Best commercial graphic design books according to redditors

I love reading these because it's so off base. No it is nothing like Mad Men. Chances are unless you are upper management you won't be making the industry average in salaries. If you want to take something away from it, watch how defeated they get when a client bitches about something not being right... then amplify that 10 fold, throw in a few "can we make the logos bigger", and put in a little working overtime to meet deadlines and going crazy. Another thing, if you aren't in college yet, you aren't "very good" with psychology or design... you may have gotten a good grade in AP classes and messed around in photoshop in your lab class, but there is much more to learn.

I'm not trying to be belittling, you just need to change your mindset completely on this as it seems pretty obvious you only have a media view of the field. Check out some ad work down by big companies. Check out the CLIO winners for the last few years. Read books on the subject like Ogilvy on Advertising or Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. Also, you aren't going to be doing all of these things, firms are done mostly in groups. You have your Accounts team (Pete Campbell, schmoozing and coordinating with the client), Design Team (Salvatore and Peggy, less copywriting now though) and sometimes Media and Project teams... depending on the agency. Each has their skills and contributions, so in all likelyhood if you want to work in an actual agency setting you will likely have to specialize. Like writing and planning? Take marketing. Like design and web-structure? Take Graphic Design and/or Computer Science. Psychology is not a particularly useful field in itself, as many of the psychological aspects are covered in their usefulness in the aforementioned majors.

Lastly, you won't know for sure what you want to do until a few years in, and that's fine. If you really like the idea of agency work though, DO INTERNSHIPS. There is no other way to get into the field and learn about the ins and outs. There are a lot of great things about the industry, but it's not all rainbows and panache.

Every designer should read Robert Bringhurst’s The elements of typographic style at least once a year.

My incredibly kind mom made this dress for me as a birthday gift :D! She used a combination of patterns from Gertie's Ultimate Dress Book: three-quarter circle skirt, princess seam bodice with a modified boat neck, and modified basic sleeves. The fabric is raw silk and was bought at a craft store in my grandma's town, so I have no idea if it's sold anywhere else.

Are you a reader? I have a couple suggestions that you may enjoy, and your local library should be able to get them for you--maybe they have them, maybe they get them transferred from another library, maybe they acquire them.

I'm working my way through The Curated Closet by Anuschka Rees and it's brilliant. It helps you identify and build your style step by step with a series of really smart exercises. I think what's difficult for a lot of people is that style is about 1) self-knowledge and 2) editing. I can buy something I think I look cute in for a party, but if it's in a color or a style that doesn't match the rest of my closet, I may hate it and only wear it once. She'll help with all that.

The other is Suze Orman's The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying. The ONLY reason I'm recommending this one is because you identified a mindset of yours that it seems like you want to change. This book gets into the emotional crap behind money in a way I haven't encountered before.

Because there are a lot of emotions behind money. My husband and I both grew up very humbly. He had two working class parents and a sister, and they passed down a lot of feelings of scarcity, of not having enough. They thrift shopped and hoarded (not badly, but elsewhere in his family it's much worse). For my husband, it's very difficult to get rid of old things, and he buys the same items over and over.

Me, I grew up with my single mom and brother. My dad had money, but he was incredibly stingy with it. We were never poor in an institutional way--but we were broke all through my childhood. I did not get new clothes during the school year. I didn't have the cool shoes. My adidas were from Payless, and they had only two stripes. All of this was made much worse by the fact that my dad married a woman who dressed her kids in brand-name clothes. They were popular, well-dressed, well-to-do, and my dad was the one who wound up paying for my step-mom's overspending.

So while I don't have a problem getting rid of old things--we got rid of lots of stuff when my mom moved us to a cheaper place to live every year--I know that I have to be careful treating myself, because part of me feels like that very small, very uncool new girl in school with the wrong shoes and no money to make it right.

I like nice things now. It's intertwined with my personality in a way. I want the ability to dress like who I think I am. And that's okay! But if I don't examine those feelings, I can easily wind up overspending, trying to make myself feel good in all the wrong ways.

What I do: Set money aside just for clothes every paycheck. I made it a percentage of my total pay, but for you it might be something else. If I want something nice, I have to wait until the money is in there. If I need something simple, like to replace a pair of jeans or shoes, it makes me really think about what I already have, how much I want to spend, and how it will fit within my existing clothes.

There's nothing wrong with being frugal. But frugal doesn't have to mean cheap. Frugal could mean buying a $300 wool coat and keeping it for 10 years.

Thinking about your style, analyzing your wardrobe and planning for your purchases will help you know when it makes sense to spend more money on an item like boots you will wear every day, or a good bra, etc. And when it's fine to buy something cheaper, like a white tank top you'll sweat through all summer and be able to easily replace next year.

You've got this. I mean, I'm a total nerd, but I always start with books. Best of all, the library is free!

Esquire has an excellent handbook on this. I've kept it in my closet for years. Everything from how to fold a shirt for travel to what to have in your closet at different income levels.

Be a classic man.

https://www.amazon.com/Esquire-Handbook-Style-Guide-Looking/dp/1588167461

Edit: one more thing

Get your shirts custom made. There are many affordable tailors online. Make a list of the measurements they want. Go to a tailor and ask to be measured. Tip the guy $5. Go home and place your order. I buy from tailorstore.com but there are plenty others.

If you’ve never worn a custom cut shirt you don’t know what you’re missing. You look more fit and handsome in a shirt that fits you perfectly. My black custom fit shirts are lady killers. I’m the only man in my office whose white dress shirts actually fit right. Women notice. Believe me they notice.

No problem mate, glad you're enjoying it.

Books I could recommend: Esquire released a great book called The Handbook of Style that I think offers some really solid advice. Alan Flusser's "Dressing the Man" is a great resource if you're interested in suits/dressing with a more refined, classier style.

Otherwise, fashion forms and blogs are a great resource as well. Lookbook.nu is good for street and casual fashion, The Sartorialist is great for inspiration on suiting. I also really like Street Etiquette as well.

I just started down this path myself. Luckily my mom has a sewing machine and some basic knowledge of how to use it, so that's been really helpful. It's an old-school fully mechanical Bernina, not sold any more but it looks to be similar to the 1008 model. Really nice machine, fast, quiet, has a ton of built-in stitches, a button-hole-maker, and easily interchangeable presser feet, but it's also way more expensive than I would spend if I had to buy my own. Unfortunately I don't have any recommendations for entry-level machines. But certainly it's worth it to do some research on what it needs to be capable of doing. For example,

• if you want to sew denim, or canvas, or anything with leather, you're going to need a beefy heavy-duty machine that can punch threw at least a few layers of thick fabric at low rpms.
  
• the two basic stitches are a straight stitch and a zig-zag. You want adjustable stitch-length, and adjustable zig-zag-width. With those two, you can do just about everything. But there are also fancier stitches that make it easier/more-professional-looking to, for example, overlap the raw edges of fabric (helpful when sewing knits, see the inside of a t-shirt or sweatshirt), or to join two pieces together fully encasing the seam allowance (check out some of the seams on a fleece).
  
• fancy presser feet: make sure you can get a zipper foot if you want to sew anything with zippers, an edge-stitching foot makes it really easy to sew a straight line really close to the edge, a button-hole foot is needed for sewing button holes (forget doing that shit by hand), and they also make feet that can automatically do a rolled-hem (see the bottom edge of your dress shirts). there are probably others too.
  
  

  basic equipment:
  

  
  

• get a rotary cutter and a rotary cutting mat. 24" x 36" minimum. Ideally it has a grid on it. And you also probably want to get a clear ruler, 24" x 6", which should also have a measuring grid on it. technically you can do with just scissors, but, it's a PITA
  
• pins. lots of pins. the good kind have a glass ball on one end, ideally colored so you can find them easily in your fabric. pins come in different sizes, silk-size (really skinny) is good for most fabrics, but you want something beefier for the thicker fabrics otherwise you'll bend the skinny ones. also, don't sew over pins. take them out just before they get to the presser foot. on that note, get (or make) a pin cushion.
  
• depending on what you're sewing, you'll need an ironing board and an iron. ideally one that doesn't auto-shut-off. also ideally the ironing board is a rectangle, but you can get away with the standard shaped ones too
  
• sewing machine needles. make sure they fit your machine; there are different styles, altho most home sewing machines take the same kind. size 12 or 14 is pretty fine, good for knits and dress-shirt-weight wovens, but you want size 16 or 18 for heavier fabrics. get a bunch (5-10 of each size); you will break them. they also dull out with use. usually you want ball-point, so it won't pierce the threads of the fabric, but sometimes you need the sharp kind meant to cut into the threads. your pattern should suggest which kind and size to use.
  
• a thread-ripper, a good pair of scissors (super sharp, only used for cutting fabric, and shaped so the bottom edge doesn't move when you snip), a little ruler with an adjustable edge guide for measuring folds, tons of thread (way more than you think you need. I would guess it took about 200 yards to do a single size-medium fleece, altho granted, there are a lot more zig zag stitches when you're sewing stretchy fabric)
  
• if you want to get into tailoring, there's a bunch more specialized stuff, but that should be enough to get started
  
  

  patterns:
  

  I was lucky and happened to want to get started at the same time as McCall's was having a huge sale, so I was able to get a bunch for $3 each. But usually they're more expensive. Do some research; there are good patterns, and shit patterns. Also, the instructions that come with patterns are universally crap. And by that I mean they're optimized for a combination of the lowest-common-denominator of sewing skills, and a minimal amount of print-space. Definitely read them front-to-back before you begin, but also supplement the included instructions with an ample dose of youtube videos.
  
  I tried starting with a dress shirt; that was a mistake. Very difficult. (It didn't help that the pattern I got for it fell into the shit category, and I ended up needing to make a ton of modifications. McCall's M6044. Do not recommend.). I'm currently in the middle of my third muslin and it's starting to come out okay, but I still don't feel comfortable giving it a go with the good fabric. Fleece is very easy to work with; I just finished one that come out actually pretty decent, using the Kwik Sew K4032 pattern. It's got some challenging parts, especially the directions for the zipper pockets weren't very good, but on the whole way more simple than a dress shirt.
  
  

  supplies:
  

  I had a really tough time finding good sources of by-the-yard fabric online. I ended up ordering from califabrics.com. I'm happy with everything I got, but it's kind of a crap-shoot if you don't order samples first. Would recommend sourcing fabric locally, if you can, or at least order samples before you commit to a bunch of yards.
  I got my zippers from sailrite.com. As you can guess from the name, they're very focused on nautical stuff, but they have a good assortment of YKK zippers that are way less expensive than anywhere else I could find. Good youtube instructional videos too.
  Otherwise, I got some stuff from Joann's (check online first, sometimes they have online-only sales but let you pick up in-store), and random sellers on amazon (muslin was cheapest there, but the stuff at Joann's was much nicer, almost good enough to actually wear if you wanted to).
  
  

  resources i've found helpful:
  

• Patternmaking for Menswear - can be found on libgen
  
• https://malepatternboldness.blogspot.com/ - especially the sew-along links in the sidebar
  
• https://off-the-cuff-style.blogspot.com/ - some good stuff on dress shirts
  
• Shirtmaking - the "bible" of sewing dress shirts
  

Today:

• I ordered some makeup stuff from Ulta rather than going into the drugstore and going "oh, this is on sale? I should get it. this looks interesting, maybe I'll get this too" and then 2 weeks later wonder why I have literally 14 different lip balms
  
• I opted out of a free gift with purchase (a branded water bottle) with that Ulta order because lol I do NOT need another water bottle
  
• I talked myself out of the F21's STORE CLOSING sale I passed by because I knew it was going to be clothes that would last a year at most and even for 50% off it still wasn't worth it
  
• on a similar note, I requested two books from the library about having a smaller/sustainable wardrobe

Books :
Micheal Bendis : Words for Pictures: The Art and Business of Writing Comics and Graphic Novel
https://www.amazon.com/Words-Pictures-Business-Writing-Graphic/dp/0770434355

Buddy scalera : Creating comics from start to finish https://www.amazon.com/Creating-Comics-Start-Finish-Complete/dp/1600617670/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1539804620&sr=1-1&keywords=creating+comics+from+start+to+finish


you don't have to buy em obviously - hit your library even the college library and request them. check out "Libby by overdrive" on your tablet or phone and you could see if they're available via online rental. "

1. fear is imagined, in this context there is next to no danger so why be afraid of something that have 0 impact.
   
   
2. you say your decent at writing , start getting better - by writing more ... if you want to , learn how to outline your story. you say you have the 3 big pieces , break it down better. Southpark a-typically is good because they don't do the "and then" formula , they start with the end , and backtrack it to figure out what lead to your ending this way it all fits. you don't have to write in a linear fashion you can start with the end and build it up to that.
   
