OER - Discipline

From creation to production — this textbook addresses the many steps of creating and then producing physical, printed, or other imaged products that people interact with on a daily basis. With an emphasis on the interplay between the digital and physical aspects of print production -- and how they work together, each chapter includes exercises and suggested readings.

A general education textbook for the study of visual rhetoric. Holds relevance to graphic design, art, media studies, communications, and intellectual property law.

An introduction to the process of producing visual media including basic principles and processes -- aesthetics, editing techniques, music selection, graphic animation, among other elements.

Introduction to Computer Graphics is a free, on-line textbook covering the fundamentals of computer graphics and computer graphics programming.

This book shows you how to understand the rules of the grid to use them effectively, and then how to break them. This book explains the history of the grid and shows examples of grid basics, such as column, compound, and modular grids. It also demonstrates methods for building and using grids, and offers numerous examples using a variety of imagery and typography.

Web and Digital for Graphic Designers is about what a novice needs to know about designing for the web and digital, from initial concepts and client needs, through layout and typography to basic coding, e-commerce and working with different platforms. The companion website provides step-by-step tutorial videos, HTML/CSS styling tips and links to useful resources to really help you get to grips with all the aspects of web design. Working alongside the text are interviews with international designers and critical commentaries looking at best practice and theoretical considerations.

This book covers Information and references that point to the many important historical developments of the short life of the computer graphics world as people know it.

A comprehensive history of data visualization-its origins, rise, and effects on the ways we think about and solve problems. A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication tells the story of how graphics left the exclusive confines of scientific research and became ubiquitous. As data visualization spread, it changed the way we think. Friendly and Wainer make the case that the explosion in graphical communication both reinforced and was advanced by a cognitive revolution: visual thinking. Through stories and illustrations, A History of Data Visualization and Graphic Communication details the 400-year evolution of an intellectual framework that has become essential to both science and society at large.

This book serves as a general introduction to illustration for the college-level student. In this book, students will learn the basics of putting together illustrations for various purposes, will learn about professional aspects of the field, and will consider assignments in botanical, poster, middle grade narrative, comic and picture book illustration, and illustration for self promotion.

The Fundamentals of Illustration is a comprehensive and practical introduction to the field for illustration for graphic arts students, as well as for those who commission illustration. Now on its third edition, this title covers all areas of illustration; from what illustrators do, through selling your work across various media. Each chapter contains a case study, exercises and a brief for students to follow. New to this edition is expanded coverage of digital media and digital tools.

A guide for artists, illustrators, students, and hobbyists on how to use basic drawing principles and techniques to create fresh, expressive pieces of art. You'll enjoy a dynamic, easy-to-follow exploration of drawing mediums and tools as you work through creative exercises and projects. Aspiring pencil artists and illustrators will also learn how to see a subject and render a personal yet modern interpretation of their observations on paper.

Organized as a series of lessons in classic drawing technique, each chapter offers both process and finished works by the founding artists and other instructors of the Famous Artists School, allowing readers to see a wide variety of approaches to learning how to draw and styles of rendering.  It is enriched throughout with fascinating sidebars and photographs documenting the working methods of master realists.

The purpose of this book is to serve as a reference for a one-semester course in digital photography for graphic communications. Since digital cameras have mostly replaced color scanners, graphic communicators need to capture images for use in magazines, catalogs, brochures, packages, signs, banners—all forms of printed materials—and also for eBooks, web sites, and apps.

The essential step-by-step manual to improving Photoshop Lightroom photo editing skills.

This is a book for photographers who’ve used Lightroom in the past but need a structured approach to start making the most of its advanced features as well as students seeking to understand Lightroom’s basic functionality. By the end of this book, students will be confident in importing, editing, sorting, developing, and delivering photos.

This book covers typographic style on the web. Meant to dispel some of the myths surrounding typography on the web, the book explains Bringhurst’s working principles, explaining how to accomplish each using techniques available in HTML and CSS.

Demonstrating the power and variety of typography from hand-drawn to kinetic, this fully updated new edition of The Fundamentals of Typography covers the principles of using type across a range of media. Starting with a comprehensive introduction to the history of typography, the authors provide detailed explanations and inspirational examples of type usage from leading practitioners from around the world. With expanded practice exercises and four new case studies, this book gives students everything they need to know to use type effectively and creatively.

