and perhaps most importantly the project briefing/description which clearly describes both the price, and the product to be delivered. Properly following this procedure, and having the documents signed should eliminate misunderstandings and miss-communications.

For example, I've had clients described in emails, calls, and other communication exactly what they wanted, I wrote it down as described (and even written) and sent back the project briefing only to discover the client actually wanted it in a different color. In the rare case that a client things I'm not delivering on my promises, I typically tell them "Customer service is extremely important to me, and to ensure I am delivering the product you asked for, I am following the project briefing. If you would like to make a change to this briefing, we can discuss a change-order and pricing."

If the above subject(s) sound interesting to you, the most clear concise description of this has been "Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers". Don't be put off by the "graphic design" label, this works the same in all fields and I have assisted friends and associates in construction contracting services improve their businesses by using these standard professional step-by-step procedures for interacting with clients.

I can definitely help you with this.


How to Draw: drawing and sketching objects and environments from your imagination

This is the best book on perspective you can buy. Perspective is the number one thing you need to have a grasp on if you want to draw, especially from imagination. Practice this until it clicks for you.

For setting up scenes I recommend Andrew Loomis books, Creative Illustration in particular. Loomis has several books out and they're all amazing. Many artists have learned to draw from Loomis.

Burne Hogarth is another master of the craft and you can learn a lot about musculature and anatomy from his books. These are generally a step up from Loomis so you could move on to these once you have a solid grasp of the fundamentals to take your work to the next level. Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Figure Drawing, Drawing the Human Head.

For people and anatomy, Proko (http://www.proko.com/library/) has good free youtube videos. He uses a lot of Loomis and Hogarth methods (which are pretty much the standard) and presents them in a way that is easy to digest. He's constantly updating his channel and adding new videos.

If you can only get a few books, I would get the How to Draw perspective book first, then go through the Proko material, then move onto the Loomis and Hogarth stuff. These learning materials will take you pretty much as far as you want to go.

Also I highly recommend sticking to traditional materials (pencil and paper) while you're learning. Once you have the fundamentals down then you can move on to digital. You're going to make things much easier on yourself if you stick with traditional while you nail these fundamentals down.

The most important thing that 99% percent of the photographers don't seem to know: if you want to make good photos consistently, learn the fundamentals.

Because a photo can be made in an instant, a lot of photographers work intuitively, without making any informed decisions about their pictures whatsoever. This is why a lot of photos taken without any training aren't appealing.

If you learn about composition, color, light, etc. like an illustrator or a painter does, you will be able to make repeatable successful photos. In the beginning, you shouldn't be overly concerned with sharpness, depth of field or your equipment. No, you should be concerned with how your photo looks at the most basic, fundamental level.

Since I started taking drawing lessons and reading books on color and composition this year, I feel way more confident about my photography. I make informed decisions that I know will work. I am able to analyze pictures that work for me, and I know why they work now. Thanks to drawing lessons, I can see a lot better, which is also a great help for retouching. I can think in terms of lines, shapes, forms, spaces, light, shadow. But the most important thing of all: I feel like I can reach the level of photography that I only could dream about last year, the high-end commercial automotive photography.

Some books that helped me a lot:

• Betty Edwards - The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
  
• Betty Edwards - Color
  
• Michael Freeman - The Photographer's Eye: Composition and Design for Better Digital Photos
  
  Believe me, you want fundamental knowledge to rely on, not a list of incoherent 'protips'. :-)

1: Without knowing what your "45-page nonfiction book" is about, I'm just going to give you the general advice that a good cover moves units. Unless someone is specifically searching for your book, the cover is going to be the first thing he sees and what catches his interest. This may be considerably less true in the non-fiction section.

How you go about getting one is up to you, but I'd personally recommend not skimping on your cover.

2: In regards to turning documents into e-books, this is actually a fairly simple process. Amazon released an e-book of instructions, and there's also a printable PDF you can look at without having to have a kindle handy. The main parts are mostly about letting your word processor handle white space instead of manually inserting spaces, tabs, and extra carriage returns (do so with indented paragraphs, page breaks, and double spaced lines). If your work has tables, charts, or pictures in it, then that might be something else to worry about.

3: Amazon's program is called KDP Select. The biggest drawback is that you can't sell your digital book through anyone else, but you can still sell physical copies elsewhere (unless it's changed since the last time I looked into it). Their website will answer your questions better than I can, but I would say that in general, no, I didn't find that Amazon did much of anything to make it worth it. You're still on your own for marketing and such, they just allow you to do some promotional work like offering your book for free for several days to hopefully snag some reviews.

>I know they will not allow me to price it $0.00 and have a minimum price of $0.99, so that is what I will charge on Amazon.

The common method to get around this is to put your work on other sites like Smashwords that DO allow you to set the price to free, and then report the book to Amazon as cheaper elsewhere. Eventually, they'll either automatically price match it or, in some occasions, pull your book down off their site. I've never heard of this second one actually happening to anyone, but I'm sure it could.

Well Craig Thompson also did Goodbye Chunky Rice, Carnet De Voyage and Habibi. As far as themes and plot go they don't have a lot of similarities (except maybe Chunky Rice) but the art is phenomenal in them and Habibi works with the Quran much like how Blankets spends a lot of time talking about Christianity.

As far as autobiographical comics go though, I'd suggest American Splendour (specifically "Our Cancer Year", "Cleveland" and "The Quitter"), A Contract With God, and Love And Rockets (try "Maggie the Mechanic", its not for everyone though, it has some scifi in this book but that kind of fades away as the series progresses to focus more on the characters and their relationships).

If you want something that experiments with the format of a comic book a lot you might want to look into Asterios Polyp, Cerebus (Jaka's Story and Church and State I & II are the highlights there) and the works of Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan is a good starting point). As I said though, these books, while some of the most brilliant comics there are, are very experimental and as such it helps to have some grounding in comics before you give them a try. I'd actually go so far as to call all three of these even better than Blankets though and I thought Blankets was great.

Uncategorized:

Thoughts On Design: Paul Rand


Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design

How to Be a Graphic Designer without Losing Your Soul

100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design

Paul Rand

Paul Rand: Conversations with Students

Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design

Bauhaus

The Vignelli Canon

Vignelli From A to Z

Dieter Rams: As Little Design as Possible

It's Not How Good You Are, Its How Good You Want to Be: The World's Best Selling Book

Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!)

Josef Muller-Brockmann: Pioneer of Swiss Graphic Design

Popular Lies About Graphic Design

100 Ideas that Changed Art

100 Diagrams That Changed the World

Basics Design 08: Design Thinking

Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920-1965

Lella and Massimo Vignelli (Design is One)

The Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice

History of the Poster

How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer

The Design of Dissent: Socially and Politically Driven Graphics

George Lois: On His Creation of the Big Idea

Milton Glaser: Graphic Design

Sagmeister: Made You Look

Victore or, Who Died and Made You Boss?

Things I have learned in my life so far

Covering the '60s: George Lois, the Esquire Era

Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite

Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative

[Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration]
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/0812993012/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=VEJ64Y4T0U6J&coliid=I1WMMNNLTRBQ9G)

Graphic Design Thinking (Design Briefs)

I Used to Be a Design Student: 50 Graphic Designers Then and Now

The Form of the Book: Essays on the Morality of Good Design

Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills

Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference

Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Envisioning Information

The elements of dynamic symmetry

The elements of content strategy

Corporate Diversity: Swiss graphic design and advertising

Book Design: a comprehensive guide

Meggs' History of Graphic Design

Not scifi by a long way, but Brian Froud & Alan Lee's book Faeries (google images) is one of the most beautiful compilations of art I've ever seen - think "history of Irish folklore" done in the style of the Dark Crystal and The Labyrinth. Myths from around the world are illustrated in fantastic style.
Similarly, Brian Froud's Gnomes is an absolutely gorgeous book presenting itself as a documentary of the lives of gnomes from around the "old-world" (Ireland across to Siberia), and how they work with & around woodland animals. If you grew up with access to woods or forests, this is basically a beautifully-illustrated love story to that magic.