   
3. motivation - we can't help with motivation you have to work on that. --- motivation is something you create for yourself. What do you want to achieve , and why ... who do you want to be and why .... nothing we say will motivate you to do anything only you can choose to progress forward. Do you want the skills that those interests will build or do you wanna whine about how awesome X,y or z will be and bemoan not creating something. the desire to create is something that almost needs to be psychotic (not litterally) but it helps , pursue a dream a desire. the hardest part of creating anything is doing it when you arent "feelin" it . so though there are many questions to ask "how badly " do you want to create anything , how badly do you want it. "
   

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst is probably the most thorough and well put together book on typography and its history. It's really cheap and I suggest anyone wanting to learn more about typefaces or a general interest in the history and evolution of type to check it out.

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'. :-)

Coincidence to me you made this thread. I have been with an otherworldly being for nearly 2 years without really knowing what it is. Never really considered faeries because I saw them in the romanticize popular Disney way.

Yesterday I found the book Faeries: Deluxe Collector's Edition. (It is a classic in new edition.) I have only read a little, but I instantly understood, trough the text and pictures, how much more nuance there is to them compared with the popular depiction (Victorian version). Now I almost dare to say I am certain it is a faerie I am with.

My advice would be to try to understand the pre-Victorian faeries, (unless you are exactly after the glittering innocent modern depiction).

An old documentary I am watching right now: The Fairy Faith: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lguShTgS8GM

You will read much about going out in nature and making offerings etc. In my case, it contacted me in my home, or showed up, once I started to open my third eye. Opening the third eye really was not that fancy. I just started to assume my imagination was real and not controlled by me, and I had a real interrest in trying it (unlike the times I had consciously tried to "open the third eye".) It was like letting imaginary associations run freely, and I assumed they represented a force outside me. (Then we can question how much it was opened, but at least enough for me to spend the next 2 years with the being and trying to deepen it). If you learn about faeries and then open your third eye, then maybe you can contact them.

this is something that I highly doubt is available in a pattern. I would highly recommend making this a drape project. Get a mannequin that is close to your size and line out the idea of the pattern you are interested in creating. I would agree, this is really not a first garment project, though. It's important to learn how fabrics lay on the body and just how patterns fit together.

This dress is has to have a lot of structure built in underneath, as well, to get those perfectly triangular cutouts, especially cut on the bias, which i also suspect it is, since there's some mild wrinkling that follows the triangles. I would highly doubt that interfacing is used unless it's very nice wool interfacing, the stuff that's in a good quality tie (also cut on the bias!). So, that would mean you'd need some knowledge in creating structure in the garments. I'd highly recommend checking out this book Patternmaking for Fashion Design before going into this project.

Not sure about websites, but these books are absolute must-reads for learning typography.

Thinking With Type

Designing With Type

The Elements of Typographic Style

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.

Here's a few I like:

• Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works
  
• The Elements of Typographic Style
  
• Designing Brand Identity
  
• Draplin Design: Pretty Much everything
  
• Making and Breaking the Grid
  
• Graphic Artists Guild Handbook
  
• 30 Essential Typefaces for a Lifetime

Pattern drafting and clothing sketches are two entirely different things. I didn’t get much out of school in terms of sketching but some books that helped me were Illustration Techniques - Takamura Fashion Illustrator - Morris and this one which was a textbook of ours Fashion Drawing - Bryant. When it comes to flat pattern making, “art” and “drawing” have little to do with it, it’s measurements, rulers, curves, tracing paper (medical doctors office paper is my favourite), cardstock “oaktag” paper, mechanical pencils and the foggy kind of cello tape you can draw on. Basically you learn to make a bland sheath to fit the body first (“block”) then you can learn to manipulate the block into different pieces and designs and there you go, you’re drafting. It’s the whole reason I’m in school right now and if they had it on YouTube I would never have bothered enrolling.
The best books for that are first and foremost Patternmaking for Fashion Design - Joseph-Armstrong, Patterncutting/Patternmaking - Chunman-Lo and I’m looking forward to getting The Costume Technician's Handbook (3rd Edition) - Ingham/Covey which a classmate said is great for blockmaking, and Metric Pattern Cutting for Women's Wear - Aldrich which I’ve been told is a staple.
As far as editions, the later ones of Patternmaking for Fashion Design are better for basic block making and they have way more than the earlier ones, and the girl who put me on to the Technician’s book said the 3rd is essential. The rest I wouldn’t really know because I haven’t used them extensively. Afaik Chunman-Lo’s book has only one edition.
There’s also Fitting and Pattern Alteration- Liechty/Rasbrand/Pottberg-Steineckert. We haven’t used it yet but it’s on the curriculum.
With these resources either bought or borrowed from the library you’ll learn everything a fashion student learns. As far as sketching goes, YouTubers are out there and can help, and practice makes perfect.
I hope this helps. Post progress photos so we can see how well you’re doing! Good luck.

As a person with no education beyond high school, take all that I say with a grain of salt. I'm a pretty successful web designer and front-end developer, having working with four startups and done a year of freelancing.

It is not uncommon to hear industry peers criticize the education system as it pertains to web design because often the practices you learn are no longer the standard or relevant. I've heard of many stories where designers exit college (with no working experience, obviously) and have an incredibly difficult time finding work for the reasons I listed above.

Education has never been brought up at any of the companies I've worked or those that I've consulted with. I believe the reason for this is that I have a body of work to show along with whatever reputation I've garnered on Dribbble, say.

All this being said, it is entirely possible for you to develop your skills on your own, such as I did, and find work. I'm happy to list all the reading materials that I own that helped me get where I am now. I'll list what I remember but I'll have to go check when I can get a second:

Hardboiled Web Design
HTML5 for Web Designers
CSS3 for Web Designers
The Elements of Content Strategy
Responsive Web Design
Designing for Emotion
Design is a Job
Mobile First
The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
The Elements of Typographic Style
Thinking with Type
The Icon Handbook
Don't Make Me Think

If you invest your money in those and actually read them, you will be well on your way. Feel free to ping me. Good luck!

Hey Whipple Squeeze This is a really phenomenal overview of creating ads. It is a very engaging and informative read and is perfect for those looking to break into the industry.

Ogilvy on Advertising delves a bit more into the overall experience of working at an agency like what the account team does vs. media teams and so on in addition to actually making ads. It's a bit dated but I think it holds up pretty well. Sure a few of his predictions about the industry didn't come to fruition and the book primarily focuses on TV spots and longform magazine ads (you can't write about banner ads or Facebook ads in 1985) but I'd say a lot of the concepts Ogilvy touches on are pretty timeless.

The Elements of Typographic Style

It may be a bit dense for a beginner, however it's been referenced as the bible of typography multiple times to me, by unrelated sources! (And it's cheap!)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881792063/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=1535523722&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0881791326&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=191BS5CQJSX6RBDKACAE

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

Good question. Tbh marketing is fairly easy to understand at a conceptual level. Most people I have met in the industry that are good at marketing are able to understand customers and find insights within data, but most of those things are learned.

I would recommend (in order of affordability):
Hey Whipple Squeeze This
Ogilvy on Advertising
Advertising Concept and Copy

Each is more complex than the last so Whipple would be a cheap and easy start to understand marketing concepts. Hope this helps.

Ah, that's one of the more traditional shops.

I'd say that what everyone else here still stands. As a graphic designer, you do have the framework to be an AD, it just means changing your portfolio's focus.

So instead of worrying about kerning and grids, you need to focus more on USPs and brand messaging. Let on pixel pushing and more big picture thinking.

If your library has these books, Ogilvy on Advertising and Hey Whipple are great starters for understanding the creative process.

Would love to add anyone on Goodreads if you use it too :) [Add me](https://www.goodreads.com/thedoerco
)

• Tested Advertising Method
  
• Ogilvy on Advertising
  
• How to Change Minds is a sales book, but it's got an easy to understand framework to understand how people make decisions that I have found useful for marketing
  
• The Ask Method Gives some great jumping off points on how to ask questions for marketing research, and how to organize that information to make decisions about your marketing and your product
  
• Positioning and Repositioning by the amazing marketing strategist Jack Trout of Disney and Coke, are good foundation reads if you don't know anything about marketing. If you know what a USP is, skip Positioning but I did like Repositioning. I did like Positioning as a refresher of a variety of different concepts that I have read more detailed individual books on.
  
• Integrated Marketing Communications to learn about more broadly how to make all of your marketing communications work together towards a common business goal. The book itself is about using marketing campaigns across different channels (tv, radio, print, online) in a coordinated effort, but it will help you understand how to use email, social, paid ads, and other marketing systems you develop together.
  
  Second Influence. Getting Everything You Can is good if you are basic in marketing, I would not recommend it for people who are more advanced.
  
  If you don't know what a "business goal" is, you need to read this:
  
  
• Scaling Up Every marketer should understand the processes that drive growth in businesses, because you are trying to manipulate those levers with marketing. You can also reverse engineer your prospect's business and explain the gains of your services in the terms of processes that drive their revenue when you're pitching them, too.

The Elements of Typographic Style, By Robert Bringhurst is an excellent resource for setting type.

EDIT: Of course, I would recommend purchasing a copy if this sort of thing interests you. It's a great book to keep near your desk for quick reference.

This book will take years off your learning curve.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881792063?ie=UTF8&tag=alldietslowca-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0881792063

If you want to be a web designer and not just a code monkey, there's no way of getting around learning (at least the basics) of graphic design. Composition, grid systems, colour theory, typography. Did I mention typography? Really, visual trends come and go, but good typography is timeless and arguably the #1 factor that decides whether a site's content (the most important part of a site) is consumable.

Then, learn HTML and CSS. Write code by hand, i.e. no WYSIWYG editors. Also, ignore server-side languages (PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, C#, etc.) and even JavaScript at this point. Once you're familiar with the elements of HTML and how to style them via CSS, learn JavaScript, because now you'll have a good mental model of what you're manipulating with JS.

This alone will keep you busy for a substantial period of time, but it's the meat of front-end engineering. Simultaneously, keep refining your design knowledge and skills. Practice on personal projects. Get feedback from peers, it's a very generous community.

• 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.

You should definitely read up on typography.

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Version-Anniversary/dp/0881792128

Here are some general rules:

• Most type is suited for body copy (unless it's a display face), so when you scale it up, the letters are further apart than they should be (because that space gets scaled up too). A good general rule to have is to tighten up the tracking slightly on larger type (if needed).
  
• Just like design elements need to breathe, so does type. The default leading (spacing between lines of text) is a bit tight on most faces. The best way is to adjust via your eye, but you can generally do around 1.5x and be ok.
  
  Note: These are not absolute rules to live by. While they will generally work for many scenarios, it's better to understand the "rules" of typography and adjust based on your design's specific needs.
  
  Overall, think more about your spacing. Give things room to breathe, as right now some pieces feel a little tight. I'm not going to tell you specifics on what to fix (I think that's a bad brand of critique that happens here), because we should all be able to look and think critically about our own work. Look over your design, see where you can help something breathe, and adjust to your own discretion.

I am ~6'3" and 240 pounds so I think we should be the exact same size.

I was always told that it did not matter how big you were, you should always buy clothes that fit you. Well fitting clothing will accentuate the favorable parts of your body while having a slimming effect on those not so favorable. This is really the main idea, the rest will be detail and personal experience describing how to know when clothes fit right and what to look for while shopping.


Pants:
1
2

As a taller person you can wear pants with a cuff at the bottom and vertical stripes. The stripes will elongate your legs making them look thinner and longer but the cuff will break up the line of your pant your legs and make look not look like giant.

Make sure that you get pants that fit in the waist. This is THE most important thing. Here is where I come to a little bit of an injunction. I know that the belt line of my pants should be resting on my hips, about an inch or two below my navel, but due to my gut I cannot realistically put pants there without them looking ridiculous. So I do what I can and put them right under my beer gut. This is where I measure my waist, as I continue to lose weight it will probably change. There should be absolutely no lines anywhere around your waist. This is important. This is make or break for pants. Next if there are no creases or lines, move to the pockets. They should not be folding up on themselves, sticking out, or have any pressure on them. If the pocket opening a little bit that is fine, but no more than 3/4".

The length of the pants was something I did not understand until recently. The pants should "break" or crease 1/3 of the way up your shin. Just one fold. A good point to remember here is that when you are walking, people should not see your socks. I have found that trying to implement both of these ideas turns into baggy pants. So I tend to go a bit shorter (if the next size is too short you can hem the pants) especially in the summer. That has been my personal experience, but I would trust these sources over what I just said.

