Best Books on Advertising Design

A real-world introduction to advertising design and art direction, updated and revised for today’s industry

The newly revised Fourth Edition of Advertising by Design: Generating and Designing Creative Ideas Across Media delivers an invigorating and cutting-edge take on concept generation, art direction, design, and media channels for advertising. The book offers principles, theories, step-by-step instructions, and advice from esteemed experts to guide you through the fundamentals of advertising design and the creative process.

With a fresh focus on building a coherent brand campaign through storytelling across all media channels, Advertising by Design shows you how to conceive ideas based on strategy, build brands with compelling advertising, and encourage social media participation. You’ll also get insights from guest essays and interviews with world-leading creatives in the advertising industry.

The book is filled with practical case studies that show real-world applications. You’ll also benefit from coverage of

• A quick start guide to advertising
• A thorough introduction to what advertising is, including its purpose, categories, forms, media channels, social media listening, and its creators
• Creative thinking strategies and how to generate ideas based on creative briefs
• Utilizing brand archetypes and creating unique branded content
• Composition by design, including the parts of an ad, the relationship between images and copy, basic design principles, and points of view
• How to build a brand narrative in the digital age
• Copywriting how-to’s for art directors and designers
• Experiential advertising
• An examination of digital design, including subsections on the basics of mobile and desktop website design, motion, digital branding, and social media design

Perfect for students and instructors of advertising design, art direction, graphic design, communication design, and copywriting, Advertising by Design also will earn a place in the libraries of business owners, executives, managers, and employees whose work requires them to understand and execute on branding initiatives, advertising campaigns, and other customer-facing content.

 candid and indispensable primer on all aspects of advertising from the man Time has called “the most sought after wizard in the business.”

Told with brutal candor and prodigal generosity, David Ogilvy reveals:

• How to get a job in advertising
• How to choose an agency for your product
• The secrets behind advertising that works
• How to write successful copy—and get people to read it
• Eighteen miracles of research
• What advertising can do for charities

And much, much more.

This comprehensive overview of advertising design strategies helps students and professionals understand how to create ads that cut through the clutter. Design principles such as unity, contrast, hierarchy, dominance, scale, abstraction, and type-image relationships are thoroughly discussed. Chapters also cover:

•Researching your client and your audience
•What makes an ad successful
•Getting the audience’s attention in a crowded marketplace
•Researching your client and your audience
•The importance of consistent branding and identity
•The difference between print advertising, billboards, the web, television, and radio
•Advertising design versus editorial design

Also included is an extensive section on typography with essential information on how type is perceived by readers, typographic history, principles, and practice. Complete with over fifteen hundred examples and illustrations of outstanding advertising design from around the world, Advertising Design and Typography will change the way you develop visual ideas and train you to see in a more critical and accurate way that gets messages across more effectively.

Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don’t aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

“More than just a nice-to-look-at, easy-to-flip-through book…Pricken has loftier goals―namely, to transform readers into top creatives by introducing them to a variety of techniques and ideas.”―Adweek

Unraveling the creative process behind some of the most effective campaigns of recent years, Mario Pricken showcases over two hundred examples of international advertising from a wide range of media, including magazines, billboards, television, movies, and the Internet. Each chapter highlights different practical methods for creating innovative and unforgettable ads, with award-winning work from some of the most influential names in the industry. This second edition includes a completely revised and updated introductory chapter plus dozens of new examples that demonstrate a fascinating range of approaches. 450+ illustrations, 280 in color

Modernist aesthetics in architecture, art, and product design are familiar to many. In soaring glass structures or minimalist canvases, we recognize a time of vast technological advance that affirmed the power of human beings to reshape their environment and to break, radically, from the conventions or constraints of the past. Less well-known, but no less fascinating, is the distillation of modernism in graphic design.

This unprecedented TASCHEN publication, authored by Jens Müller, brings together approximately 6,000 trademarks, focused on the period 1940–1980, to examine how modernist attitudes and imperatives gave birth to corporate identity. Ranging from media outfits to retail giants, airlines to art galleries, the sweeping survey is organized into three design-orientated chapters: Geometric, Effect, and Typographic. Each chapter is then sub-divided into form and style-led sections such as alphabet, overlay, dots, and squares.