Going slightly more towards scifi now with Terry Pratchett's The Last Hero illustrated by Paul Kidby. More a comicbook than anything else, but does have amusing technically-illustrated-descriptions of vehicles, characters, animals and scenes that you don't normally get from the novels.

I would definitely recommend getting some beginner sewing books to start too. It will set you up so much better, so you're making beautiful things from the beginning, and will help you build skills. A lot of times I think beginners get over ambitious, try to make a fancy dress with a difficult (or inappropriate - quilting cottons are for quilting not dressmaking) fabric, get frustrated with fit issues and complicated techniques, and then give up. I think the Colette Sewing Handbook is great, although I think a lot of people on this sub don't like it for whatever reason. Tilly & the Button is more popular and is also fine. Both have blogs and sell patterns which you can use in addition to what's in the books. There are also tons of how-to's online, fitting books, other blogs, and more advanced books once you get into it.

Edit to add: I'm sure you can find these books or similar at the library too, and estate and garage sales are an excellent place to find cheap sewing machines, patterns, fabric, and things like thread and zippers.

>The use of raised heel running shoes is not healthy, A sole-less running shoe is much better for you.

>In society today, we don’t really question why we do things the way we do.

>People will continue to run the way they always have if they don’t know that it is unhealthy.

These statements are too absolutist for a scientific paper. Obviously, all of the evidence you have supports that barefoot running is better, but beware saying that 'it is much better for you.'

>I truly believe that I am an early adapter to the process in sole-less running shoe world. Throwing on music, running up to ten miles, and never once thinking about how I am running on my fore foot.

These kinds of anecdotal statements would never be included in scientific writing, but it's fine for an opinion piece.

You have also used the word 'you' to refer to the more general 'one' or 'people'. This is pretty informal. A little bit of informality is fine in opinion or editorial writing, but not really in scientific research.

Everybody, myself included, needs to work on their punctuation. I use The New Well-Tempered Sentence. It's a lot more fun than any other books I know on proper punctuation. Actually, The Transitive Vampire is a good grammar book too.

Obviously though, if you got an A, you wrote what the TA was looking for! But, it's the type of thing that could vary depending on the course and teaching staff.

Books books books!

Some essential reading:

• Thinking with Type - very basic, and a good place to start; designed like a workbook
  
• The Elements of Typographic Style - pure reference
  
• The Vignelli Canon (PDF, also available as paperback)
  
  You have probably heard of the documentary Helvetica. This movie inspired me to become a type nerd. The follow-up movie, Objectified, is also very good and focuses on consumer design.
  
  Web sites / blogs:
  
  
• Typophile - active forum and community
  
• I Love Typography - great blog
  
• The Ampersand - pictures of ampersands; more interesting than it sounds
  
• Brand New - logo design, not typography specifically
  
  If you are at college or have a college campus nearby, check our their art library. There are bound to be awesome resources there. Explore graphic design periodicals and get lost in giant bound books of type samples.
  
  Edit: Disclaimer: I'm merely a design hobbyist.

ok. I don't what style you want to go for, and I'm going to assume that you want to get into the comic book style. That doesn't matter though, where you need to begin is with Andrew Loomis' Creative illustration, Figure Drawing for all its worth(the free pdf, but I would recommend getting the book, because why not), Drawing on the right side of the brain, and Drawing the hands and face. All of these resources are what you need to start out. It doesn't look like you are out of the gate "I draw stick figures" level. But you have to keep in mind, that the ultimate tutor, is time. If you really want to get better quickly, then you have to devote a lot of time to studies and just drawing in general. Good luck, I hope I helped you at least a little bit.

What do you need feedback with?

The site isn't, like complete rubbish or anything. But there a lot of room for improvement, and I don't know where to start.

I'm guessing that'd you probably want some advice on how to make it look better. So, I'll start there.

If you want to learn how to make websites look nice, start here.

Design is actually really hard. It takes a long time to learn the fundamentals, let alone gain mastery. But there are many resources available.

In terms of coding, start by learning about validation.

Getting a design right across different browsers is hard. Validating your code as you go along will make things easier.

Learn the development tools in your browser of choice. Firefox has firebug, which has an awesome array of extension for helping you craft your pages. Firefox can also be extended with the web development toolbar, which you can use to validate your code as you go.

(Incidently, if you search reddit, you will find threads where developers list their favoured web development tool sets.)

Tangentially-related experience will be your game. Get a series of temp jobs. You'll be surprised at the skills you can pick up at these jobs.

From a design perspective, there's too much white space in your resume. That can be a supporting if not sufficient reason to fill up the page more with more detail about your working past, as insomniaclyric suggests.

With regard to resume format, I think you should do some mugging on resume advice websites. It seems very simple, but try to go through the websites over the course of a week and distill the good advice from the bad.

With regard to resume layout, try to buy this book.
http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-Principles/dp/1566091594/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265645414&sr=8-3

There's a very good chance your library can help you out here, so do ask them first, but I do recommend buying it if possible. Seriously, it's worth the money. You can get it used from Amazon for less than one buck! Given that you'll be applying its advice to your resume, the purchase should be easily justified.

Physical copies look better imo. The colors are nicer. I you are willing to wait, get the Trade Paperbacks!

Volume 1 (Chrysalis Arc, which is awesome) is out here.

Volume 2 (Nightmare arc, personaly didn't like as much) will be out Sept. 24 here.

There will also be a compilation of the mane 6 micro series in November here.
The Rarity and the Pinkie comic were both top notch, while the others varied from good to mediocre (depending who you ask). But it is a good price for 6 comics!

Issue 9 was great, Volume 3 is looking like it will be awesome (no date yet for that one).

> Logistically, how would I go about getting it developed, and on what should I be focusing most of my efforts? I.e., do I just look up local developers via Google search? Are remote developers viable? Should I aim for developers who have developed similar programs, (for example, say a team developed MyFitnessPal, and I want to develop a fitness-based app, do I go after them, too?). Another important question, what qualities, qualifications, experience, etc. should I look for? (beyond the common sense ones that I should know, like work ethic, chemistry, etc.)

Without details of your app, it's difficult to say what size of team you'll need. My recommendation would be to heavily screen the portfolio of any potential app developers. Any potential candidates should have at least several apps of good quality, and that were moderately challenging to make.

The candidate should also demonstrate (by their actions) that they are familiar with standard professional consulting practices; there should be a contract (I hear you know a lawyer) which clearly details the project including copyright (work for hire), final deliverable, kill fee, change orders, etc. There should also be a document 'briefing' describing exactly what will be delivered, when it will be delivered, and how much it will cost (the proposal). While there is some variation in the process, any 'professional' should do something similar since these processes help ensure that both the vendor (developer) and client (you) know exactly what you're getting into.

For a book which describes this in detail (useful to both freelancers & clients), read Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers. Unfortuantely, this series doesn't have one specific to software development, but the principles within are applicable across many industries. The book is very concise, so it's a quick read too.

> I wouldn't be involved in the nuts and bolts of programming at all. I would of course have input on layout, design, and function, etc.

Draw as much of that as you reasonably can; any information you can give will help with the initial design, and planning stages.

> I haven't even thought about cost or funding

Good and experienced software developers tend to be well paid. Perhaps not as much as lawyers, but understand it won't be cheap,

Lastly, don't forget marketing! Marketing is such a huge portion of many successful apps; simply having a 'good' app is rarely enough.

