Reddit mentions of Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual

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!

This book is really really great as an intro to design. It's very visual and lays out the fundamental design rules for you. Only once you understand the rules should you try to break them.

Color scheme designer is a little nicer than mudcube below. Figure out color schemes you like, "learn them", and add them to your arsenal.

Kuler is a community for people to upload and find color swatches, if you're not interested in making your own.

Google Web Fonts is great. There are better font sites out there, but google web fonts is free and really easy. Find a font you like and figure out "how to use it". It'll eventually become part of your arsenal, your toolset. I personally love Oswald, Josefin Slab, Bitter, and several others. I'll typically use a google web font for headers and such, but use a standard like Helvetica for body text.

Subtle Patterns for when you need to add texture to an otherwise boring background. I use this all the time.

Twitter Bootstrap to help you with grid layout and responsive design. It has its frustrations (it's a little annoying to add padding to elements, or to get rid of margins between columns, etc etc) but typically I start a design with Bootstrap and modify it as I need.

Get comfortable with things like CSS3 box shadows (very useful for adding subtle depth to designs) and CSS3 transitions (for subtle hover effects and the like)--the little things add a lot to the user experience.

At the end of the day, try to understand as best you can the different fundamental pieces: form (ie, grid), flow (ie, UI/UX), color, and typography. Choosing the right font and the right colors go a long way.

Finally, always start a design with a philosophy in mind. Is this design supposed to be "simple, elegant, and light"? "Dirty, grungy and rough?" "Usable, clear, concise?". Come up with a philosophy for your design and make sure every decision you make conforms to that philosophy. If your design philosophy is "simple" then the fonts you pick should be simple, your color scheme should be monochromatic, icons should be vector-arty, etc.

Good design feels "tight" because the designer did nothing by accident. Everything about the design, even things you might not consciously pick up on, were explicit decisions made by the designer. That coherence in the designer's mind translates to you and how you react to the design.

I'm an engineer that taught myself design, and the above is basically what it boils down to for me. I was able to do it because I spent years working with designers and implementing their work. Eventually it all just "clicked"; I guess my brain was quietly synthesizing all that information in the background. I'm now a pretty good designer, and if you want to PM me I'll show you some of the stuff I've done (I don't want to share it publicly because it's not all live yet).

Best of luck.

Edit: Don't Make Me Think, the book mentioned by shaft0 below is also very good. You should definitely learn about usability as well as graphic design--but since nobody had given you a thorough response about the graphic design portion yet I figured I'd tackle that part.

I am the same way. I can't say that I've successfully made it (I'm getting better), but as I'm working on the same thing maybe I can point you toward some books that I found or were recommended to me. Not sure if these are exactly what you're looking for or not, they're both good introductions to graphic design (colors, layout, positioning, typography, etc.)

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Elements-Graphic-Style-Manual/dp/1592532616

http://www.amazon.com/Principles-Beautiful-Web-Design/dp/0975841963

I'm still looking for good material and such so I'd be anxious to see what others have to add.

The choice of typefaces and the choice to use so many screams amatuer to me. I get that you tried to made each font "relate" to the word you were representing but it just doesn't work. The color choices are awful to me, they dont work together. Is an event planner your main job? Its what sticks out the most followed by community management. Also your content is not really saying anything. I guess you're trying to say you do all these things but I would certainly hope not all at once. From what I've heard, employers/clients will frown on someone claiming specialty is so many areas because it implies you're not really good at any of them just mediocre at a lot of them. The composition is filling, not activating the page. As a user/reader, it is way to much work to get to the intended message, that can be okay if the journey is stimulating and leads to an interesting or unexpected pay off but this doesn't, it's predictable and only surprising the surprisingly poor execution. I recommend Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual.

Design Elements: Graphic Style Manual is a great book to have. It helps to remind you about general practice and design sense that you might forget about.

Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain: is not a focus on methodology, but can help to just get your brain out of a rut.

http://www.amazon.com/Design-Elements-Graphic-Style-Manual/dp/1592532616/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1303080776&sr=1-1

Good luck in your future projects. In the meantime, you might try looking at your piece with your photographer's eye.

Course book list from my first year of graphic design, I found them all really helpful and interesting, especially the first one. It explains not just how to make things look good, but WHY certain things look good and some things look like crap.

Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual

Understanding Color: An Introduction for Designers

Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students

There's another really small, short book that is on the process of design, or rather "how to produce creative ideas." I can't remember the title, but I'll find my copy when I get home. PM me if you have any questions!

I just started learning about design myself in an effort to get my software and webpages looking a bit more professional. I'd recommend starting with traditional graphic design theory -- there's some fundamentals you really need regardless of medium. I started picking up the basics from Timothy Samara's Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual and it's been very educational so far.

learn the following programs: illustrator and photoshop. Optional; dream weaver and flash. Go to Amazon.com and buy graphic design books. I'd recommend this one. Then do some freelancing and build a good portfolio.

As for design basics, I got this book after graduating, and have kept and bought some other books on typography and grids and such, not exactly burying myself in them, though I do read them as often as I can force myself to. Maybe one magazine for now, as well. I don't want it to be my entire life, I just want to be good enough to have a job, as bad as that sounds. I know I have to put some extra effort in, though.