As a side note, I like to avoid pleats, they have never worked for me but somehow I have about 6 pairs. They are a bit more comfortable to me but they look awful on my body and I never wear them (Remember, you wont wear something that doesn't fit or you dont like). Try some out though, you might be the perfect fit for them.

I have had good luck with Dockers pants recently, so give those a shot.


Shirts
1
2

Shirts are a little bit easier as I find its not as hard to hide your fitting mistakes. Goto a shop and try on about 8-9 shirts and get your size down and memorize it. This will help immensely. The first thing to check for in shirt fitting is the collar size. If I cant wear a shirt with a tie, I won't buy it. When you have the top button buttoned you should be able to get two fingers in between the shirt and your neck. If you strangle yourself getting them in there, it's too small. You should have to wiggle your fingers just a tiny bit to get em there, nothing more.

The shoulder seem should fall right where your arm rolls off. This is a bit tough to understand, but you'll know it when you find it. If you have trouble, refer to the links above. The cuff of the shirt should come down to the beginning of your palm. I shoot for it to hit the base of my first thumb bone or the last skin crease of my wrist.

For a bigger guy I think the length of the shirt is not terribly important for guys our size as long as you can tuck it in securely and it not come out if you happen to stop sucking your tummy in. Though, the fit around the stomach is a bit harder to get right. You don't want much fabric here because when you tuck your shirt in you have to find a place to put it. Just a few spare inches is all you need here. 2-4 inches will do. You wont pop a button, you cant use it as a tent, just right. I highly recommend the "military tuck". Its a nice way to cheat a shirt to do what you want because you probably wont be able to find a shirt that fits you perfectly in all the previous areas, so if you have to forsake one, forsake this one.


Jackets

Use them to cover up any mistake but don't rely on them. They can help to make you look more lean. A good suit jacket will to wonders, sometimes miracles. Use one to cover up that military tuck.




In closing (I'm getting tired haha)

1. Shop for your size.
   
   a. Dont fool yourself into buying smaller clothing, you wont wear it.
   
   b. Shop at thrifts stores, you size isn't hard to find there.
   
   c. ^ This also makes it easier to throw out clothes don't fit.
   
   
   
   
2. There are tricks, but don't over use them.
   
   
   
3. Every brand will fit and fall differently on you. Try a lot of them.
   
   
   
4. I recommend this book They have some good stuff for people our size.
   
   
   
5. Lose weight.
   
   
   
6. Nothing will fit perfectly unless you get it tailored or you lose weight.

I’ve been reading about capsule wardrobes lately and am trying to move that way with my wardrobe. I realized that despite my over abundance of clothing, there are only certain specific pieces that i wear over and over again and really love. Personally, I don’t think an extremely strict capsule wardrobe would be very realistic for me, but I think there are a lot of good principles that can be pulled out of the concept. I love the idea of focusing on quality, versatile pieces that fit you well and that you feel great in vs. as many fast fashion/trendy/cheap pieces as you can afford (which I realized is how I currently shop and is definitely why i always feel like i have nothing to wear even though my closet is overflowing).

I ordered a book on Amazon called (the Curated Closet. I haven’t finished it yet so I can’t 100% vouch for it, but I’ve flipped through it and read the first couple chapters and I think it will be really useful for me. It’s very functional, it gives you exercises to do to help you develop your personal style and then build your wardrobe around that as a guide.

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.

I think it's because sewing is predominantly female hobby, so pattern companies ignore menswear...
Burda magazine has some patterns
http://www.burdastyle.com/pattern_store/patterns?for=2&page=1
https://beta.burdastyle.de/shop/schnittmuster/herren

You can also try to learn pattern drafting with these books

https://www.amazon.com/Pattern-Cutting-Menswear-Winifred-Aldrich/dp/1405182938

https://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Menswear-Gareth-Kershaw/dp/1780670168

https://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Menswear-Contemporary-Myoungok-Kim/dp/160901944X

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

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

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.

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.

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 just read The Curated Closet and found it to be very helpful. I didn't do every exercise in the book, but it's SO helpful and sounds perfect for what you are looking for. I got mine from the library.

The book first has you basically brainstorm what styles you love and what you love about them. Then, through a very detailed process, you distill down to eventually curating your dream wardrobe with clothes you absolutely love and fit your lifestyle, including a wardrobe for work, after hours, exercise, etc. The book also include comprehensive selections on how to identify quality clothing and a good fit, what can be tailored easily, how to shop, how to update your wardrobe, how to style, etc.

It was very helpful for me as someone who has worn hand-me-downs most of her life (thanks big sister!) but is almost 30 and never really defined a personal style. I encourage you to take a look at it before going out and making any purchases. You won't regret it!

Drafting patterns is definitely scary! This is the book we used: http://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Fashion-Design-5th-Edition/dp/0136069347. It's a bit pricey, but the earlier editions would probably be just as helpful! If you get into your project and you need help, just shoot me a PM! I learned a lot of things the hard way, so I'd like to help people learn from my mistakes, haha. I could also take pictures of my pattern pieces if it would help you visualize (the circle skirt especially was a bit weird).

This is the wool I used: http://www.moodfabrics.com/dark-turquoise-solid-coating-fw12295.html When I first looked at it, $18/yd sounded like a lot, but it ended up being the least expensive in my class. As you can tell from my pictures, it's much greener than the picture on Mood!

Awesome web resource is Jim Zub's blog. He covers tons of topics. Very honest and helpful.


There are a lot of great book resources you should check out too, but they tend to go more into the process of making a story. More about the craft and less about the process.
Scott McCloud's Books, "Understanding Comics" and "Making Comics".
Bendis's book, Words for Pictures

Thinking with Type is a great book, but I'm more of a Bringhurst fan - The Elements of Typographic Style is my recommendation.

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.

The elements of typographic style

http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881792063/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250821514&sr=8-1

learned more about fonts and font design than i ever wanted to. great book. lots of why, lots of theory, not as many examples.

An Essential Reading List For Designers

Source: www.tomfaulkner.co.uk

All books have been linked to Amazon for review and possible purchase. Remember to support the authors by purchasing their books. If there are any issues with this listing let me know via comments or pm.

Architecture

• The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture by Phaidon
  
• The Architecture of the City by Aldo Rossi
  
• Learning from Las Vegas by Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown & Steven Izenour
  
• Modern Architecture since 1900 by William J R Curtis
  
• Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture by Phaidon
  
  Communication Design
  
  
• Essentials of Visual Communication by Bo Bergström
  
• Visual Language for Designers by Connie Malamed
  
• Visual Communication: From Theory to Practice by Jonathan Baldwin & Lucienne Roberts
  
• This Means This, That Means That: A User's Guide to Semiotics by Sean Hall
  
• Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture by Marita Struken & Lisa Cartwright
  
  Fashion Design
  
  
• Fashion Design Course by Steven Faerm
  
• Fashion Today by Colin McDowell
  
• The Fashion Designer Survival Guide by Mary Gehlhar
  
• Deluxe: How Luxury Lost it Lustre by Dana Thomas
  
• The Fashion Book by Angela Buttolph Editors of Phaidon ?
  
  Furniture Design
  
  
• Furniture Design by Stuart Lawson
  
• Eames by Gloria Koenig
  
• Design of the 20th Century by Charlotte & Peter Fiell
  
• 1000 Chairs by Charlotte & Peter Fiell
  
• The Encyclopedia of Furniture by Joseph Aronson
  
  Game Design
  
  
• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses by Jess Schell
  
• Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
  
• [Challenges for Game Designers](Challenges for Game Designers) by Brenda Brathwaite
  
• Level Up!: The Guide to Great Video Game Design by Scott Rogers
  
• Screenplay: The Foundation of Screenwriting by Syd Field
  
  Graphic Design
  
  
• Grid System in Graphic Design by Josef-Muller Brockmann
  
• The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher
  
• A Type Primer by John Kane
  
• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
  
• The New Typography by Jan Tschichold
  
  Information Design
  
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
  
• Show Me The Numbers:Desiginingg Tables and Graphs to Enlighten by Stephen Few
  
• Envisioning Information by Edward Tufte
  
• Information is Beautiful by David McCandless
  
• Information Graphic by Sandra Rendgen
  
  
  Industrial Design
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
  
• The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda
  
• Manufacturing Processes for Design Professionals by Rob Thompson
  
• Process: 50 Product Design from Concept to Manufacture by Jennifer Hudson
  
• Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell
  
  (cont'd)
  
  

I don't actually know why sorry. If I could find my copy of this I could maybe say:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881792128

Best guess it has something to do with the arrangement of our eyes, but that's entirely my guess, and not a very educated one.

Good/quality design is making sure that as many aspects of a design as possible at least look intentional. In Modern/Swiss design (what most design today is based off of) this means keeping spacing/line-weights consistent, either the same, or from some sort of set/sequence. Keeping all of your horizontal lines, in the figure and the implied lines between, the same is very pleasing to the eye, and generally "looks better".

At the moment the thin slash through the middle is different enough from all the other white-spaces that it should maybe be a bit wider, though the designer should take care of that after dealing the the cross-bar on the A, just in case it's just that comparison that looks off.

Does that help?

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!

We used "Patternmaking for Fashion Design" by Helen Joseph-Armstrong for our first patternmaking class and reference it all the way through our senior design classes. It's an awesome reference book--almost any project/design I've had I've been able to find the alteration I've wanted in this book, or at least the basic starting point. It has a LOT of information/ideas, so sometimes jumping into more advanced techniques can be a bit daunting if you haven't learned or at the very least read through the basics. I haven't purchased and used them yet, but if you're looking for some cooler patterning techniques I've heard both first hand from classmates and in general online that the Pattern Magic books are amazing.

For draping we used "Draping Basics" by Sally Di Marco. I think this book is a good reference, but my professor thought it wasn't the most beginner-friendly. I didn't struggle with it throughout my classes and think it's great, but it can be a bit dense to read through if you don't have a teacher/person demonstrating the technique in front of you and have no previous draping experience. Again, great reference and has tons of info, just takes a tad more effort if you've never sewn or draped before before you pick up on the terminology/patterns of what they're doing.

The last really good book I'd recommend is "Professional Sewing Techniques" by Julie Cole/Sharon Czachor. newbies to sewing may need to Google some terms now and then, but it's perfect for all the little details--all the different types of pockets and how to sew them, different methods of creating tucks and pleats, etc. Say I know I want a specific detail, like a cuffed sleeve: I can look it up and see all the different ways they do it in the industry (all of which are easily doable on a home sewing machine) and see all the subtle differences those techniques make. For costuming, it can help you be more accurate and it's great to see all the variations laid out in front of you. It also makes a massive difference in how professional things end up looking.

TL;DR The three books in the links above should have you covered for flat patterning, draping, and all the little details that make your costume/clothing look professional and well-finished. Knowing at least the basics of sewing is recommended for the draping book, but the rest of the terminology used in all three beginners should be able to Google and understand no problem!

(Edit: formatting)

I have this book

https://www.amazon.com/Sewing-Book-Encyclopedic-Step-Step/dp/0756642809

It's full of sewing techniques for making clothing and it's helped me out a lot. But I don't think you need a book to do what you want to do. Adding waist darts to a dress is pretty easy and bust darts aren't too difficult either.

Heres a video on how to do bust darts https://youtu.be/d9FoVBffroo

You are giving me such good advice. I appreciate it! I'll definitely make a practice version. I feel like the dress will be fine even if the fit is a bit off after switching fabrics. This dress is not meant to be a precise fit at all, so it should be fine.

I have The Sewing Book, and it seems pretty thorough.

The best thing to do is get a copy of Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographical Style and read it. Then read it again. Then reference it regularly.

There is no better resource for learning to set type well.

Get The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. After you've read it you can check out webtypography.net a site which is going through chapter by chapter and adapting the lessons of The Elements of Typographic Style to the web providing helpful css snippets and explanations of how print and web typography differ by convention and necessity. In my opinion design without typography is nothing. A thoughtfully typeset page with no adornment caries far more weight than a poorly typeset page filled with the fluff techniques demonstrated on the multitude of tutorial websites out there. Understand typography and you are well on your way to understanding design.

If you're looking for something he will learn from, not just a gimmicky "lolol I hate papyrus" gift, I'd strongly recommend The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst.

This book was recommended to me by one of my lecturers while I was in university. I didn't purchase it until I had graduated (mainly because I was broke at the time), but I really wish I had purchased it earlier. It is the pinnacle book for learning about typographic history and best practices. I cannot stress enough how much of an amazing resource this is for a young typographer. Even if you don't end up getting it for him, just let him know that it exists so he can pick it up at some point.

1. Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst.
   
   
2. Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works by Erik Spiekermann.
   
   The former is widely considered somewhat of a 'type bible,' and was referenced often in college. It's a fantastic resource, however it can be seen as less accessible for total beginners.
   