Thanks! Great job on your first project! I'm sure you'll be able to work up to clothes soon. My sister gave me this book the dress came out of and it's super helpful and confidence boosting! https://www.amazon.com/Love-First-Stitch-Demystifying-Dressmaking/dp/1611802342

I don't really read books but I love comics and manga.

Planet Hulk I want to read this so bad after seeing the movie. I loved the story in the film and want to see the source material.

Deadpool I love Daniel Way's run on Deadpool. it was one of the first comics I read.

My Little Pony Micro series V1 because ponies.

There's a documentary called Dear Mr. Watterson (it was available streaming at some point on Hulu I think) and a book about the strip and Bill's artwork called, [Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip]
(https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Calvin-Hobbes-Unconventional-Revolutionary/dp/1441106855) that speak about licencing to some degree. My impression is that Bill sees his strip as an art form and wants it to be appreciated to some degree as such.


Also, I think he is/was concerned about the Pandora's box of allowing any licencing. The strip was active durring a time where people actually read newspapers. His net worth is calculated to be somewhere around 450 million. Tose calculations are rarely correct, but suffice to say I don't know that he needs to license his strip for financial reasons. He has had multiple multi-million dollar offers and has declined them all.


I don't know how much Waterson spoke about this directly. I think he made most of his statements durring conversations within the industry. It should be noted that Waterson was known to slip autographed copies of his books on to the shelves of independent bookstores, but stopped the practice after learning that the copies where being bought and re-sold at ludicrous markups.

Edit

Finally have some time to double back and finish out my thought. I don't necessarily agree with Watterson on his approach. I appreciate his willingness to take a stand on his rights reguardless of the financial 'loss'.


While all items are an encroachment of his intellectual property, I don't consider fan art to be the great encroachment that some people do. In short, I would totally use a Calvin coffee cup, but only if I bought it from an artist that shares the appreciation of the character.

Edit II

The book I referenced earlier cites a speech Watterson made in chapel 6 called, The Cheapening of the Comics. The speech is very blunt and frank. He doesn't condem all licinging directly, but does state that it is very rarely done well.

I want to eventually do the same thing with my comic halfwing.com, and this post and responses are really helpful.

I read a good book that had some other helpful information called How to Make Webcomics written by four successful webcomic creators, i.e., they make a living off their comics.

They actually call out that only 5-10% of your audience will spend money on your comic, so you have to expect that for kickstarter. They also say it takes about 3 years to build up your audience enough to be successful.

The above probably varies, but that helped me set expectations. There is more good info in there besides that but not as related to kickstarter.

I also found a podcast specifically for comic kickstarter campaigns called comixlaunch that had some useful information. Sometimes there is a lot of promotion/chit chat in the beginning, but there is good information farther in the podcasts.

You are a painter!
Casually for 8 years is a significant amount of time. Even the grandest painters are, in the most basic form, just pushing coloured mud around with a stick that has hairs on it so....no more noble than that!
Anyway, there is no finish line to art, we are all on a journey whether we have had formal training or not.
I have had formal training. I have a bachelor's degree in art with a focus on painting and sculpture. I am currently a high school art teacher and I have a studio at home to keep up my work.

You should look at Alex Grey. His subject matter might not be what you are into but his colours and layering remind me of your work...or you of him.

You should also check out Betty Edwards book on colour theory. It taught me a lot about how to emphasize my colour usage. I LOVE bright bold colours in my work!

"Bone" by Jeff Smith -- Don't let the simple, cartoon-like style fool you; this one is a killer. From start to finish, Smith takes you on an epic adventure packed full of action, genuine humor, and plenty of heart. What I like best about "Bone" is that it didn't try to be the next "Watchmen." It didn't try to be grim or gritty. It's great.

"Blankets" by Craig Thompson -- They just re-released a hardcover edition of this story, which makes it a perfect time to pick it up. I can't say much about this story, except that it is a great example of autobiography in comics form. Anybody who has ever been in love will resonate with this story.

"Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth" by Chris Ware -- This is an intimidating piece of work; it's lengthy, the story jumps around, and there is a lot of responsibility placed on the reader to understand the story. Still, Jimmy Corrigan is a unique, heart-felt story about the ties that bind and influence a family across generations. I'm sorry: that might have made it sound like a schmaltzy piece of fluff -- when it actually is a heart-wrenching piece of heartbreak.

"All Star Superman" by Grant Morrison -- This isn't Watchmen. It isn't dark. It isn't full of sex or drugs or over-the-top violence. It is, however, an incredible look at what makes a Superman and what he has come to mean to our culture.

Give those four a shot. You might like them.

Not a living from writing, but like any reasonably intelligent person, I'd like to make a living off my creative abilities rather than working a regular day job.

You should read Scott Adams' book. To summarize, I don't ever make goals of any sort, I only create systems that win more often than lose. I don't own a car because it's a major expense that won't pay off for a very long time. I don't plan out my entire story with precision because in the heat of the moment, something might strike me that I want to add. I have a general end goal for the story, but it might shift over time. As an example, my original goal for the labyrinth was that Umi had created a false representation of reality and everything was a weird simulation of reality. This is why there was a magic freezer that could create chicken from nothing, and a series of odd rooms that weren't quite right, such as a Japanese styled bathroom mixed with a victorian era bedroom and an alien-style armory.

These priorities shifted over time when I started mapping out the story just a bit more.

But yes, in the end, it all just grew organically out of the WP. It needs a lot of fixing, and I'm currently tracking 60-something plotholes and major story issues, not least of which was me forgetting Barbatos and confusing him with Agares. (CRINGE), my worst error to date.

Alan Lee is one of my favorite artists ever. I've loved his work since I got a hold of the book him and Brian Froud did called Faeries ( http://www.amazon.com/Faeries-Deluxe-Collectors-Brian-Froud/dp/0810995867 ) Also does some of the most fantastic pencil drawings ive seen. I LOVE his pencil drawings, which is why I got this book ( http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Sketchbook-Alan-Lee/dp/0618640142 ) Highly recommend both of these.

• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
  
  
• Stop Stealing Sheep & find our how type works 3rd Edition by Erik Spiekermann, this one is a super easy read but a great book.
  
  
• Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton, I have the 2nd Edition
  
  
• Making and Breaking the Grid by Timothy Samara
  
  
• Typographic Design: Form and Communication by Rob Carter, Ben Day, Philip Meggs. I have the 4th edition but I think most are okay. This is a good general typography textbook.
  
  
• Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks by Keith Houston
  
  I can't give suggestions on hand-lettering books yet as the few I have read weren't good...so I'm trying to find better ones. But check out Louise Fili and Jessica Hische for inspiration and of course Paula Scher and Sagmeister.
  
  There are many other books so I welcome others to chime in and add their suggestions.

Personally, I'm more of a learn-by-doing person. I would suggest looking for some local art classes. Color theory sounds like it would be the most useful thing for you.

If you do end up buying a book, try to find one that has lots of exercises, and basically treat it like a class. Don't just read all the way to the end of the book in one sitting. Read a chapter, do the exercises from the chapter, and then wait a day or two before you move on to the next chapter.

The book Drawing On The Right Side Of The Brain is a good example of what you should look for. It's obviously tempting to say "I don't need to know about drawing!" when you work primarily digitally, but learning drawing really teaches you a lot about the fundamentals: perspective, composition, light and shadow, etc. To re-use my musician analogy, pretty much all composers start by learning to play an instrument (usually piano) before they start writing music. You don't need to be an expert, but it's very important to understand the fundamentals.

Oh, also apparently the same author has a book on color theory, but I haven't personally read it. Might be worth a try.