Typography Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Working with Type is a practical, hands-on resource that distills and organizes the many complex issues surrounding the effective use of typography. Divided into four sections--The Letter, The Word, The Paragraph, and The Page--the text is concise, compact, and easy to reference. Each of the 100 principles, which cover all practical aspects of designing with type, has an explanation and inspiring visual examples drawn from international books, magazines, posters, and more. Typography Essentials is for designers of every medium in which type plays a major role.

An in-depth guide to the rules and practices of typography.

Explore 100 key concepts, theories, and guidelines that are critical for choosing and using type. We communicate with text every single day, but what does it mean to really understand type--to use it with clear intent and purpose? The art and science of typography combines subtle tweaks to line lengths with harmonious combinations of weights and styles; considered typeface pairings with a robust set of alternate characters; exciting technological advances with the realities of font licensing. There are so many ways designers can optimize how text is read and influence the way its message is understood--and yet so many designers miscommunicate without even realizing it. Richly illustrated and easy to navigate, Universal Principles of Typographypairs clear explanations of each principle with visual examples of it applied in practice. By considering these concepts and examples, you can learn to make more informed, and ultimately better, typography decisions. Building upon tried-and-tested principles from the world of print through to the very latest advances in browser technology, this book will equip you with everything you need to make the most informed typographic decisions in your design work today.

This book guides students through the aesthetics as well as the technical considerations of typography. It spans the invention of movable type to today's digital typography, and ends with a showcase of contemporary fonts. It additionally centers the essentials of type design to practitioners, and thoughtfully and thoroughly explains the development of form and style such as letter form anatomy, stroke formation and rhythm, tool methodologies, structure and proportion, tool methodologies, and more.

This class introduces studies in the algorithmic manipulation of type as word, symbol, and form. Problems covered will include semantic filtering, inherently unstable letterforms, and spoken letters. The history and traditions of typography, and their entry into the digital age, will be studied.

With raised awareness and accessibility laws emerging around the world, understanding what inclusive access to the Web means is becoming necessary knowledge for anyone who produces digital content. Much of the current information on Web accessibility requires some technical understanding, and may be difficult to consume for the average person. The instruction here will “interpret” the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.1), to make it easier to understand for a general audience. You will have an opportunity to experience barriers firsthand, then experience that content with the barriers removed, developing a practical understanding of web accessibility.

Why do affluent, liberal, and design-rich cities like Minneapolis have some of the biggest racial disparities in the country? How can designers help to create more equitable communities? Introduction to Design Equity, an open access book for students and professionals, maps design processes and products against equity research to highlight the pitfalls and potentials of design as a tool for building social justice.

Digital Foundations uses formal exercises of the Bauhaus to teach the Adobe Creative Suite. All students of digital design and production—whether learning in a classroom or on their own—need to understand the basic principles of design in order to implement them using current software. Far too often design is left out of books that teach software for the trade and academic markets. Consequently, the design software training exercise is often a lost opportunity for visual learning. This revised edition updates Chapters 1-12 of the original text for use with Adobe Creative Cloud 2024 software.

A step-by-step manual to improving Photoshop Elements photo editing skills

Learning how to use vector illustration software, this book integrates tutorial videos and step-by-step projects. This book introduces you to all the important tools and processes - from the basics of Bezier curves to applying meshes. As students learn each skill there are projects for them to try out, and by the end of the book they'll build up to a major design project to put all your new abilities into practice.

The project-based step-by-step lessons show users the key techniques for working in InDesign. Designers will build a strong foundation of typographic, color, page layout, and document-construction skills that will enable them to produce a broad range of print and digital publications--from a simple postcard to an interactive Adobe PDF with form fields. The real-world tasks in this comprehensive book are presented in easy-to-follow lessons and are designed to train beginning Adobe InDesign users in the program--from fundamental features to powerful layout and output skills. The online companion files include all the necessary assets for readers to complete the projects featured in each lesson.

Support for PhotoShop, InDesign, Illustrator, and more.