   That's where the latter comes in. If you're going the self-taught route, you'd probably love Stealing Sheep. However, unfortunately it seems to be out of stock everywhere, with only used or insanely marked up resellers. I wonder if it's going out of print, which would be a shame.

ti consiglio The Elements of Typographic Style, di Robert Bringhurst. Libro leggero e chiarissimo che copre molte basi di tipografia.

First, I want to congratulate you on losing the weight! I started a new job about six months ago and wardrobe was basically what I wore in college and graduate school. I wanted to step up my wardrobe a little bit, so I picked up The Curated Closet from my local library. It has helped me define my style and helped refine my wardrobe. One of the 'exercises' it has you do is to create Pinterest boards of your clothes to help you define your style and what not.

I've only tried Poshmark and had mostly successes. I've gotten some great pieces (dresses, sweaters, jeans, and flats). But I would agree with u/Truant_Muse, patience is key and knowing measurements.

Good Luck with building your wardrobe! I can't wait to see it :)

Yes! I am catching the 90s vibes too. I love that aspect of it. Maybe there’s a designer out there making a similar inspired dress that’s not so straight across the neckline. If you like, you could sell yours on Poshmark or consignment and put the cash towards the new one.

I checked out The Curated Closet from the library awhile back and it helped me a great deal. I didn’t even finish reading it before it was due (curse of an over ambitious reader!!) and I still got so much from it.

Into Mind is recommended here a lot, as well as her book, The Curated Closet.

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!

They might mean this.

Or her book.

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!)

Design is much more a "why" rather than "how" sector.

People here will disagree with me, but they're wrong.

You're designing solely for a client, and it drops into so many things, Target market, competition analysis, colour theory. Especially if you want to go into UX, where the thought behind anything is just as important as the end product. We're problem solvers, we answer questions through design, colour and form.

If you're looking to learn the tools, you also need to learn the thought. The "why" behind the "how".

Being able to do a 5 minute job in illustrator because you know the tools doesn't really matter if you don't know why you're placing things and creating things.


If you're doing tutorials, make sure you're reading.


Logo Design Love

How to Use Graphic Design to Sell Things...

A Smile In The Mind

I'd recommend these three, they're primarily logo and branding design books, but the fundamentals that they cover translate into every facet of Visual Communication.

Instead of trying to sum everything up in one Reddit post, I am going to direct you to this book. It is extremely informative, and written by someone who is quite experienced at comic book writing.

It may also help to actually look at some comic book scripts to see how professionals handle things.

You also seem to be asking about how to do the actual art, so I'll also suggest either buying some Blueline paper, or Clip Studio Paint if you want to work digitally.

• The Form of the Book by Jan Tschichold
  
• The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst
  
  These are mostly directed at classical book design, so they probably tend more conservative than you should do for a magazine, but these books actual spell out rules for what you should do (I'm a big believer in handcuffing yourself to rules for the purpose of understanding them, and then breaking them later), which is I think what you're asking for.
  
  My sorta summary/advice based heavily on what I read in the above books:
  
  Don't decorate; be confident. There's definitely an urge to add little horizontal rules above things or boxes around page elements. Tischichold especially points out how young designers can't help but put a thin box around the inside title page of books. He says it shows a lack of confidence. The solution is to have a justification for where you put things.
  
  Basically, if you have a baseline grid for the page, then you can place page elements on it and know that they will be harmonic with the overall page.
  
  Page numbers can honestly go anywhere as long as it's not the inside edge. Putting them there means the publication has to be completely open in order to use the page numbers, which is annoying.
  
  Don't put repeating information on pages. It's annoying to have the author's name or the book title at the top of every single page. Again, this is a demonstration of a lack of confidence. I believe the thinking is that if the pages are photocopied and distributed, then people will know where it came from. DRM annoys.
  
  Usually the font size for notes will be smaller than the main text, so keep aware of the leading difference between the two, especially if you put notes along the side. The leading shouldn't necessarily be equal, but it should be a multiple of the main content, so that every three or four lines the text aligns again.
  
  I hope none of that was totally irrelevant to your project :) Good luck!

Elements of Typographic Style

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Brinhurst is what you're looking for.

Hermann Zapf said “I wish to see this book become the Typographers’ Bible,” and Hoefler & Frere-Jones consider it "the finest book ever written about typography".

The Bringhurst Bible

James Victore's book is amazing. It's a quick read but is packed with inspiration.

Envisioning Information is great for info design.

Megg's History of Graphic Design


The rest of these I haven't read yet, but here is a list of things I currently have on my amazon wish list:

Some People Can't Surf by Art Chantry

Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design by Jennifer Bass

Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design by Michael Bierut

Damn Good Advice by George Lois

How To Be A Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul by Adrian Shaughnessy

How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman

The Design of Dissent by Milton Glaser and Mirko Ilic

Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State by Steven Heller

Highsmith's Inside Paragraphs is a great introduction. It's 100 pages and it reads like a comic book. It is very short and incredibly specific: it is only about paragraphs. I make all my typography students read it, working from the idea that good typography starts with good text typography. In other words, if you can master text type, display type is easy.

Lupton's Thinking with Type is a good general beginning text. She has a lot of the info on her website.

I also find Speikermann's Stop Stealing Sheep quite good for an intro text.

Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style is the classic text that is worth having in your library. Mine is fairly well-thumbed with plenty of post-it flags and lots of favorite passages underlined. It is a bit much for the beginner, but definitely worth having as a reference. You'll grow into this one, and likely never outgrow it. It is a reference book that reads like poetry.

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

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.

I like this book quite a bit for helping me alter slopers. Has a lot of interesting ideas for designs and features too. Not a ton of info on how to construct, but if you have experience with commercial patterns and finishes, should be ok with some help from google/youtube.

http://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Fashion-Design-Joseph-Armstrong/dp/0136069347/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418560325&sr=8-1&keywords=helen+armstrong+patternmaking+for+fashion+design

This one, used at my local craft college in their fashion design program. It's extremely through and recommended by industry professionals.

(as in - I'm in a private forum with garment manufacturers and they say it's good)

Like /u/jereviendrai said,
Helen Joseph Armstrong's Pattern Making for Fashion Design.
It is a textbook and it is wonderful and very thorough. Any publishing year will do. Libraries usually carry it. Also can be found in "easily liberated" formats.

The reason I learned to sew was because by the time I was 13 years old, I was a size 16. Girl, I feel your pain! I wear a size 20 these days, and many patterns do go to a 22 or 24. With that being said, there is nothing better than drafting your own patterns, and it's way easier to do than you'd think, it just takes some time and patience. My favorite book to work off of is this one. Happy Drafting!

I remember really liking the book "logo design love" when I was getting started, though I haven't looked through it in awhile (loaned mine to a friend) to remember exactly what was in it haha. But I remember it having some practical advice in it that was presented in an easily understandable way. (https://smile.amazon.com/Logo-Design-Love-Creating-Identities/dp/0321985206/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=logo+design+book&qid=1568948814&s=gateway&sr=8-1)

Could be worth checking out!

Big fan of Logo Design Love by David Airey.

Gonna second this and add in a book on logo design. I like this one for beginners:

http://www.amazon.com/Design-It-Yourself-Logos-Letterheads-Business-Newsletters/dp/1564967689

Then move on to the big one:
http://www.amazon.com/Logo-Design-Love-Creating-Identities/dp/0321985206/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412518028&sr=1-1&keywords=logo+design

You could also use inkscape which is a free vector drawing tool.

I absolutely love and recommend the book Logo Design Love by David Airey.

Yeh there’s just too much going on here. If you have to use an image fill, stick to one i.e. the map or the terrain. This wouldn’t work very well in monochrome either, which isn’t everything but it’s generally a sign of a good, recognisable logo. I recommend reading Logo Design Love, you may find it helpful :)

Ogilvy on Advertising

Truth, Lies, and Advertising

Hey, Whipple

Bill Bernbach's Book

The Book of Gossage

This https://www.amazon.com/dp/039472903X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_-LmozbRFSJV3K

And this https://www.amazon.com/dp/006124189X/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_dMmozbWME8S98

And for fun read, get Matt Beaumont's "e" and "e squared": https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/s/ref=is_s_ss_i_0_9?k=matt+beaumont&sprefix=matt+beau

Also, get this for general knowledge of some of the great work done in particular medium: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118101332/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_0Qmozb5TPRJCS

Sewing machines - Vintage sewing machines often cost the same as brand new cheap machines and are better quality. The problem is that they require more research and legwork.

So, you will most likely want to buy new. If your girlfriend finds that she enjoys sewing and you bought a brand new starter sewing machine, just plan on getting a better sewing machine in the future. By the way, I think most are recommending the Brother sewing machine as a starter machine.

Personally, I love my 1920s Singer sewing machine (Even though my machine is almost a hundred years old, it is reliable as heck, and it will sew anything.)

Sewing kits - a few essential supplies
Avoid buying any tools made by Singer. They are poor quality and not worth the few cents it takes to buy them.

If it looks cheap, it's likely cheap.

Good companies - Fiskars, Gingher, Dritz (There are several more.)

Here's the starter sewing kit that I would want, but it's high quality. http://merchantandmills.com/products/gift/starter-set/ Geez, I still want it, and I'm not a beginner. The link is from the UK where they are located, but there are US resellers, too.

Another option is to buy each of the following sewing tools individually. Dressmaking shears (commonly known as scissors but the shape of shears makes cutting fabric easier), a package of various hand sewing needles (always good to have), thread snips or embroidery scissors, tape measure (flexible not the clunker in your tool box), some pins, and a seam ripper (essential).

A good beginner sewing book is essential and they often have beginner project instructions, too.
http://www.amazon.com/Sewing-Book-Encyclopedic-Step---Step/dp/0756642809/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417205004&sr=8-1&keywords=sewing+book

Fabric - Just so she has something to sew when she opens all her boxes, buy some fabric. For example, I would buy quilting cotton 1/2 yard each of 5 different colors. There will be lots and lots of this in fabric stores.

Thread - Buy All-Purpose thread. One spool each of Black, Tan (khaki), and white.

Those are my recommendations. There are so many different ways to do this. I think your $300 price range is definitely achievable. Mostly, I'm trying to make sure that she will be able to make something after she opens all of her packages.

Last but not least, YouTube is a sewist's friend. There's been many a time that I couldn't figure something out, and finally, I check Youtube to find that someone has uploaded a video that showed me exactly how to do what I couldn't figure out.

Check out this book by Brian Michael Bendis: https://www.amazon.com/Words-Pictures-Business-Writing-Graphic/dp/0770434355

It's a fantastic look at the nuts and bolts of comic writing, but it also has great lessons on writing and process in general, as well as devoting a chapter or two to the business of being a writer. It's an easy and fun read, strongly recommend.

So as a writer, there's an impulse to exactingly describe what you envision in a panel--you've got the pacing down, the dialogue, and a firm belief that the comic will go swimmingly if/when the comic comes to life exactly as you've laid it out in exacting detail.

But more often than not, that's miserable for the artist. You're taking absolute control over what happens in a panel, and many artists will feel that you're encroaching on their creative territory. It is the artist's job to produce story in their particular style, and many will hate how restrictive it feels to draw a panel with little creative wiggle room.

Not all, of course. Some artists like very prescriptive directions so they can get on with it. Check out Bendis' Words For Pictures, there's an invaluable section where artists bitch about writers.

As a writer, it's difficult to cede creative territory, but making comics is all about trusting your partnership with your artist. A lot of the time, the artist will come up with stuff you couldn't have predicted.

1. Illustrator is a very useful tool, it would serve you well to know how to use it. Illustrator also uses a very similar skill set to other applications you will end up using like indesign for example.
   
   
2. No not at all, I think people love to complain no matter what industry they are in. However it is very competitive, there are plenty of very very successful designers out there and lots of really unsuccessful ones. No where is it more immediately obvious how "good" or "bad" you are at something than with a visual portfolio, people can see at a glance exactly how competent you are, that's pretty intimidating. For instance you might be able to escape notice as a mediocre insurance claims adjuster for much longer than a mediocre designer. If you can find a handful of solid clients and build good relationships with them it can go a very long way to having a long and comfortable career.
   
   
3. Pay varies dramatically and theres a reason that very few people can give you a straight answer, your dealing with at least 3 variables at any given time if not more. What you are worth, what your client is worth and what the client is asking you to do. So for instance if your doing a multi million dollar marketing campaign and rebranding of a huge corporation while sitting in your manhattan office expect to be paid a little differently than if you are doing the CD cover for your friends band (that they recorded in garageband), the skill set, stakes and experience are dramatically different in those scenarios.
   