Congrats on the new job, and happy cake day! Wish you the best of luck, pumpkin!

Item

$24/mo is absurd. The best way to check grammar is to put it down and come back an hour or two later to proofread. If you're desperate, MS Word does have a built-in grammar check tool you can use or Open Office has some grammar check extensions you can download such as LanguageTool.

If you question your own grammar, get a couple of light and easy grammar references to keep by your desk. Eats, Shoots & Leaves or The Transitive Vampire are two that are easy to work with and don't take themselves too seriously.

EDIT: Also, if you need to write regularly, buy one of these: The Synonym Finder. Hands down one of the best, easiest to use on the market. I write professionally and I have 5 copies of this book -- one for every place I may wind up writing. That's how useful I find it.

I have compiled a reading list to be read in order just for this question.

I strongly believe that these books will make you better than 90% of designers out there.

Level One

Start with Thinking with Type it is a really good introduction to all things graphic design. It focuses a lot on typography and it is really basic. I

Next is Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type This book takes what you learned in Thinking with Type and allows you to develope it further in a grid based system. Its good, basic, and has exercises for you to do to play with composition.

Third on the list is Graphic Design: The New Basics It will take what you learned in Thinking with Type and Grid Systems and open them up a little. You learn about design elements other than just type like scale, rhythm and contrast. It really good, and has some projects to do.

Level 2

Now You can get into more "advanced" stuff. There are a lot of books that can go here, but Ill recommend some of my favorites. Its not as important to do this section in order.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design is the bible when it comes to grids. Its german and dry as fuck, but it is basically awesome. Its expensive, but worth every single penny.

Elements of Typographic Style Not alot about grids in here, but it tells you every insane crazy thing that typographers do when they massage text.

You can look at other designers work too. Heres a list of designers I like a lot:

Stefan Sagmeister

Paul Rand

Massimo Vignelli

James Victore

Paul Sahre

Wolfgang Weinhart

Paula Scher

Tibor Kalman

Most of these designers also have books out about their life and work.

Get a sketchbook and play around in it. Draw, collage, glue bubblegum wrappers in there. Just make it a diary of your visual life.

You could also get into Visual Theory here:
Norman Bryson has a book on still lifes that awesome
JWT Mitchell's What do pictures want is great

After this, its just a matter of making a lot of really bad shit and eventually its just a little less worse and maybe one day it might be good.

Ive got more, but that should keep you busy for a year or two.

Some of my favorites. Some are good to skim through for ideas, some of them are more "sit down and read" books. Definitely not a comprehensive list, but all books that I enjoyed reading.

Graphic Style by Seymour Chwast and Steven Heller

Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton

100 ideas that Changed Graphic Design by Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

A Short History of the Printed Word by Warren Chappell and Robert Bringhurst

The Posters: 1,000 Posters from Toulouse-Lautrec to Sagmeister

Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop by Jim Sherraden

The bad news: There are mountains of legal issues and risks an artist takes on with sharing that kind of information. Also there are many of variables from company to company, project to project: rendering package involved, in house tools, required techniques involved, client demands, time/money resources, final look goal, delivery specs, etc. Even if someone could provide production scripts, these factors make it an ineffective and possibly detrimental approach to learning.

The good news: You can start learning in much more effective ways that will actually prep you better for production! I agree with Bootylicious overall, in that you're going to get the most from making your own projects and learning to problem solve them as you move forward and hit unforeseen hurdles. Doing is the biggest, the most challenging, and the most important part.

With that said, it's not always enough to just keep trying without being equipped with the proper knowledge, you'll eventually come up against issues you can't solve just by pushing without outside information. But it won't be specific scripts that get you through these times either. Core, software agnostic, concepts are going to push you through your biggest obstacles and help you learn to ask/answer critical questions:

What image do I have? What do I want it to be? What are my resources? What approaches do these 3 answers allow for?

Assume that every company, every client and every project you encounter is going to be totally different, so learning to answer these will help make you a flexible, comp-rock-star.

Make a project with as clear of a goal as you can and start there, when you get stuck, or as you go along in general, learn from software agnostic sources that focus on the skills and theory, over sources that focus on a specific program.


I've included a few book links below + happy comping!


https://www.amazon.com/VES-Handbook-Visual-Effects-Procedures/dp/0240825187/


https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Compositing-Film-Video-Production/dp/1138240370


https://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X/

I learned by just messing about on my machine (and making plenty of mistakes on things that didn't really matter), and some pretty intensive Googling. Getting a pattern marked as 'easy' and trying to follow it slowly (with inexpensive fabric...) is quite a useful experience, even if you end up with something unwearable!

I've recently bought Love At First Stitch (it's been out in the UK for a while) and although I've not used the instructions as a beginner would, it seems to me that they're really clear and would be very helpful - the author specifically wrote it to help people ease in to sewing.

Last time I tried to give advice on drawings the person got upset and quit reddit, soooo, please don't do that. My suggestion if you're absolutely serious about drawing is to absolutely learn the fundamentals.

Fun With A Pencil: How Everybody Can Easily Learn to Draw https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857687603/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ijZZDbCWDFEAQ

Drawing the Head and Hands https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857680978/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_AjZZDb0B3RBPF

Figure Drawing for All It's Worth https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857680986/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_OjZZDbW37G79H

Successful Drawing https://www.amazon.com/dp/0857687611/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_4jZZDb95Z0W96

Creative Illustration https://www.amazon.com/dp/1845769287/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ikZZDbFRJYAJD

And after the basics


Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist (Volume 1) (James Gurney Art) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0740785508/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_alZZDbZW0Y1P4


Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter (Volume 2) (James Gurney Art) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0740797719/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_DlZZDb676AWT6



It doesn't matter what medium you use, learning how to draw and understanding what you're doing will help out the most.

Two resources you need to read on color: http://www.amazon.com/Color-Light-Guide-Realist-Painter/dp/0740797719 and http://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419319385&sr=1-1&keywords=light+for+visual+artists

Lots of illustrations and examples, very easy to understand and yet both are no more than 250 pages. I have both of these books and they are great! I would also look at Cubebrush and Ctrl+paint. You need to definitely focus on color theory as well.

Along with learning these, also check out Andrew Loomis' books (Google Save Loomis to find pdf of his books for free). And this one -- > http://www.amazon.com/Human-Anatomy-Artists-Andr%C3%81s-Szunyoghy/dp/3833162562/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419319599&sr=1-4&keywords=andras+szunyoghy

But once your learn color theory and look at the resources I suggested, you will definitely improve on your coloring skills. Gurney's may be aimed at painters, but it's for everyone really. I can't give much advice since I'm learning color theory but these results have been very helpful.

Oh cool! this book is great, as well as this one! Typography is really important :)

Others have covered the serious books but for a bit of entertainment and the look at the somewhat eccentric side, I recommend The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd.

Chip has been a long time book cover designer and this story covers his experience in design school and some of the lessons he learned along the way. It's one of my favorite reads and I recommend it to any designer that has been through or will be going through college soon.

Color by Betty Edwards: A Course in Mastering the Art of Mixing Colors

This book can maybe help, it contains a nice "formula" for mixing and decoding color. I've read through several chapters, and as an amateur artist myself, found it interesting and memorable. Good luck with everything!

Well, not all at once, but there are paperbacks collecting the individual comics:

• The ongoing main series.
  
• Finished Micro-Series spin-off Volume 1 and Volume 2
  
• The ongoing Friends Forever spin-off.
  
  For the sake of completeness, there's also an omnibus, which also collects the main series, but is the equivalent of 3(?) of the regular paperbacks I mentioned above.
  
  Finally, if you don't want/need physical books, they're also available on the Comixology app, I believe.
  
  I hope that helps!