Alongside the comprehensive catalog, the book features an introduction from Jens Müller on the history of logos and an essay by R. Roger Remington on modernism and graphic design. Eight designer profiles and eight instructive case studies are also included, with a detailed look at the life and work of such luminaries as Paul Rand, Yusaku Kamekura, and Anton Stankowski, and at such significant projects as Fiat, The Daiei Inc., and the Mexico Olympic Games of 1968. An unrivaled resource for graphic designers, advertisers, and branding specialists, Logo Modernism is equally fascinating to anyone interested in social, cultural, and corporate history, and in the sheer persuasive power of image and form.

Designing Brand Identity

Design/Business

Whether you’re the project manager for your company’s rebrand, or you need to educate your staff or your students about brand fundamentals, Designing Brand Identity is the quintessential resource. From research to brand strategy to design execution, launch, and governance, Designing Brand identity is a compendium of tools for branding success and best practices for inspiration.

From posters to cars, design is everywhere. While we often discuss the aesthetics of design, we don’t always dig deeper to unearth the ways design can overtly, and covertly, convince us of a certain way of thinking. How Design Makes Us Think collects hundreds of examples across graphic design, product design, industrial design, and architecture to illustrate how design can inspire, provoke, amuse, anger, or reassure us.

Graphic designer Sean Adams walks us through the power of design to attract attention and convey meaning. The book delves into the sociological, psychological, and historical reasons for our responses to design, offering practitioners and clients alike a new appreciation of their responsibility to create a design with the best intentions. How Design Makes Us Think is an essential read for designers, advertisers, marketing professionals, and anyone who wants to understand how the design around us makes us think, feel, and do things.

Brand by Hand documents the work, career, and artistic inspiration of graphic designer extraordinaire Jon Contino.

Jon is a born-and-bred New Yorker. He talks like one, he acts like one, and most importantly, he designs like one. He is the founder and creative director of Jon Contino Studio, and over the past two decades, he has built a massive collection of award-winning graphic-design work for high-profile clients such as Nike, 20th Century Fox, and Sports Illustrated. Throughout all of this, he has gone to design hell and back, facing obstacles like fear, self-doubt, and bad luck. Brand by Hand documents the work and career of Jon Contino, exploring his lifelong devotion to the guts and grime of New York and cementing his biggest artistic inspirations, from hardcore music to America’s favorite pastime. A graphic-design retrospective showcasing his minimalist illustrations and unmistakable hand-lettering, Brand by Hand shares how Contino has taken a passion for pen and ink and turned it into an expanding empire of clients, merchandise, and artwork.

The famous Italian designer Massimo Vignelli allows us a glimpse of his understanding of good design in this book, its rules, and criteria. He uses numerous examples to convey applications in practice – from product design via signaletics and graphic design to Corporate Design. By doing this he is making an important manual available to young designers that in its clarity both in terms of subject matter and visually is entirely committed to Vignelli’s modern design.

Balancing Social, Professional, and Artistic Views

What does it mean to be a designer in today’s corporate-driven, overbranded global consumer culture? Citizen Designer, Second Edition, attempts to answer this question with more than seventy debate-stirring essays and interviews espousing viewpoints ranging from the cultural and the political to the professional and the social. This new edition contains a collection of definitions and brief case studies on topics that today’s citizen designers must consider, including new essays on social innovation, individual advocacy, group strategies, and living as an ethical designer. Edited by two prominent advocates of socially responsible design, this innovative reference responds to the tough questions today’s designers continue to ask themselves, such as:

• How can a designer affect social or political change?
• Can design become more than just a service to clients?
• At what point does a designer have to take responsibility for the client’s actions?
• When should a designer take a stand?

Readers will find dozens of captivating insights and opinions on such important issues as reality branding, game design and school violence, advertising and exploitation, design as an environmental driving force, and much more. This candid guide encourages designers to carefully research their clients; become alert about corporate, political, and social developments; and design responsible products. Citizen Designer, Second Edition, includes insights on such contemporary topics as advertising of harmful products, branding to minors, and violence and game design. Readers are presented with an enticing mix of opinions in an appealing format that juxtaposes essays, interviews, and countless illustrations of “design citizenship.”