   Graphic design is everywhere and at all levels, expect to be paid accordingly. Understand too that $1000 for a logo is completely relative and doesn't by any means reflect the work that goes into it. You may have a someone who whips something together in a few minutes or have a team of designers slaving away iterating on an identity for weeks to make sure it's perfect, to make sure it becomes a household/highly recognizable piece of branding.
   
   
4. One of the toughest and most technically challenging things I feel like you will have to deal with is typography. Having a good understanding of how to wield it's awesome power can go a very very long way. I think as far as learning your tools goes, for me at least the internet has been a far more valuable resource than any book, if you need a problem solved google can do that pretty quickly, theres also a ton of good tutorials or articles on design process out there, I have yet to see any books that come close.
   Now on the typography I can make a few suggestions, some of these are pretty dry and not so flashy but have very solid fundamentals in them. If you go to art school (and I highly suggest you do if you can afford it, it can be a phenomenal experience) then these are the kind of books you will be reading in the first year or two.
   
   Typographic Systems of Design ~Kim Elam
   
   Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type ~Kim Elam
   
   Thinking with Type ~Ellen Lupton
   
   Elements of Typography ~Robert Bringhurst
   
   
5. I started doing some design work and drawing in high school. Both my parents are designers so I'm sure that helped, from there I went and got a BFA in illustration. While my first love is drawing and most of my work is illustration I still end up doing lot's of design work because it is (in my experience at least) very frequently in demand.
   
   Hope that was helpful and I'm sure lots of other people have had very different experiences and will share their stories and opinions. It's a very diverse field.
   

I'm a type designer, so feel to ask me questions.

To keep the look and feel consistent across the entire font largely depends on understanding the fundamentals of visual communication design, typography, and the relationship between characters.

The process starts with a design with specific parameters, a "skeleton" of a typeface. You need to decide if it's going to be a serif, sans serif, slab serif, display, etc., then move on to the qualities of the typeface. What characters would it have (cold, friendly, fat, loud, etc.)? What purpose would it serve?

Once the design is settled, the work in creating a typeface from scratch involves lots and lots of tweaking to maintain a relationship with each glyph. Drawing glyphs is a lot of work, and yes, a lot of the work is done by eye. Each character could be "generated" and be mathematically accurate as a foundation, but it will be largely optically incorrect and loses an important quality, a human touch.

Extrapolation with fonts can be done with Superpolator and interpolation with RoboFab, but it doesn't make the typeface design better if it is not drawn correctly in the first place.

The best fonts out there, upon close inspection of their glyphs, show that their forms are derived from the written hand. See Gerrit Noordzij's The Stroke for more.

Karen Cheng's Designing Type is another good read. Another book that's coming soon is Fred Smeijers' Counterpunch 2nd Ed..

As glasspenguin mentioned, Typophile.com is a great message forum on type design. You will find a lot of information there.

@OP I second the typography being…default as sitniz said. I would suggest checking out resources like ilovetypography, thinkingwithtype, and the fundamental "Elements of Typographic Style" by Binghurst

On typography:

• The Elements of Typographic Style, the Bible of Typography.
  
• Thinking with Type, a nice overview of how type works.
  
• Detail in Typography, on the finer points of type.
  
  On grids:
  
  
• Raster Systeme, by the eminent expert of the Swiss School.
  
• Making and Breaking the Grid, a modern update on the timeless grid.
  
  On colour:
  
  
• The Art of Color, a classic on color.
  
• Interaction of Color, another classic text on color (theory).
  
  On usability:
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think, a classic on web usability.
  
• The Design of Everyday Things, a general usability Urtext.
  
• Understanding Comics, a great primer from an unlikely field.
  
  On information design:
  
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, the master at work.
  
  On inspiration:
  
  
• How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer, inspiration from the field.
  
• How to Be a Graphic Designer without Losing Your Soul
  
  On theory:
  
  
• What is a designer, philosophical musings, existential questions.
  
• Graphic Design Theory: Readings from the Field, theoretical backgrounds on the craft.
  
  On history:
  
  
• Meggs' History of Graphic Design, a canonical classic.
  
• Graphic Design: A New History, an alternative narrative.
  
  Monographs:
  
  
• From Lascaux to Brooklyn, the inimitable Paul Rand.
  
• Saul Bass: A Life in Film & Design, the art of Saul Bass.
  
• Tibor Kalman, Perverse Optimist, the exceptional work of Mr Kalman.

I'm a type nerd :)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0881792128/ref=aw_ls_5_3?colid=3RG1SRKEB21KE&coliid=I3JBV4YELX1GPP

I learned from a book, Metric Pattern Cutting for Women. It was super helpful at understanding where to start with making a pattern and different pattern shapes. I will say that you should know how to sew clothes before jumping into this book because there is no provided glossary for the sewing terms. No need to be an expert sewer. Just know how basic garments fit together.

I have this book that I quite like. It shows you how to draft basic blocks, and then how to alter them to make other styles of clothes. IDK if it would be considered a beginner's book, but as long as you can follow instructions, it shouldn't be too difficult to figure out.

The price tag is quite hefty, but there are other editions of the book that are cheaper (and from what I can tell, they have almost exactly the same information - I have 2 different editions and I don't remember seeing much of a difference between the two)

How to Make Sewing Patterns also seems to be a good book; it seems to follow the same basic idea as Metric Pattern Cutting, but I think it's more simplified. The first book I suggested assumes that you know the basics to measuring and pattern construction, whereas this book starts from the very beginning and assumes you know next to nothing.

Esquire tends to have better fashion advice than GQ, IMHO. Esquire is more classic.

Here are their online tips: http://www.esquire.com/style/tips/

Here is their book: http://www.amazon.com/Esquire-Handbook-Style-Guide-Looking/dp/1588167461/ref=pd_sim_b_12

Looks like maybe bleached e:denim canvas which you can then distress and dirty. You can then preserve that and get the "hard" layer by waxing it.

This and this are good books for patternmaking. The second offers halfscale patterns that you can blow up and modify if you have access to a plotter.

Construction is going to be pretty difficult to learn, especially manipulating denim with a home sewing machine. You'll want to learn how to do a flat felled seam if you're working with denim. Unfortunately, the roping will be hard to achieve without a chain stitch machine.

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

I did what u/Pancake_nips said (except I just took measurements and did some tracing instead of disassembling the garment) and it worked out pretty well. Here's a very useful sew-along.

It takes a lot more work, but you can make your own pattern from scratch. This book gives you directions on making a sloper, and then has instructions for several patterns based off of that, including jeans (and tops and outerwear too).

What a great post! I want you to dress me.

On a related note, I have this book on my list. One of my favorite bloggers says it changed the way she got dressed.

This book would help you.

I've taken evening classes at a fashion design school. I hope to take more.

We didn't use a book but this book was recommended for slopers https://www.amazon.com/How-Draft-Basic-Patterns-Gross/dp/B014RV85SG/ref=dp_ob_image_bk . There's a companion book for patterns developed from the slopers. This book is also popular:

​

https://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Fashion-Design-Joseph-Armstrong/dp/9332518114/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1538945180&sr=1-1&keywords=helen+joseph+armstrong+patternmaking

this textbook might change ya life

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.

this might help:

Building Your Book for Kindle [Kindle Edition]

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

I did it! I had sewn a couple dresses in highschool (10+ years prior), but hadn't sewn a single garment since. I had, however, been quilting for the last 4 years and so I felt like I knew my way around a sewing machine.

I used Gertie's Ultimate Dress Book which I borrowed from the library, and it was great! Super helpful and thorough!

(Oh, and I made it knee length, which also makes it way easier.)

Did it look a bit more homemade than some people would want? Yeah, I admit that it did, but I was pleased with it, I got to make EXACTLY what I wanted and I also only had 5 weeks between getting engaged and getting married (not shotgun, I swear!), so traditional bridal wasn't much of an option.

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!

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

At my school we've been using Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph-Armstrong. While it's certainly been nice having a teacher walk through it with you, and do exercises together in class, I've also been able to figure some patterns out alone by using this book.

If you’re making a muslin, you can experiment with how much to slash and spread. Because of the width of the sleeve, the cap doesn’t have to be as high as it is for a more tight fitting set in sleeve. Precise measurements are not really required, it’s more of an art than a science. They would just give a starting point. The sleeve pictured has the fullness added above the elbow, but you can do anything you want. I went to school for fashion design, but I still refer to my design book:

https://smile.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Fashion-Design-Joseph-Armstrong/dp/9332518114/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=

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

I thoroughly recommend Love At First Stitch - it comes with some straightforward (but rather lovely) patterns and will walk you through how to read them, as well as techniques like seam finishing and zippers.

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

Everyone has great advice, but if you want a pattern book to read over for future inspiration that's aimed towards vintage Gertie's books are fun! Some of the patterns are more difficult than you'd want to start with but circle skirts are appropriately vintage and also easy!

There are a lot of tutorials for circle skirts, but the easiest ones just have elastic as the waistband and come together in a few hours (it gets faster when you've done a few).

Assorted tips: Buy a bit of extra fabric at first. If you don't need it you can use it for something else, but if you make massive fuck ups (like I do ALL the time still) you don't have to worry about running out.

Don't be ashamed of your seam ripper. Sometimes things just come out wonky.

If you get into a project and just hate it, you're not obligated to finish it. It's a hobby. Set it aside and come back to it or frog it (toss it) later.

Don't be afraid to touch the fabric in fabric stores. Sometimes the print is beautiful but the moment you unfold a little bit of it, it's got an awful feel. Pick something you want to have on your body for garments! Use your current clothes or vintage ones you find as inspiration for what kind of feel to go for.

Pick up hand sewing tutorials too even if you're going to buy a machine. Everything benefits from a little bit of hand finishing (especially vintage hems).

Google EVERYTHING. Anything that doesn't seem clear, Google can probably find a video, tutorial, or different instructions to help you figure it out.

"Type Matters"

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

I read "The Curated Closet" and it really helped me define my style to what i need and wear vs who i would like to be. It also really helped me narrow down a color palette that works for a capsule wardrobe. Typical day to day wear skinny ankle jeans (dark denim & grey), flats, half tucked linen tshirt or 3/4 breton shirt and sunnies with bright red lips as an accent. Crisp white button down for a dressier day with sleeves rolled up. Sometimes I throw on a scarf and heels. I love sheath, fit & flare dresses and pencil skirts. I have no actual changes in seasons just a monsoon season. 🤣 Which sucks because i love layering!!! I like to keep it minimalist and effortless. The bags that work the best for me are Celine trapeze, box and belt and an hermes kelly dupe. When i want to dress up a bit i switch to a Chanel bag.

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.

Have you seen this book? https://www.amazon.com/Curated-Closet-Discovering-Personal-Building/dp/1607749483/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1501584822&sr=8-1&keywords=closet+book

I have so many clothes but find myself only wearing less than 1/10th of my closet. One big problem is we get tempted by clothes that are "good deals" so we end up buying what we don't necessarily love. I am working on shrinking my closet as well but it's so hard to let go.

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.

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.

I feel the same way! The author of The Curated Closet (which I got from the library) recommends putting your favorite images into a separate folder (not just Pinterest). I did that, deleted the ones that didn't match, and was left with a pretty clear winter style. I made a list of key pieces, crossed off the few things I already owned, and then I was ready to check thrift stores. I'll probably ask for jewelry and a jacket for Christmas/birthday, so I'd only have to spend a lot if I buy shoes. Good luck!

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.

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.

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

You know AI, so this is really just about how to draft patterns.
There's a number of books on the subject, but for you (based on your post looking for men's sewing patterns) I would recommend
Patternmaking for Menswear by Gareth Kershaw: https://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Menswear-Gareth-Kershaw/dp/1780670168

This will read as a shameless plug, but the patterns on makemypattern.com can be downloaded as an SVG that you can open in AI. This obviously does not teach you to draft them, but it does allow you to tweak them.

My list:

• Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel - travel, see the world, experience new things
  
• How to Win Friends and Influence People - make friends, enjoy people
  
• Starting Strength - get fit, look good
  
• Esquire The Handbook of Style: A Man's Guide to Looking Good - dress well, look good
  
• The 4-Hour Workweek - work on your own terms

I ordered Bridal Couture: Fine Sewing Techniques for Wedding Gowns and Evening Wear, Bridal Gowns: How to Make the Weddings Dress of Your Dreams, and Gertie's Ultimate Dress Book. The two wedding ones have been the most useful but they're very similar and tend to run together in my head. One goes really into muslins and the other doesn't care about muslins and is all about tissue fitting which is so weird to me. I'm sticking with the muslins. I think Couture does muslins and Gowns does tissue fitting. If I had to pick just one I'd go with Couture.

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.