Also not to sound to much like a pimp. But the story of the prototypes and bill burning them came from the wonderful book Looking For Calvin And Hobbes by Nevin Martell. so if anyone is interested in the Bill Watterson side of Calvin and Hobbes thats a great read

Maybe you might want to pick up this little book. It will give you some hints and tips on type design for paper:

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-Principles/dp/1566091594

(not an affiliate link or anything; just a quick search to find it online somewhere)

As others have said, you have a lot more room for play when dealing with printed items. Brochures don't have web limitations, so feel free to try out different type faces. Also, keep in mind that printing so much black might lead to costs you don't see with web design, so choose a printer (either the machine, or a company) wisely. You don't want tacky inks making the brochures stick together.

Lastly, some acknowledgements. I like the spacing on the inside view of the brochure. There's enough room at the bottom to hold it, and not cover text (this is often an oversight). You use fore- and background color to break up the questions and notes, which is nice.

Overall, you can use more contrasts with typeface, size, and alignment than on the web, so please do! And, try out that book; if you need to do this again, you will definitely get some ideas there (I did).

So many things. I was never a competent pixel artist because once I got to semi-proficient I looked at the skill curve and realized that I wasn't making it through all of that.

I really recommend frequenting these two sites:

http://pixelation.org
http://pixeljoint.com

Someone mentioned the classic Disney animator bible:

https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Life-Disney-Animation/dp/0786860707

It can't be understated how essential this book is to learning the essentials of animation. Further than that there were the Loomis books that were called out time and again as a great art education (palette selection becomes incredibly important in low resolution art). Those books are hard to come by-- scratch that, they used to be now they're just on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1845769287

There's a lot to dive in to. If all of this seems like too much, cribbing from OpenGameArt's better assets is a cheap and easy way to start.

Chris Ware isn't for everybody, but he's certainly my favorite alt comic author. Of course Jimmy Corrigan is considered his most important title, but I feel his work has grown more ambitious with every title. You can go bankrupt collecting the ACME Novelty library, but this collects lots of the material as well.

There are three MLP comic series, and there are indeed trade paperbacks, though obviously not all the issues of ongoing series have been collected yet. It's a good idea to read the main series in order, but doesn't really matter for the others.

The main series, simply titled "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" has story arcs of either 2 or 4 issues. With a few exceptions, they are mostly very high quality (Katie Cook and Andy Price are very good at their jobs).

The "micro series" (collected under the title "Pony Tales") featured one-shot issues focusing on individual characters. Quality-wise, they tended to be a bit hit-or-miss. It is now completed.

After the micro series finished, a new side series called "Friends Forever" started, focusing on the relationship between a pair of characters. The first issue wasn't great, but I've liked all the others so far.

I am in almost the same situation.
I have also been looking for books for motivation, inspiration and so on.
Here are some stuff that keep getting recommended as well as other books that I think are interesting judging by their description and reviews (note: I haven't read anything yet I am just sharing my searching results from the past 2 or 3 days):

For creative problems

• Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
  
• Burn your Portfolio
  
• The Design Method
  
  For Inspiration
  
  
• 100 ideas that changed graphic Design
  
• Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills
  
• Graphic Design, Referenced
  
• Drawn In
  
  And this one seems to go into depth of the business itself:
  
  
• Know Your Onions
  
  Like I said, I haven't read any of those but maybe this will save some time for you or for other people searching for books.
  
  There is also Thinking with Type, The Elements of Typographic Style, Universal Principles of Design, Deign for how people learn, How to be a Graphics Designer without losing your soul.
  
  Edit: I was actually going to make a thread similar to this but I am gonna post my similar question here anyway,
  Does anybody know of more books for people who are already involved in the medium ?
  
  A lot of recommendations I see around the internet seem to be for someone just starting graphics design or still in school but rarely is it something for a higher level.

I can't believe no one mentioned sewing books yet. There are so many kick-ass introduction to sewing books out there now!
Most of these talk you through setting up your machine all the way to making some pretty nice garments. They are a must have. I'd go for love at first stitch if she's into quirky younger fashion and the collette book if she's a little more conservative. Both include a few patterns to start her off.

http://www.amazon.com/Love-First-Stitch-Demystifying-Dressmaking/dp/1611802342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418696695&sr=8-1&keywords=love+at+first+stitch

http://www.amazon.com/Colette-Sewing-Handbook-Techniques-Seamstress/dp/1440215456/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1418696786&sr=8-2&keywords=colette&pebp=1418696800367

Kerning is the individual spacing between letter pairs.

Tracking is the spacing between a range of characters.

So finding a medium between not squashing the letters is Tracking. Slightly different, definitely worth knowing the difference asap (I learnt this way too late on!)

Type Matters is a great little book on typography that is definitely worth a read

I'm currently reading his book - it's a quick read, funny, and interesting. Your post has that same flavor.

I hope you make the big bucks in Vegas. I'll bet you're really good at what you do!

Study lighting a bit, I still have very shitty lighting myself but this book helped: https://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X


As for Arnold courses, the best in-depth tutorial that helped me understand it was : https://inlifethrill.com/mastering-arnold-cinema-4d-bundle/

Depends, on what you want to do. Render interiors? products? Mograph? I did them all and I still suck at pretty much all of them :)

Well if you're looking for a free hosting site, there's a bunch. try http://www.drunkduck.com/ or http://www.smackjeeves.com/ for starters. But more than that you should consider reading the book How To Make Webcomics which can be found here and I'm sure some other places too.

For drawing software it really depends on what look you are going for. I would suggest playing around with a bunch of different programs until you find one that works. You could even try hand drawing comics and then scanning them in.

The "bible" is "The Grammar of Graphics" by Leland Wilkinson. (link to amazon). The "gg" of ggplot2 stands for grammar of graphics.

Then we go into other books, resources that help with actually showing visualizations:

• Show Me the Numbers: Designing Tables and Graphs to Enlighten [Few, 2004]
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information [Tufte, 2001]
  
• The Functional Art [Cairo, 2012]
  
• Semiology of Graphics: Diagrams, Networks, Maps [Bertin, 2010]
  
  Then we can look at the "Table of Elements of Data Visualization":
  
  
• A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
  
• The Data Visualisation Catalogue
  
  Then, we can look at some blogs to help you see what works and doesn't work:
  
  
• http://helpmeviz.com/
  
• http://wtfviz.net/
  
• http://thumbsupviz.com/
  
  Finally, some blog posts about other people in data visualization that you can learn from:
  
  
• An Incomplete List of Females in Data Visualization
  
• Data and visualization blogs worth following
  
• Teaching data visualization: Recommended readings and resources
  
• 90 dataviz Tumblr blogs to follow
  
• The 30 data viz blogs you can't miss - in one place

Well you can check out some of these trade paper back editions.

First things to be available is volume one and volume two.

But if your also interested the Micro-series is going to be released in November.

Remember though there really is no value in the trade back if you are planning to re-sell. Good for the read, still though I find them good to get signed.

A bit different from the other stuff, but Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is good.

It's sloppy. I would definitely recommend reading up more on typography: http://www.amazon.com/Type-Matters-Jim-Williams/dp/1858945674

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568989695/

Some of your design decisions I don't see a purpose behind. Check out the Work section of your home page. You have your tabs and thumbnails in these dark grey boxes, but the tabs are actually separated from the thumbnails container. Why? They are connected, wouldn't you want to show that they have a relationship here? Going back to type, your header and tabs are pretty much the same size, yet one should be secondary to the other. Even ignoring that, the header may as well not be there because it's dwarfed by the boxes.

The pseudo bar chart of your software proficiency tells me nothing about your actual skills in these programs.

The level of execution here is not something I would expect from a creative with a degree. Keep polishing it up.