From the meanings behind colors to working with color in presentations, Color Design Workbook provides you with the information needed to effectively apply color to design work.

Since color is such an important part of graphic design, designers need the most up-to-date, as well as the most fundamental, information on the subject to have the tools needed to use color effectively.

The Color Design Workbook, New, Revised Edition explains the meanings behind colors, working with color in presentations, and loads more. This guidebook provides you with the vital information needed to creatively and effectively apply color to your own design work.

You will also receive guidance on talking with clients about color and selling color ideas, and you’ll also learn the science behind color theory. Case studies are included to show the effects some color choices had on both their clients and consumers. So why wait any longer? Become a color expert now!

Now in full color in a larger size! 40% more content and over 750 images to enhance and better clarify the concepts in this thought-provoking resource for graphic designers, professors, and students.

This very popular design book has been wholly revised and expanded to feature a new dimension of inspiring and counterintuitive ideas to thinking about graphic design relationships.

The second edition includes a new section on web design and new discussions of modularity, framing, motion and time, rules of randomness, and numerous quotes supported by images and biographies. This pioneering work provides designers, art directors, and students—regardless of experience—with a unique approach to successful design.

Veteran designer and educator Alex. W. White has assembled a wealth of information and examples in his exploration of what makes visual design stunning and easy to read. Readers will discover White’s four elements of graphic design, including how to: define and reveal dominant images, words, and concepts; use scale, color, and position to guide the viewer through levels of importance; employ white space as a significant component of design and not merely as background, and use display and text type for maximum comprehension and value to the reader. Offering a new way to think about and use the four design elements, this book is certain to inspire better design.

Allworth Press, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, publishes a broad range of books on the visual and performing arts, with emphasis on the business of art. Our titles cover subjects such as graphic design, theater, branding, fine art, photography, interior design, writing, acting, film, how to start careers, business and legal forms, business practices, and more. While we don’t aspire to publish a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are deeply committed to quality books that help creative professionals succeed and thrive. We often publish in areas overlooked by other publishers and welcome the author whose expertise can help our audience of readers.

100 Years of Swiss Graphic Design takes a fresh look at Swiss typography and photo graphics, posters, corporate image design, book design, journalism, and typefaces over the past hundred years. With illuminating essays by prominent experts in the field and captivating illustrations, this book, designed by the Zurich studio NORM, presents the diversity of contemporary visual design while also tracing the fine lines of tradition that connect the work of different periods. The changes in generations and paradigms as manifested in their different visual languages and convictions are organized along a timeline as well as by theme. The various fields of endeavor and media are described, along with how they relate to advertising, art, and politics. Graphic design from Switzerland reflects both international trends and local concerns. High conceptual and formal quality, irony, and wit are its constant companions. A new, comprehensive reference work on Swiss design.

A visual and comprehensive guide to a hugely popular graphic style.

The distinctive aesthetic of mid-century design captured the post-war zeitgeist of energy and progress and remains hugely popular today. In Mid-Century Modern Graphic Design Theo Inglis takes an in-depth look at the innovative graphics of the period, writing about the work of artists and designers from all over the world. From book covers, record covers, and posters to advertising, typography, and illustration, the designs feature eye-popping color palettes, experimental type, and prints that buzz with kinetic energy.

The book features artworks from a wide selection of international designers and illustrators whose work continues to inspire and influence today, including Ray Eames, Paul Rand, Alex Steinweiss, Joseph Low, Alvin Lustig, Elaine Lustig Cohen, Leo Lionni, Rudolph de Harak, Abram Games, Tom Eckersley, Ivan Chermayeff, Josef Albers, Corita Kent, Jim Flora, Ben Shahn, Herbert Bayer, and Helen Borten.

Theo draws from a broad range of sources including advertising, magazine covers, record sleeves, travel posters, and children’s book illustrations to show the development of the design style globally, and how this continues to influence design today. The book is packed with hundreds of color illustrations, including classic designs, such as Saul Bass’ film posters and Miroslav Šašek’s children’s books, alongside lesser-known gems.