It's worth picking up Eqsuire's book. http://www.amazon.com/Esquire-Handbook-Style-Guide-Looking/dp/1588167461

You'll save more then $10 when you learn to purchase good clothing that actually fits.

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

I'm taking patternmaking right now at LA Trade Tech and Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Armstrong is still the standard textbook. It'll go over everything you need to know.

yay! i get super excited when people want to learn pattern making. my ultimate career goal is to be a pattern maker. this pattern making book has helped me a lot. there are a lot of good tips in there and step by step directions on how to make slopers in your specific size (or sizes 2 4 6 8, etc.) ^_^

Definitely sounds like you would benefit from creating your own patterns. Yay! I'm wading through a couple pattern drafting books myself right now, and while developing your own basic patterns can be slow, meticulous, and immensely frustrating, it's also hugely rewarding.

There are a ton of textbooks out there, largely written to accompany pattern making classes. This is a bit hard on the person who's trying to learn this in isolation, since so many of the books assume you'll have the extra resource of a teacher. (Might be worth seeing if there's a local sewing studio or community college that teaches patternmaking-- in-person instruction would be nice.) Don't be discouraged, though-- it IS possible to get there alone!

The standard text seems to be Helen Joseph-Armstrong's 'Patternmaking for Fashion Design.'. Connie Crawford, Donald McCunn, and Winifred Aldrich also come highly recommended.

Since all of these books are textbooks, they can be pretty expensive. To try a book before you buy it, see if your public library (or local university library, if you have access) can use Interlibrary Loan to get you a copy of any of the above. Depending on their rules about renewing, you might be able to get your basic pattern made before you have to give the text back. :)

You could also go the draping route. Since I'm completely ignorant on this subject, I'll only leave a link to Kathleen Fasanella's Saran Wrap Patternmaking Method, which produces a sloper without having to do any measuring. (Everything in Fashion-Incubator's 'tutorials' section is brilliant. If you enjoy painfully/beautifully methodical sewing and patterning instruction, you can lose yourself there for days. But I lose my train of thought. Ahem.)

No matter how you produce your sloper, you'll still want a real textbook to help you manipulate your first pattern into real shirts you would want to wear. The sloper is very basic-- it doesn't have buttons, fastenings, interesting seams, or even much extra room for moving. All that comes later.

It's also useful to have a helper on hand for the first projects in the book. Getting accurate measurements of your body is crucial, so you'll need to recruit someone who can be trusted with a tape measure. It's also useful to have a friend help pin and fit the bodice sloper. Ideally you would team up with a sewing buddy who also wanted her own patterns-- I just bully my husband into helping. ;)

Good luck! It sounds like a ton of work, and it is, but I'm a complete novice and I already have the freedom to look at commercial patterns, shrug, and say, "no, I would rather make my own-- I KNOW it will fit better."

Logo Design Love by David Airey

Logo Design Love

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0321985206

Many people mistakenly think that just because they're good at social media that they will be good at social media marketing. It's an entirely different beast.

Do you have any experience in branding or marketing basics? You need to be able to create strategic briefs, messaging guides, create and effectively track goals that will solve your client's pain points.

Recommended books:

Ogilvy on Advertising

22 Immutable Laws of Branding

22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

After that I would learn more about content marketing. How to create good, compelling stories that not only engages the brand's followers but stores that legitimately helps them as well.

Blogs to subscribe to:

Content Marketing Institute

Hubspot

*CMI also had a podcast called PNR that is a great way to keep up on latest news, trends and predictions. I recommend subscribing to it.

Speaking of blogs, consider including them as part of your content strategy. They make easy fodder for social posts and drive traffic to the client website.

A few final things to note:

• Having someone with graphic design experience will step up your game big time, plus it can help avoid potential legal issues down the line (more on this later)
  
  
• Same goes for short form video. It's the most engaging content and damn near everyone is doing it.
  
  
• I would not accept any work that did not also include an advertising budget. This will allow to grow followers quickly and ensure they see your content. Only 6% of followers organically see a brand's content. Your missing out on a lot of potential without boosting those posts to ensure more people see them.
  
  
• Make sure you don't use any copyrighted images or videos. Most people are under the mistaken assumption that photos on the internet are fair game. This can get you and your client in a lot of trouble.
  
  
• Write a strategy doc and content calendar and stick to them. The biggest mistake new people make is playing it by ear. If after a few months you find the strategy isn't working, change it up to keep what does and can what doesn't.
  
  That's about all I got for now. Lemme know if you have any questions.

Read both of David Olgilvy's books. Then read them again.

Confessions of an Advertising Man

Ogilvy on Advertising

I personally don't think you are too old.

I used to sew for fun when I was 16, stopped after leaving school and began again at the age of 23/24. I have been steadily re-learning all of the techniques I was taught at school, and have been attending college courses on sewing and dressmaking too. I am now at the stage where I am working on my own project portfolio, but will happily admit that I am still learning lots of new things.

I will agree with /u/heliotropedit though. you do have to be completely 100% dedicated to learning everything you can.

You will end up spending hours and hours practicing the same techniques over and over again. You will want to quit at times and need to motivate yourself to carry on and push through to the end. You'll want to cry on occasions at how tired you are and how you feel that your work simply isn't good enough and how it never will be. You will see other people wearing beautifully crafted garments and feel angry at your own lack of skills. but when you finally break through and create a perfectly drafted and constructed garment, you will realise all of that time, pain, upset and sheer panic will have been 100% worth it.

But before you ever reach this point, you need to be completely certain that it is what you want to do, the tailoring profession is very difficult to break into and it takes true dedication and sacrifice and time (years) to make it.

NB a few good books to help:- (the first three books are good for beginners, the last 4 books are aimed at the more intermediate level sewers)

Easy Does It Dressmaking

The Sewing Book

The Dressmakers Handbook

Couture Sewing Techniques as recommended to me by /u/heliotropedit.

Couture Sewing: Tailoring Techniques

Classic Tailoring Techniques: Menswear

Classic Tailoring Techniques: Womenswear

1. This sewing book at about $28 is the most expensive thing on my WL.
   
   
2. To improve my sewing ability and to have a resource guide at my disposal.
   
   
3. To be honest, no I would not be okay with that. I always want to improve myself and my craft and anything to help means the world to me.
   
   Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds <3

I wholeheartedly recommend these books:

https://www.amazon.com/Panel-One-Scripts-Writers-Comics/dp/0971633800

https://www.amazon.com/Words-Pictures-Business-Writing-Graphic/dp/0770434355

There are some published:

https://www.amazon.com/Panel-One-Scripts-Writers-Comics/dp/0971633800/

https://www.amazon.com/Panel-Two-Scripts-Writers-Comics/dp/0971633819/

https://www.amazon.com/Words-Pictures-Business-Writing-Graphic/dp/0770434355/

Learn from the masters.

• Comics and Sequential Art: Principles and Practices by Will Eisner
  
• Making Comics by Scott McCloud
  
• Alan Moore's Writing For Comics
  
• Words for Pictures by Brian Bendis
  
• Framed Ink: Drawing and Composition for Visual Storytellers by Marcos Mateau-Mestre
  
• Foundations in Comic Book Art by John Paul Lowe
  
• The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing Comics by Comfort Love and Adam Withers

I have a lot of trouble with the writing aspect. Some things that have helped me are 1) taking a creative writing class in college and reading books specifically about comic writing, 2) making clear outlines and timelines of the basic way the plot progresses, and 3) researching the time period/setting to get new ideas for details and where the plot should move. I'm still at the beginner level for writing, struggling through the writing for a big project, but that's what's been helping me.

There are also a lot of prompts and questionnaires that can really help you develop your characters, like this one. Good luck and keep it up!

Anything by Scott McCloud for sure.

And I can't vouch for them, but Alan Moore wrote a book on it, and Brian Michael Bendis so those might be helpful.

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.

Just because something is regularly used does not mean that it is good or appropriate. Besides, free fonts are seldom used in newspapers, television, movies, and music videos (and almost never used by reputable organizations). Free fonts are almost always terrible because of: kerning, x-height, letterforms, glyphs, ligatures, leading, etc. A good typeface has a family, not just a single font. Here's a primer, but I would recommend this book and this one.

My critique remains the same as my initial comments: far too many typefaces, and avoid using free fonts. Buy them if you can, steal them if you have to, or be much more diligent in finding well designed free typefaces. Start here.

a few things:


-read about design history. It's probably the most important and commonly overlooked aspect of learning design. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide was a good one.


-subscribe to Design magazines. The quality of articles in print magazines is always way better than most blogs you'll find. Also, it just feels good to flip through a magazine once in awhile. Communication Arts. Applied Arts. Computer Arts. They're all worth looking at.


-color theory books are pretty easy to come by and most of them seem to be the same. So any color theory book is good.


-for type I really liked thinking with type. And the elements of typographic style is amazing but a lot harder of a read.


-also, process is everything. If you can think of design as more than 'making things look good', that helps. Ultimately design is making this work better. Every choice affects how a person will feel/react when they see your design. Color, type, layout, everything, will have a psychological affect on people, even if they don't realize it.

I'd be glad to. To start, here are some terms to look for:

1. IxD / Interaction Design
   
2. UX / User Experience Design
   
3. HCI / Human-Computer Interaction
   
4. Goal-Directed Design
   
   "The Crystal Goblet" explains the aim of print design, which is a good precurser to reading about interactive design media.
   
   As far as books go, I strongly recommend About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design. It's a fairly long book, but it's worth reading to build a strong foundation of understanding in IxD.
   
   A lot of IxD is about effectively using visual design to achieve goals. If you want to understand the visual tools of IxD after finding the theory interesting, you might read the mistitled Layout Workbook (or any other overview book; it's not actually a book about layouts — nor a workbook), followed by Bringhurst for advanced traditional typography.
   
   Rocket Surgery Made Easy and other Steve Krug books are commonly suggested for more IxD topics, but I haven't gotten around to reading them. It's likely they're lighter reading than About Face 3.

Way too many typefaces, lack of hierarchy, and no attention to typographic style. Try to keep to no more than 2 different typefaces per design, but create hierarchy and variation through size, color, and occasionally by including variations of weight or font style in the same font family.

There are many things I could list that are incorrect or need improvement about the brochure, but until you get the basics of typography down, none of them will really matter. Type treatment is arguably the single most important part of a good design. It defines the design. Good type treatment applied to the ugliest images can be completely transformational - however, no mater how beautiful the images are, bad type will destroy the design.

Read some books on typography to get an understanding of the basics, and then start to apply the new knowledge.

This book is single-handedly the best book you can read to get you headed in the right direction. I would highly recommend starting there.

Then, apply what you have learned to a new design of this brochure and come back for a second round of critique.

But the bible of typography is definitely this.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0881792063?ie=UTF8&tag=desi05d-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0881792063

I like these books as a starting off point.

Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton

The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst

The Language of Graphic Design by Richard Poulin

Megg's History of Graphic Design

A list of some of my favorites so far..

Interactions of Color by Josef Albers

[The Elements of Typographic Style] (https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Version-Anniversary/dp/0881792128/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485894924&sr=1-3&keywords=typography+book) by Robert Bringhurst

[Don't Make Me Think] (https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability-ebook/dp/B00HJUBRPG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1485895055&sr=1-1&keywords=dont+make+me+think) by Steve Krug (More of web design, but I loved the book. It can apply to all design.)

Logo Design Love by David Airey

Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler

The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman

These are just a few that I have really enjoyed.

https://www.amazon.com/Typographie-Manual-Design-Emil-Ruder/dp/3721200438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491666411&sr=8-1&keywords=emil+ruder+typographie

https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Version-Anniversary/dp/0881792128/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1491666331&sr=8-5&keywords=typography+book

https://www.amazon.com/Grid-Systems-Graphic-Design-Communication/dp/3721201450/ref=sr_1_27?ie=UTF8&qid=1491666365&sr=8-27&keywords=typography+book

https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Type-2nd-revised-expanded/dp/1568989695/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1491666463&sr=8-1&keywords=typography+book

In almost every GD class I took at the California College of the Arts this book was required reading. its a great reference for beginners and really reasonable in price compared to my tuition.

Well, the most important books that I read when learning design were:

• Grid Systems
  
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
  
• The Elements of Typographic Style
  
• Making and Breaking the Grid
  
  All of those would be a good start.

> What are some good fonts?

Very hard to answer unless some context ist given.
If you wish to make a qualified decision yourself,
I recommend the Bringhurst for an introduction:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0881792128

I think it might be helpful to start from the beginning and learn the principles and hierarchies behind the bells and whistles of Adobe CC.