That is a great book.

Someone recommended this the other day, it's a great primer for graphic design in general:

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-Principles/dp/1566091594

----

They've got a web version these days:

http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Web-Book-3rd/dp/0321303377/ref=pd_sim_b_2

Novels with a strong male protagonist? I don't mean to be rude, but nearly every novel written, ever.

That said, if you like Palahniuk, you'll probably like The Contortionist's Handbook. I also like the relatively weak male leads from The Cheese Monekys and The Learners

Know Your Onions: Graphic Design: How to Think Like a Creative, Act Like a Businessman and Design Like a God

Actually, I do have one for you. One of my favorites, The Cheese Monkeys, by Chip Kidd. If you're not familiar with Chip Kidd, he's known for designing book covers. This was his first novel (there's a sequel that came out a few years later), and I love it. There's a character in this book, Himillsy Dodd, who very much reminds me of you.

If she likes Fantasy art and stories, you might try Faeries by Brian Froud and Alan Lee. It has a lot of stories about the different creatures in legends and stories like elves, faeries, brownies, etc. it's beautifully illustrated with pencil drawings by Alan Lee, so it should appeal to her artistic side.
http://www.amazon.com/Faeries-Collectors-Edition-Brian-Froud/dp/0810995867/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414413776&sr=8-1&keywords=Faeries+Alan+lee

It wasn't exactly that cut and dry. He was super happy for the format change. It allowed him to have a half page to release longer, less constrained, comic strips. He did release some merch, a tee shirt and a couple years of calendars. Read a book on him last week...

https://www.amazon.ca/Looking-Calvin-Hobbes-Unconventional-Revolutionary/dp/1441106855

add all the books by edward tufte! and also semiology of graphics by jacques bertin, modern typography by kinross, elements of typographics tyle by bringhurst, man there's quite a lot of basics missing here :)
as others come to mind I'll add them here, unfortunately I don't have my books with me at the moment

EDIT: The two dataflow one two books are pretty interesting as well, Information graphics by Robert Harris

I agree about your photography and 3D designs. With a bit of work, you can turn these, or any other artwork into different design pieces. Simple things like CD covers, business cards, posters, can quickly beef up your portfolio.

Consider adding Typography to your extra curricular studies. A lot of your stuff that you think isn't portfolio worthy, might be after some thoughtful typesetting. Thinking with Type and Designing with Type are old standbys that are easily available.

I always recommend “Creative Illustration” by Andrew Loomis. It’s an older book, but Loomis was a great teacher and the fundamentals are so solid. Loomis book

If you're looking for a practical text that stays focused on data visualization I'd recommend William Cleveland's Elements of Graphing Data. Unlike Tufte, Cleveland wasn't focused on aesthetics, but that made his books far more focused on categorizing and solving data analysis and visualization problems.

If you want to go deep into the theoretical side of information design check out Bertin's Semiology of Graphics. It's a challenging text that takes time to digest, but read this and you'll have a much deeper understanding of how people will perceive visual data of all types.

The Transitive Vampire: A Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed.

A fun way to brush you your grammar.

https://www.amazon.in/Deluxe-Transitive-Vampire-Handbook-Innocent/dp/0679418601

Awesome, I just both this two:
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881792055/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292256276&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-Designers-Critical-Students/dp/1568984480

cant wait until they here! Thanx a lot for the nice suggestions.

Thanks. If you're curious how to format a Kindle book, you can read up on it here: http://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Book-Kindle-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1377352299&sr=8-1&keywords=building+your+book+for+kindle

It would actually be helpful to browse through it before you start writing. That way, you know how to format your text and chapters ahead of time.

I am a big fan of these books:

1. Love at first stitch: http://www.amazon.com/Love-First-Stitch-Demystifying-Dressmaking/dp/1611802342/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1459291310&sr=8-1&keywords=tilly+and+the+buttons
   
2. The Colette sewing handbook: http://www.amazon.com/Colette-Sewing-Handbook-Techniques-Seamstress/dp/1440215456/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1459291310&sr=8-2&keywords=tilly+and+the+buttons

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel

Safe Area Gorazde By Joe Sacco

The Photographer by Emmanuel Guibert

Blankets by Craig Thompson

Not non-fiction but

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware is about as non-pop, non-pulp as it gets.

A mentor who is a professional character designer and has worked in-house and freelance recommended these two books to me:

The Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook: Pricing and Ethical Guidelines
https://graphicartistsguild.org/handbook

Business and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers
https://www.amazon.com/Business-Legal-Forms-Graphic-Designers/dp/1621532496

Scott Adams' book is also pretty fantastic.

A great book about some simple basics that help give even the most plain design some polish: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-Principles/dp/1566091594

The one I recommend really helped with getting into the mindset of what an agency MD is looking for in a designer. Contains really useful & insightful tips, as well as a glossary for jargon busting.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Know-Your-Onions-Creative-Businessman/dp/9063692587

the first decent book i got a long time ago was Type and Image. A very good book on typography is The Elements of Typographic Style, for a wider perspective go for Typographic Design: Form and Communication. To get a perspective on the 'communication' part of graphical communication i'd got for Information Architects

I guess this list dates me a bit :)

You need to learn the design part of web design then. If you can learn good basic design, then you can easily apply that to your web work.

Here are 4 really good book references that have helped me in school.

Meggs' History of Graphic Design ///
Typographic Design: Form and Communication ///
Graphic Design School ///
Graphic Design Referenced

Also, start thinking in terms of either Design or Graphic Design to learn either of those, stop trying to learn it through Web Design. Design is just so much more.

Light for Visual Artists by Richard Yot. I like it more than Digital lighting and rendering, although that is great for learning the software side. "Light" Is more about light from an artistic stand point and less about the software implementation.

The earlier parts of the book are on his website http://www.itchy-animation.co.uk/light.htm
The book can be found here http://www.amazon.com/Light-Visual-Artists-Understanding-Design/dp/185669660X.

His book is at 4.5 stars, and only 3% of the reviews are 1-stars. Looks like his "trolls" are greatly outnumbered by his sycophants.

Based on the fact that the rest of his blog post is all about how great it is to psychologically manipulate people, his false claim about the reviews is probably just an attempt to drum up book sales.

Non-Designers Design Book.

You could drastically improve the current design simply with better use of space. Text shouldn't be touching the border!!

So the ways that really helped me understand perspective where from Andrew Loomis' books on Illustration, specifically his book "Creative Illustration"
https://www.amazon.com/Creative-Illustration-Andrew-Loomis/dp/1845769287

Here are the only 2 pictures I could find online of the pages I was thinking about, but he has several chapters on perspective in just about all of his books.
Perspective Page 1 | Perspective Page 2

The guy is like an old master of Illustration, and he wrote several books on the subject all of which I think are some of the best out there. Basically though, checking your perspective comes down to a few simple rules revolving around the horizon line. No matter where your objects sit in space, they will share the same relative height to the horizon line. Another thing is that the horizon line is an indicator of the height of your camera. This gets tricky to visualize if your camera is tilted up or down, but all of your objects will still share the same relative distance from the horizon line no matter how much you tilt the camera. The Page 2 link shows examples of wrong and right ways to place your objects in a scene based on the horizon line. People that draw backgrounds for cartoons blow my mind with this stuff

http://www.abookapart.com/products/design-is-a-job

http://creativemornings.com/talks/mike-monteiro--2/1

http://www.amazon.com/Business-Legal-Forms-Graphic-Designers/dp/1621532496

Decide what you feel is fair. You can always negotiate down. Think of the business agreement as a partnership, which is what it is. There is nothing dirty about it.

The Gnomes book you mentioned was my first thought too. Faeries by Brian Froud is similar.

