Fundamentals of Graphic Design
CalArts
Graphic Design is all around us! Words and pictures—the building blocks of graphic design—are the elements that carry the majority of the content in both the digital world and the printed world. As graphic design becomes more visible and prevalent in our lives, graphic design as a practice becomes more important in our culture. Through visual examples, this course will teach you the fundamental principles of graphic design: imagemaking, typography, composition, working with color and shape... foundational skills that are common in all areas of graphic design practice. I don't just want you to watch a video of someone talking about design, I want you to MAKE design! If you want to be a designer you have to be a maker and a communicator, so this course will offer you lots of opportunities to get your hands dirty with exercises and with more practical projects. At the end of this course you will have learned how to explore and investigate visual representation through a range of image-making techniques; understand basic principles of working with shape, color and pattern; been exposed to the language and skills of typography; and understand and have applied the principles of composition and visual contrast. If you complete the course, along with its optional (but highly recommended) briefs, you will have a core set of graphic design skills that you can apply to your own projects, or to more deeply investigate a specialized area of graphic design. To succeed in this course you will need access to a computer. You can complete this course without one but it will be tougher. Access to, and a beginner's level knowledge of Adobe Creative Suite programs, such as Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign will help you, especially if you want to complete the optional briefs.
More resources on Design Theory
smashingmagazine.com
Smashing Magazine is a design-focused publication offering practical articles, tutorials, and ebooks for web designers and developers. It covers layout, composition, typography, UX, and responsive design, with code samples and design patterns.
The Non-Designer's Design Book
Robin Williams reduces visual design to four principles - proximity, alignment, repetition, contrast - plus basic typographic contrast, using before-and-after page examples. Readers finish able to critique and fix layouts such as flyers, newsletters, and business cards.
Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual
Timothy Samara organizes graphic design into rules covering form, typography, grids, color, and image, each shown through annotated professional work. Readers gain a working vocabulary for composition decisions and a reference for critiquing their own layouts.
Universal Principles of Design
A cross-disciplinary reference presenting design concepts - affordance, Fitts's law, signal-to-noise ratio, the von Restorff effect - one per spread with an example. Useful for grounding design decisions in perception and cognition research rather than taste.