• The Interaction of Color
  
  
• Grid Systems In Graphic Design
  
  
• The Elements of Typographic Style
  
  
• Trademarks and Symbols
  
  
• The Design Of Everyday Things
  
  Each of these I was instructed to read cover to cover when I first began designing and here I am three years later with an extremely successful design career, large in part due to these readings.
  
  Take the time to do it the right way, and the rest will follow naturally.
  
  

The Elements of Typographic Style is a classic, one of the best typography books around.

I can only choose one?!

User-experience design. I'm a web developer/designer, so much my work is to make websites intuitive and easy to use. As it turns out, doing this is quite difficult; UX design is almost a science in itself.

If you'd like to read a superb book on the subject, check out a book titled The Design of Everyday Things.

If you're still thinking "how complicated could it be?", check out this new edition to my bookshelf: The Elements of Typographic Style: a ~400 page treatment on typography alone. Very few notice the good/bad about the typography of a website or publication, if it looks nice, and less do anything more than just notice. Yet if it doesn't look so great, everyone will notice.

The mark of a good UX designer is that the user barely notices his design at all.

Or maybe number theory. If you let me, I'll lecture you about things like information theory, Euler's works, or my favorite math problems all day. :)

If you're serious about typography.

The Elements of Typographic Style

I would also recommend this book , Elements of Typographic Style

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0881792128/ref=mp_s_a_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1494081534&sr=8-9&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=typography

A book like this http://www.amazon.com/Metric-Pattern-Cutting-Womens-Wear/dp/1405175672

will teach you to make all your own slopers, and alter them into whatever pattern you need.

And always use a mock-up (a practice piece in cheap fabric like factory cotton) to alter your pattern/sloper to your exact shape. The book I linked to has slopers with built in ease, but you can also get sloper draft instructions without ease, for even more control.

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!

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

Here are some fashion references that I used and helped. It was also the style bible not fashion bible. lol

http://www.amazon.com/AskMen-com-Presents-The-Style-Bible/dp/0061208507/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1372205417&sr=8-3&keywords=details+men%27s+style+manual

http://www.amazon.com/Details-Mens-Style-Manual-Ultimate/dp/159240328X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372205417&sr=8-1&keywords=details+men%27s+style+manual

http://www.amazon.com/Esquire-The-Handbook-Style-Looking/dp/1588167461/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1372205417&sr=8-2&keywords=details+men%27s+style+manual

Dealing with conflict and having long relationships was something I had to build over time, and most of that will come with just working toward being the ultimate man woman desire. Having confidence, good direction in your life, lots of friends, good hobbies, good manners, being gentleman, having boundaries and standards. Don't be insecure or clingy. I didn't just read one or two books I read about 40 and at one point it became an obsession to be this ideal man woman desire.

1. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159240328X/ref=oh_o04_s01_i00_details
   
2. http://www.amazon.com/GENTLEMAN-TIMELESS-GUIDE-FASHION-Ullmann/dp/3833152702/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3TPPWDLACPI4Z&colid=FLC5W5OOSQLF
   
3. http://www.amazon.com/Esquire-The-Handbook-Style-Looking/dp/1588167461/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3HOO0657RWPLF&colid=FLC5W5OOSQLF
   
4. http://www.amazon.com/Starting-Strength-3rd-Mark-Rippetoe/dp/0982522738/ref=wl_it_dp_o_npd?ie=UTF8&coliid=I32MMPCIUV1D2I&colid=FLC5W5OOSQLF

If you have a little money lying about, you should pick up The Handbook of Style

I'm not sure if MFA likes this book or not, but it has a lot of useful information and one section specifically dedicated to starting a new wardrobe on different budgets. It helped me when I finally decided to stop wearing only black shirts and jeans and instead have at least a modicum of sartorial taste.

One thing that's left off of the graphic (but is shown in the image) is to have a jacket taper just above the waist. That will make it look like you're actually wearing a nice suit and not a suit shaped bag.

Also, sometimes esquire has a lot of stupid/laughable/idiotic male fashion advice, but this book has most of the essential info re: suits and how they should fit and more.

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.

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

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

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.

Patternmaking for Fashion Design
and How to Make Sewing Patterns are good resources. The first is more of a textbook that addresses specific techniques in patternmaking (e.g. how do I do articulated sleeves? how do I do an invisible zipper?) while the latter is more of a general introduction.

I use a machine for nearly everything and am horrible at handsewing. The most hand sewing I do is for tacking down allowances or for hook & eye closures so I think you could probably get away with mediocre hand sewing technique.

Generally, most pattern drafting books tell you how to draft a sloper (or template of your body,) and then tells you how to manipulate the sloper to get finished designs. You can start with any sloper (from any book or website) that fits you well and jump right to the sloper manipulation part from any book you like.

For womenswear I recommend “Pattern Drafting and Dressmaking” by Dorothy Moore . It’s much, much cheaper than other books, and offers a really good, simplified set of slopers despite the book being so old. When I started drafting, four years ago, I used this book to create a dress shirt with princess seams, as well as trousers, for my wife and her co-workers assumed that they were from Banana Republic. Don’t worry though, the book also has sections on dresses, coats, jackets and even a bonus formula for a contemporary man’s dress shirt.

On a side note, you can draft anything you want, but you have to know how to put it together and most of these books do not give you construction advice. I like Kwik Sew’s instructions because they use simple construction techniques, ¼” seams and teach good habits. If you don’t know how to assemble something you’ve drafted, borrow the instruction booklet from a KwikSew pattern that is similar to what you are trying to make and write down the construction steps. In addition, you’ll see it mentioned here a lot, but "Shirtmaking" by David Coffin offered invaluable tips on how to get the collar, cuffs and yoke assembled in a non-conventional way.

Some of the other books I recommend:
“Patternmaking for Fashion Design” by Helen Armstrong, is an odd book. As a pattern drafting book, I feel that it fails, as it is too big and tries to cover too many bases. But as a reference book, those qualities make it exceptional. This is not something you’ll ever read straight through… you’ll start at the index and jump to the morsel of information that you need, e.g. dart manipulation, or collar variations. Really expensive though.

“The Practical Guide to Patternmaking” by Lori Knowles and “The Practical Guide to Patternmaking for Meanswear” by Lori Knowles are both great. Where Moore’s book looked a little dated, this one has contemporary designs.

i used this at a local CC here in SF and my classmates who went to FIDM already had it because their teachers had already used them for THEIR classes.

Place a dart in a paper pattern. Self-teaching patternmaking and this book (Helen Joseph Armstrong was so annoyingly complex and assumtious that I got this book (Dennic Chunman Lo) and it's easy to follow but hard to understand at certain points, as he just "throws" you the concept with no deep how-to of it or explanation/

In terms of ready-to-wear clothes that you buy in a store, if, for example, a size L is supposed to fit women sizes 10 to 14, that garment is actually cut to fit a size 14. The largest size in each size range is what the garment is actually cut for.

This is a pricy book, but it is an awesome textbook that covers all aspects of patternmaking: Patternmaking for Fashion Design

Patternmaking for Fashion Design by Helen Joseph Armstrong is pretty much the standard patternmaking text for just about every decent fashion design program in the States. I still have my copy from the 90s which I used in school, and I still refer to it when making my own patterns.

It has a very wide variety of styles/details/silhouettes/etc. And our patternmaker at my work, who has been drafting production patterns for 30+ years, references her copy regularly.

Logo Design Love

Let me preface that I don't consider myself a pro in anyway. I work at a printer and am the in-house designer, which for the most part means I am a troubleshooter that needs to fix your damn files so they can print. But I have found these useful for inspiration/education/etc...

Logo Design Workshop

Logo Design Love

The entire Los Logos series. This is volume 7.

The entire LogoLounge series.

Except for the Logo Design Workshop these are primarily catalogs of logos, but some will go through the design process to give you an idea of what the designer was thinking, discussions with client, etc.

The second edition of Logo Design Love by David Airey came out relatively recently. It's great. The first edition was outstanding and I was surprised to see that the second is even better.

Also, Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler is wonderful as well.

http://www.amazon.com/Logo-Design-Love-Creating-Identities/dp/0321985206/ref=zg_bs_3564965011_3

I have this one and it's fantastic. Check the reviews for it, too.

This one will probably be my next purchase on that same theme:

http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Brand-Identity-Essential-Branding/dp/0470401427/ref=zg_bs_3564965011_7

There are the books I was recommended:


1 2 3 4 5 6 7.

Link of the book :

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321985206/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=inkbot05-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0321985206&linkId=b05fbd7ab1b9acec082c4f5f61b362ba

Learn marketing if you hate coding. There are tons of books. http://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising-David/dp/039472903X
http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com/

Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, co-founder of Ogilvy & Mather, one of the most important and biggest ad agencies out there. It's one of the best books on the subject that I've ever read.

http://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising-David/dp/039472903X

Hey Whipple, Squeeze This is pretty much required reading. As is Ogilvy on Advertising, in my opinion. Sort of old school versus new school insight. Both are advertising legends, and Luke Sullivan is/was a copywriter, so I found his stuff to be particularly helpful. There's a ton of stuff out there to read, but these two are a good place to start.

I bet those days will come back soon. There's so much style in longer form. I recently read Ogilvy on Advertsing, written by this man, and recommend it to anyone interested in marketing or cool old school British style.

Start a little kitty for this one man: https://www.amazon.com/Ogilvy-Advertising-David/dp/039472903X

/u/chaintip

Edit: There's a bunch of other books which are bangers though! Maybe this one too, Niall Ferguson - The Square and The Tower.

Copywriter's Handbook

Ogilvy on Advertising

My Life in Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins


Pick Me: Breaking into Advertising and Staying there - By Nancy Vonk Invaluable to me when I was in school. Read it more than my textbooks

Zag: The Number one strategy for high performance brands

Tipping Point - Malcom Gladwell

> Just because he sells them doesn't make them effective for use

Read "Ogilvy on Advertising" and you'll come away with a different perspective.

Is there anything you do consistently without thinking about it?

Is there anything you do enjoy, that you do occasionally, but you just enjoy it for the sake of doing it?

Lastly, is there something you are really attracted to, but don't do because people will judge you?

> Honestly the only way I can find enjoyment in anything is to drink a lot while I am doing it. It's the only thing I have found that turns off the constant thoughts of: "why do you even bother, you are just embarassing yourself."

Be productive when you're drinking then. I've experienced the same thing. I started drawing a little time after I tried marijuana. I tried drawing before, but that negative voice would creep into my head and I would just quit. Marijuana gave me the ability to lose my fucks. (I'm not condoning it, but it was the initial spark that got me through my post-military depression and start doing things again.)

I started out with terrible shit, but after just the ACT of putting shit out there without care for what people would think, it got easier. I kept with it, now I can draw just through the inebriated brazenness that alcohol gives me. I'm still not good, but I have a couple things that I have a tiny bit of self-pride in.

I do it for friends, I do it for a hobby. It will never be a career...but it keeps me happy. I've started a bunch of new interests since I realized I can do whatever the fuck I want: I started reading books I like, instead of the ones I think will get me a job. Early 1900s NatGeos, John Muir, classics like Aristotle, Plato...St. Thomas Aquinas, a book on the Japanese government, lol. I recently bought two books, a sewing book, and a book on fashion. I'm a guy, and very few in America expect a guy to take up sewing and fashion as a hobby...but I want to give it a try. I've always been interested in the functionality v. fashionality of the way people dress. I find a lot of fashion ridiculous, so I want to try to offer my own stuff. The books are a start.

In high school, a wise old black woman told me, "Just do it." Shortly after I got out of the military, an alcoholic sociology major with multiple businesses told me, "Just do it." After that, a deceptively smart stripper in Florida told me, "Just do it." ...sure, it might be a Nike slogan, but their advice came straight from them and they were honest about it.

Don't give a fuck whether you think you can or can't...just do it.

Get a book like this, some muslin or light colored fabric, dark thread and sew samples. Set zippers, sew darts, button and buttonholes, curved seams, French seams, top stitching etc. if you really want to do this it is important that you work on technique. Tailors will do dozens upon dozens of sample welt pockets before they do a real one.


http://www.amazon.com/The-Sewing-Book-Step-Step/dp/0756642809

Any of these two books. I really want them, but are a bit expensive for me atm

The Sewing Book: An Encyclopedic Resource of Step-by-Step Techniques

[Vintage Hairstyling: Retro Styles with Step-by-Step Techniques] (http://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Hairstyling-Step-Step-Techniques/dp/0981663915/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=3Q3B5H91EIZ85&coliid=I13B0QG9NBDQ9U)

These two books are great. Best $40 you will ever spend.

http://www.amazon.com/Words-Pictures-Business-Writing-Graphic/dp/0770434355/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1463121823&sr=1-1&keywords=words+for+pictures

http://www.amazon.com/Make-Comics-Like-Pros-Graphic/dp/0385344635/ref=pd_sim_14_11?ie=UTF8&dpID=61UB9MAkkjL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR125%2C160_&refRID=1D8HQXEZ6V4S2DP6P3Q6

Words for Pictures by Brian Michael Bendis. If you're interested in writing your story ideas as comics/manga, you need to have this book.