D'Aulaires' Book of Trolls also comes to mind, or something else by them.

This would be a good question to ask a librarian. I bet this kind of book is always very popular with kids in any library.

If you like Waterson, I just read a biography about hiim, you should definitely check it out, the writer constantly talks about how Waterson will not talk to him or anyone else. If you're a fan you should check it out: https://www.amazon.com/Looking-Calvin-Hobbes-Unconventional-Revolutionary/dp/1441106855

I can tell you of all the comic artists, Waterson's estate is the biggest when it comes to stopping people from ripping off his work.

I'm a really big fan of Know Your Onions; it both serves to cover the basics of design, as well as some of the post-design process that often tends to be glossed over in other content.

There's a Web Design version as well.

As a sort of extension to Scott's comment, buy this book (or download the PDF through the most legal means possible):

http://www.amazon.com/How-Make-Webcomics-Scott-Kurtz/dp/158240870X

visit this website: http://www.webcomics.com

(these guys are pros at online publishing, some of them have been doing it for over 20 years)

and consume every comic you can. Dissect it, re-read it, and replicate it. Then do the same to your favorite movies, TV shows, plays, books, etc.

Download the free guide from Amazon on how to format your Word document for Kindle.

https://www.amazon.com/Building-Your-Kindle-Direct-Publishing-ebook/dp/B007URVZJ6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1483308983&sr=8-1&keywords=kindle+formatting

BTW if you're serious about this business get Scrivener as an investment. It'll make life so much easier for you. Vellum is for advanced publishers. You don't need it yet.

He's never allowed C&H to be licensed for anything (save for one postage stamp and I think a calendar) so basically all the C&H merchandise that has come into existence is illegal or just knockoff. The idea for a movie/show has been pitched to him a million times and he always shrugs it off, partly because when it comes down to the voices, he wants that to be left to the readers' imaginations. While I've always wanted to see an animated Calvin and Hobbes too, I still have to respect the guy that created them and his decisions. This book sheds some light on Watterson and his thoughts regarding it. It's a good read if you're a fan.

Aside from Trump, I think Scott is the person who changed my perspective the most.

His book is also great.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1591847745/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478797144&sr=8-1&keywords=scott+adams

I believe this book gets suggested quite often on the sub, it was also recommended by my course tutor.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/9063692587?keywords=know%20your%20onions&qid=1451835390&ref_=sr_1_1&s=books&sr=1-1

It covers a wide range and will get you started with principals and terminology allowing you to expand on that.

I'm sure others will post with more suggestions.

one of the best books in the subject
http://www.amazon.com/Color-Betty-Edwards-Course-Mastering/dp/1585422193/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1417458569&sr=1-2&keywords=color+theory

This is an ensemble cast right? So it's important to realise she doesn't gain those characterisitics based solely on how she looks; But rather how the rest of the cast contrasts against her.

{Ps, you might have read it already, but well worth reading}

"Type Matters"

Great book for it, made by a former student of my university & now is used as a teaching aid.

the Cheese monkeys by Chip kidd. Its fiction but some of the lessons and stories are very true to how art school is.

you'd both know this if you read the kindle publishing ebook free from Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007URVZJ6

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware

Take a basic design course. If you want to learn design basics, start with the BASICS.

This book: http://www.amazon.com/Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic-Principles/dp/1566091594 will actually get you started off right by teaching how graphic design is more then colors, but about presenting information and solving problems. (And it looks like you can pick up a used copy via amazon for a few bucks)

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid On Earth is the mopiest, indiest thing you will ever read.

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed

The Cheese Monkeys by Chipp Kidd. A weird one but very good - our typography teacher had us read it and write a short opinion piece. http://www.amazon.com/The-Cheese-Monkeys-Novel-Semesters/dp/0061452483

Buy his book! I bought 5 copies last month and gave them away and everyone says it's fantastic.

https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still/dp/1591847745/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1478922393&sr=8-1&keywords=scott+adams

Take the elves as they should be.
I would advise you to look for the book Faeries, illustrated by Brian Froud and Alan Lee.
Lovely drawings and paintings, and lots of background info...

Try this book of his and read it: How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

Possible that it will blow your mind.

Relevant blog post out of many: http://blog.dilbert.com/post/150816666991/blowing-your-mind-as-promised

The Cheese Monkeys: A Novel In Two Semesters by Chip Kidd

More on the book and what's printed on its fore-edge here :-)

This is book that starts with a very easy project and then gets gradually slightly more difficult: https://www.amazon.com/Love-First-Stitch-Demystifying-Dressmaking/dp/1611802342
Maybe working through it could be a good way to get started with sewing.

There are books with boiler plate contracts for designers. http://www.amazon.com/Business-Graphic-Designers-Fourth-Edition/dp/1621532496

They are not a substitute for a good lawyer, but it's better than nothing.

This one is fun.

http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-Designers-Critical-Students/dp/1568984480

I feel that you will enjoy this.

Ooh, this looks good. How to Make Webcomics, one of the authors is Scott Kurtz, of PvP fame.

There are so many. Here is a well-written, easy to read introductory book for some of them:

https://www.amazon.com/Know-Your-Onions-Creative-Businessman/dp/9063692587

Good start. Still far away from encyclopedia. This is the reference: https://www.amazon.com/Information-Graphics-Comprehensive-Illustrated-Reference-ebook/dp/B00VQVNUWM/
This is the approach:
https://www.amazon.com/Semiology-Graphics-Diagrams-Networks-Maps/dp/1589482611/
So come on, continue to make it the encyclopedia of old stuff. Then add new. Especially from big data, molecular biology and genomics.

Someone is doing a documentary about Calvin + Hobbes":
http://web.mac.com/joelallenschroeder/DMW/dearmrwatterson.html

There is also a book about how it influenced one guys life:
http://www.amazon.com/Looking-Calvin-Hobbes-Unconventional-Revolutionary/dp/1441106855 (the title is a bit misleading)

Lastly there is comic by a guy obviously influenced by C+H, both in style and substance called Frazz. It's fairly good too.

Just finished this and immediately ordered her strip collection Dykes to Watch Out For. This is a really odd and heart-wrenching tale regarding a father/daughter relationship all told through the lens of different pieces of literature.

I think of it as a cross between Blankets and Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth.

Also, the Micro Series has a TPB coming out in October, and hopefully hints that they'll continue beyond issue 7.

This book would help you.

How to Make Webcomics might be a good read, depending on how serious she is.

Some herbs for your garden.

Also, if you haven't you may want to look into Three sisters farming.

$10

$5

Both books. I really really want it!

• Typography Intro - http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/techniques/a-20-minute-intro-to-typography-basics/
  
  
• Typographic History - http://ilovetypography.com/2007/11/06/type-terminology-humanist-2/
  
  
• Typographic Terminology - http://ilovetypography.com/2008/03/21/extreme-type-terminology/
  
  
• Typographic Hierarchy - http://blog.typekit.com/2011/03/17/type-study-typographic-hierarchy/
  
  
• Mixing Fonts - http://www.typography.com/ask/recentTopic.php?rtID=92
  
  
• Typography Book (the de facto standard) - Elements of Typographic Style by Binghurst - http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881791326
  
  
• Also, Thinking with Type - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568984480?ie=UTF8&tag=thedescub-20&creativeASIN=1568984480 - (available electronically) - http://www.thinkingwithtype.com/
  
  
• Typography on the Web -
  
  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/03/14/technical-web-typography-guidelines-and-techniques/
  
  http://www.webtypography.net
  
  http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/choosing-the-right-font-a-practical-guide-to-typography-on-the-web/
  
  http://www.alistapart.com/articles/on-web-typography/
  
  
• Design Theory - http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/sessions/web-design-theory/
  
  
• Design Principles -
  
  http://www.digital-web.com/articles/principles_of_design/
  
  http://www.fuelyourcreativity.com/the-lost-principles-of-design/
  
  http://inspectelement.com/articles/the-principles-of-good-web-design-part-1-layout/
  
  http://desktoppub.about.com/od/designprinciples/Principles_of_Design.htm
  
  
• Layout - http://www.alistapart.com/articles/whitespace/
  
  
• Grid Design -
  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/04/14/designing-with-grid-based-approach/
  
  http://www.alistapart.com/articles/outsidethegrid/
  
  
• Rhythm - http://24ways.org/2006/compose-to-a-vertical-rhythm
  
  
• Visual Hierarchy - http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/01/the-principle-of-proximity-in-web-design/
  
  
• Color Theory - http://sixrevisions.com/web_design/a-look-into-color-theory-in-web-design/
  
  http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/28/color-theory-for-designers-part-1-the-meaning-of-color/
  
  
• Color Applets - Contrast Analyzer: http://snook.ca/technical/colour_contrast/colour.html
  
  Color combinations: http://www.colourlovers.com/, http://kuler.adobe.com, http://www.0to255.com
  
  
• Art Direction - http://www.alistapart.com/articles/art-direction-and-design/
  
  
• Print Design - http://www.underconsideration.com/fpo/
  
  
• Brand / Logo Design - http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/
  
  http://justcreativedesign.com/2009/07/27/what-makes-a-good-logo/
  
  
• Design History -
  http://designishistory.com/
  
  http://www.designhistory.org/
  
  
• Random graphic design theory -
  
  http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/web/50-totally-free-lessons-in-graphic-design-theory/
  
  http://psd.tutsplus.com/articles/inspiration/teach-yourself-graphic-design-a-self-study-course-outline/
  
  
  Get through all of that and you should be well on your way to expert graphic/web design.

Or you can just read his PhD thesis, Computational Information Design, which covers pretty much all of the same conceptual topics but doesn't go into the technical aspects of project development as much. Other essential reading would be Semiology of Graphics by Jacques Bertin, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte, and Visual Complexity by Manuel Lima.

Realistically, I think this would be a total waste of money. Amazon have an entire free ebook devoted to this, and you can find it here. There are a few simple rules, but the biggest one is don't use the tab button. There you have it.

Correction: See How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big for Scott's diet and fitness systems.

For knowledge, I highly recommend typographic design form and communication.

For skill you really just have to get your hands dirty and play around with things, find out what works for your style.

If you're looking for fiction, even though you didn't mention it, i'd suggest Chip Kidd's "The Cheese Monkeys" it has a lot of good insight wrapped in a strange little story.

It isn't for me either. I only know the basic tenets of design as described in:

The Non Designer's Design Book

• C - Contrast
  
• R - Repetition
  
• A - Alignment
  
• P - Proximity
  
  These principles get me through most of the fine grained design chores. I contract out all of my major design work (like the overall look of the site + assets). If you're strapped for cash, try
  99Designs .

I've heard really good things about The Sewtionary. It's a dictionary-styled book, so it's just techniques and how to do them, all in alphabetical order.

If you want something that you can work through and learn a lot at the same time, there is the Colette Sewing Handbook and Tilly and the Buttons' Love at First Stitch. They both have a handful of patterns and the book walks you through them, getting slowly more difficult, and teaching techniques as you go.

Note: I don't own any of these books, but they're all highly-reviewed.

Not an online resource, but you may want to hunt down these books (check out your local/university library):

• https://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/books_vdqi
  
• https://www.amazon.ca/Semiology-Graphics-Diagrams-Networks-Maps/dp/1589482611
  
  

There the volumes set, covering entire story :

Main Story :

http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Friendship-Volume/dp/1613776055/

http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Friendship-Volume/dp/1613777604/

http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Friendship-Volume/dp/1613778546/

http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Friendship-Volume/dp/1613779607/

Micro Series (Pony Tales)

http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Tales-Volume/dp/161377740X/

http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Tales-Volume/dp/1613778732/

or here if you are in the US.

How about this one:?
http://www.amazon.com/Faeries-Deluxe-Collectors-Brian-Froud/dp/0810995867

https://www.amazon.com/Deluxe-Transitive-Vampire-Ultimate-Handbook/dp/0679418601

If you have it in Word, I use this book. It's a little out of date but I used it for making a Kindle book last week. Building Your Book For Kindle (PS it's free)

Amazon has an ebook that walks you through formatting for Kindle. I used this when putting my boyfriend's book up as a Kindle ebook, and it helped tremendously.

To this, I would add The Deluxe Transitive Vampire.

Faeries: Deluxe Collector's Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0810995867/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_UPDRAbMH8ZCFK

Is it Transitive Vampire or Sin & Syntax?

Pony Tales volume 1, collecting the first 6 issues of the micro-series, will be out on 5th Nov: http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Tales-Volume/dp/161377740X

Amazon link

There are! Here's volume one, and volume two!

Here is the mobile version of your link

Use this book (it's free). It helped me out a lot.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007URVZJ6

> So choosing to discard ALL inventions will give you 99% prediction score.

This is correct. But someone who does this will also never be able to capitalize on a great opportunity. The higher one aims, the greater risk that person needs to accept. But most people vastly overestimate the danger of taking on some risk.

Just because you take a risk and lose, doesn't mean your life is over. You can rebuild and try again. Scott Adams (the author of the Dilbert comic strip) wrote a great book about how to look at risk. How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

In one sense, being too risk-adverse is just as bad as being reckless with risk. Risk is a natural factor in any growth. Learning how to manage it well is a very valuable skill.

Also, most people vastly underestimate the risk in traditional investment vehicles. What they think is a low-risk investment strategy is actually a lot more risky than they know. See the Japanese NIKKEI for a lesson on how risky a whole stock index can be over a long period of time, for example.

Both. It's folklore and he illustrates it. Faeries is the most popular one:

http://smile.amazon.com/Faeries-Deluxe-Collectors-Brian-Froud/dp/0810995867/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1419735694&sr=8-1&keywords=faeries

I have this one, also Good Faeries, Bad Faeries, World of Faerie, Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book and Faeries' Oracle.

Go to the art section, get a book on color theory like this one http://www.amazon.com/Color-Betty-Edwards-Course-Mastering/dp/1585422193/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1344050656&sr=1-3 and say I used to be into black and white photography too, but recently I switched to painting. Do you shoot in film or digital?

Yes, I would have played dumb about what the book is all about.

Jimmy Corrigan The Smartest Kid On Earth - I was put off by the title and the cover, but it's a blend of stories - one about a kind of slow guy who is sort of shy and troubled and you experience things kind of as he does; the other a story from the past about a difficult family life.

I like graphic novels that have a lot of realism and project a lot of feeling, which is why I loved Blankets and think it's Craig Thompson's best work. Some others that you might want to Google:

• Phonograph Vol. 2 - A story about different young adults who frequent a club. I don't care for "superhero" stuff but they have different powers, even though the stories are about their interactions rather than actions.
  
• Girls - A story about an alien pod that lands, surrounds a town, and creates a woman that seduces men in order to lay eggs and produce offspring, ultimately pitting the men and the women of the town against each other even though the aliens are the common enemy (and they only attack the women of the town)
  
• Y: The Last Man - A story about all men on earth dying except for one, who tries to survive and understand life and find his fiancee

"The Non-Designer's Design Book" and "The Non-Designer's Typography Book", both by Robin Williams (no not that RW). Great starter books for a general introduction that isn't so detailed that it's boring.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Non-Designers-Design-Book-Typographic/dp/1566091594'