BENDIS wrote a book for it

Here you go: http://www.comicbookscriptarchive.com/archive/

Also check out Words for Pictures: The Art and Business of Writing Comics and Graphic Novels.

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...

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

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

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.

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.

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

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, very good book about the fundamentals.

This is my favorite, mostly because it brings in concepts that surround design, and explains things like gestalt. Pardon the Amazon link, but it's not an affiliate link.

http://www.amazon.com/Universal-Principles-Design-William-Lidwell/dp/1592530079/ref=sr_1_56?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418235901&sr=1-56&keywords=graphic+design+concepts

Edit: forgot my favorite type book, which is dry as hell, but full of great info: http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Typographic-Style-Robert-Bringhurst/dp/0881792063/ref=pd_sim_b_6?ie=UTF8&refRID=1RD40NPJ75KD5V99KXAB

And the version for online type: http://webtypography.net/

"Just doing it" is fair enough and is valuable, but also can only take one so far without understanding fundamentals as well.

What you don't want to be is someone with just a high software proficiency but relatively little understanding of what they're doing, or why. They essentially end up becoming an expert at mimicry. They can build whatever you want, but don't understand why what they're building works.

I've seen enough examples where it can simply delay advancement, such that someone self-taught with 5-10 years experience ends up with skills comparable to a graduate with 0-3 years of experience.

If the goal is to circumvent school, especially if the motivation is to save money, then the goal should also be to replicate the benefits of design education as much as possible without the expense.

> Books are nice but they aren't nearly the invaluable tool that "Just Doing It" is.

I assume you're just talking about instructional books, which relates to what I was saying above. To discredit the reading of a book such as The Elements of Typographic Style would be a shame. I imagine a book like that is required reading in any graphic design program.

La design nu pot sa zic ca ma pricep prea tare, dar domeniul ma preocupa din ce in ce mai mult. Thinking with type si The Elements of Typographic Style, The Design of Everyday Things, Grid Systems in Graphic Design, Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop si Don't Make Me Think sunt cartile care mi-au placut/din care am invatat cel mai mult, dar sunt clasice asa ca banuiesc ca stii de ele.

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 :)

holy shit is that comic sans in publishing i think i just shat myself

...

Well, it's pretty creative though. Not a bad job in that sense. Here's a free tip if you're actually interested in publishing.

Ahhh these type exercises bring back fond memories! Typography can be a difficult thing to learn and teach because there is never one answer to a problem. Just learn the few things you shouldn't do and rock out with the rest. It is a skill that has a feel to it and the only way to develop an eye for it is to just practice and observe. I will dig out some of my work of similar projects and share.

Here are some of my favorite reads from back in day.

The Elements of Typographic Style

The Fundamentals of Typography

U&lc : Influencing Design & Typography

Thanks! One of my friends told me I need to read up on typography as well. He recommended me reading THIS and also THIS before I even start college to get a better understanding of it all. Regarding HTML and CSS, hopefully we'll learn that during the Web design I, II and III during the course. Otherwise I know a college in town where you can get a Web Design diploma (2 evening classes per week) in just two months and that is basically ONLY html, css and dreamweaver. It's dirt cheap to do as well so I might do that if I dont get enough html/css experience from college.

Here's some links of books I put on my wish list. Its a lot of stuff about grids, which is something you should learn.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design

Universal Principles of Design

The Grid: A Modular System for the Design and Production of Newpapers, Magazines, and Books

The Elements of Typographic Style (A dry read, but very valuable knowledge)

Thinking with Type

I learned most of my composition skills from Drawing and Painting classes. I've heard photography is a great way to learn composition too.

Aside from that use Lynda.com and learn your color theory. You should also learn stuff like using CMYK vs RGB. Common sizes for print material in your country.

If you go Freelance, use this book: Graphic Artist's Guild Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines

If you haven't discovered this site and you're feeling frustrated, just remember it could be worse: Clients From Hell

And just for fun: How a Web Design Goes Straight To Hell, Why You Don't Like Changes to Your Design

If you're having trouble with text and typography, I recommend Elements of Typographic Style. From letters and glyphs to pages and columns, it's a great read (actually funny in places) and will help you know what you want to do with your type. Then it's usually a pretty simple matter of googling how to do that in InDesign.

This isn't directly skills-related, but if you're going to be working as a designer you should read Design is a Job. A lot of really great practical info on working as a designer and the industry you don't usually hear people talk about.

If you're interested in logos and marks, I thought "Marks of Excellence" was a fantastic book. It's one that you need to read, though, not just flip through. For typography, I think "Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works" is a good read for an easy introduction to typography. For a little more serious dig, hit up "The Elements of Typographic Style".

typography has some good rules for this.

see the book The Elements of Typographic Style

or http://webtypography.net/intro/ which is based on the instructions of this book.

Layout + Color

Picture This by Molly Bang

Typography


Second vote for Elements of Typographic Style, excellent book.


Drawing, honestly at the start the biggest key to growth is going to be drawing as much as you can. You're going to suck for a while so start getting those bad drawings out of you. There's a ton of great people to watch on YouTube (Sycra Yasin, Glenn Vilppu, Stan Prokopenko, Steve Huston). I've seen Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain recommended by many. I'm not crazy about it myself but I didn't read as a beginner artist so I probably didn't get as much out of it as I could have.

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

Well, as an ex-designer that now pretty much exclusively codes, I'd say your time would be best spent around typography. Here's a book that I would highly recommend. :)

Even if it's just a passing interest, I highly recommend 'The Elements of Typographic Style 4.0' by Robert Bringhurst: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0881792128/ref=aw_2nd_sims_1?pi=SL500_SY115

Do you have a good understanding of typography in general? If you have that, you could try searching for specific things you want to learn like adjusting kerning or using ligatures.

If you need to familiarize yourself more with the elements of typography, this book is commonly considered THE go-to book for typography: http://amzn.com/0881792128

Well, the first two books you should get are:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Metric-Pattern-Cutting-Womens-Wear/dp/1405175672

and

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pattern-Cutting-Menswear-Winifred-Aldrich-ebook/dp/B008GI0I8C/ref=dp_kinw_strp_1


I wouldn't have passed my degree without them.

These are the books I was taught with at college.

They can seem quite over complicated at times, but stick with it, after a while you start to get a 'feel' for how the patterns work, and more importantly, why they work. I never refer to the books now - once you have your basic set of blocks adjusting them to what you need starts to become second nature.

Like anything it just takes repeated practice, but these books are an excellent place to start.

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!

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.

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.

How much money do you have to spend on clothes right now? Take that money and spend half of it on a good, comfortable, nice-looking pair of shoes. If you don't have hundreds of dollars, go to a second-hand store or a vintage clothing store or something, but try to buy new shoes. You can buy cheap stuff for every other article of clothing if you like, but don't skimp on the shoes; they are the most important aspect of your wardrobe. A pair of black oxfords would be versatile.

Next, get a button-down shirt (or some shirts) which fit you well in the shoulders and waist. You want your shirt to fit like a second skin. Try to find something that is long enough that you can bring the front and back together at the crotch (more or less). Check the shirt(s) for mother-of-pearl buttons, good stitching, and, if patterned, check to see if the pattern lines up from shoulder to arm. Look up the word "gusset" and try to get shirts with gussets. These are some general marks of a quality shirt. You don't need all these things, but they are signs of quality.

Trousers: make sure they look good in the butt. No frumpy ass for you; no pucker either. Length: around the ankles...no flood, no bunch up at the bottom. Try to get something simple; some nice denim goes well with a dress shirt, a blazer or sport coat and a tie.

Check out the following books:

Dressing the Man

Gentleman: A Timeless Guide to Fashion

Esquire Handbook of Style

The Affected Provincial's Companion--this one is about fashion to an extent, but it transcends it and puts it into a decorum and lifestyle aspect. In fact, also check out Glen O'Brien's new book, How to be a Man if you're interested in a more lifestyle-oriented reason to look nice.

I honestly think the last two books would be a good start for you. Due to your description of yourself, I'd maybe start with How to be a Man. The first few paragraphs are shit, but it gets really good, especially by the time it gets to "How to be sexual". It seems like you need a much better reason to dress nicely than the reasons you've suggested. I think this book could really help you develop a better ethos regarding style, and maybe even help you with decorum (if you need help with that).

Check out this quick video for a great introduction to O'Brien.

Good luck.

edit: clarification

This is a good book to get started

My dad is a graphic designer who does freelance work, and in his business first impressions count. A few years back he realized that he was dressing like a slob, and decided to shape up. When I decided that I was going into the art field as well, he gave me this book and took me shopping for a few essentials. Before that point I always thought fashion was either runway models looking like something out of Zoolander or t-shirts with jokes on them. There's something great about a "trade secret" being passed down from father to son, but even more than that dressing well gave me confidence that I had been lacking (I had a lot of social anxiety and body image issues, despite being skinny and relatively athletic). When my girlfriend first told her mom about me, one of the things she mentioned was that I really "got" clothing, and it felt really good to know that I had succeeded to that extent, having looked like this just a year earlier (for comparison, here and here are me more recently. excuse the dumb expression in the last picture; it was from a not-so-serious photo with a cousin at thanksgiving).

Alright some fun facts for you.

1. Read this book: Esquire: The Handbook of Style (http://www.amazon.com/Esquire-The-Handbook-Style-Looking/dp/1588167461/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1335560463&sr=1-1)
   
   This addresses questions you have regarding dressing (and yes, wear a different shirt, undies, and socks daily), shaving, and such.
   
   
2. Do not shave your chest unless you like the way that looks, beware it will be itchy
   
   Good luck.

or here if you are in the US.

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)

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.

Here is a list of ideas in several price ranges:

Fashionary Essential Boxset

Fashion Sketchbook

Grace: A Memoir

WWD Subscription

Patternmaking for Fashion Design

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.

I actually know what I've spent exactly since February 1!

I'm a post-grad student who lives at home, and basically my only other expense at the moment is food. I pay for everything out of my savings right now as my program doesn't allow time for a job :(

Clothes: $751. A lot! I bought a pair of prescription sunglasses I was reimbursed for which were included, but I also bought white jeans and a Hillary-esque pantsuit which were both kinda expense, as well as other bits and bobs. I don't thrift as I'm a bit of a weird shape and I just don't have the energy to find things that would fit! I know I like interesting cuts and patterns, so I'm willing to pay a little more for something that isn't basic.

Beauty: $487. Also a lot! I prepaid for eyebrow waxing services for the year, and a haircut. These are basically the only services I pay for. I have nail colours that go with my clothes at home, and I'm pretty into skincare so I spend a bit on that. I'm obsessed with glossier makeup right now so it's a bit of a premium over drug store.

When I was working I had a pretty strict budget for everything. Once I had taken all my money for rent, utilities, groceries, savings and insurance, what I was left with was my fun money which I could use however I wanted, usually on clothes, skincare, and makeup. I had different spending and savings accounts to keep everything separate. It's boring but it worked to keep my spending under control!

My feeling is that you should try to meditate a bit on what kind of look genuinely makes you feel your best. Don't think about what other people wear, just on what you feel good in. Your best tools to get you outta the rut are pinterest for your aesthetic goals, and a trusty excel sheet for the planning and expensing. I also read a book called The Curated Closet that I really liked that I think would be a helping hand in getting you started on actually building a wardrobe.

It is tougher starting out as a guy I think. Don't dismiss those outdated patterns. They are good for practice. A shirt is still a shirt even if its a little odd. But if you can afford it I have this one

https://www.amazon.com/Patternmaking-Menswear-Gareth-Kershaw/dp/1780670168

Well worth it for what I learned from it.

The first picture looks like a surplice bodice dress, similar to one in Gertie’s ultimate dress book.

Simplicity 8127 is very similar to your second picture. Obviously without the sleeves and the bows on the front.

Off the top of my head I can’t think of a pattern for the third image but would suggest looking at other Gertie patterns if you’re into 50’s style dresses.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1588167461?ie=UTF8&force-full-site=1

Since you're even tagging Aidan_King:
I'm really extremely surprised by all the positive comments you get for your posters in the different threads. I guess that's the Bernie hype. Sure, it's nice that you do them and it's better than not doing it at all, but they are anything but well designed and would never be officially used.

If you are serious and think about doing more design work I recommend getting a book about typography (for example this one) and start from there.

Edit: Okay, that "would never be used" was wrong. One was already posted on Instagram.