This study guide uses text integrated with video to help you gain real-world skills that will get you started in your career in graphics, design, or illustration, and lays the foundation for taking the Illustrator ACA exam. A mix of project-based lessons, practical videos, and regular assessments throughout prepares you for an entry-level position in a competitive job market. Adobe conducted research to identify the foundational skills students need to effectively communicate using digital media tools. Based on feedback from educators, design professionals, businesses, and educational institutions around the world, the objectives cover entry-level skill expectations for each topic. The ACA exams have proved to be highly successful; Adobe reports that the total number of exams taken worldwide has reached one million since 2008. To create this new product, Peachpit and Adobe Press have joined forces with team of outstanding instructors who have a great track record getting students certified: Rob Schwartz and his colleagues at BrainBuffet.com.

Transform your ideas into powerful visuals--to connect with your audience, define your brand, and take your project to the next level. This highly practical design book takes you through the building blocks of design--type, photography, illustration, color--and shows you how to combine these tools to create visuals that inform, influence, and enthral. Grasp the key principles through in-depth how-to articles, hands-on workshops, and inspirational galleries of great design. Find out how to create a brand plan, discover how a typeface sets the mood, and learn how to organize different elements of a layout to boost the impact and meaning of your message. Then apply your skills to do it yourself, with ten step-by-step projects to help you create your own stunning designs--including business stationery, invitations, sales brochure, website, online newsletter and e-shop. There's also plenty of practical advice on publishing online, dealing with printers, commissioning professionals, finding free design tools, and much more. If you're ready to use powerful design to take your pet project or burgeoning business to the next level, Graphic Design for Everyone is your one-stop resource to help you become an effective, inspirational visual communicator.

'Truly something that's just a beautiful, slick, and very enjoyable little publication' – CreativeBoom "Graphic Design Play Book features a variety of puzzles and challenges, providing a fun and interactive way for young visual thinkers to engage with the world of graphic design" – Eye Understand how graphic design works and develop your visual sensibility through puzzles and activities! An entertaining and highly original introduction to graphic design, the Graphic Design Play Book uses puzzles and visual challenges to demonstrate how typography, signage, logo design, posters and branding work. Through a series of games and activities, including spot the difference, matching games, drawing and dot–to–dot, readers are introduced to graphic art concepts and techniques in an engaging and interactive way. Further explanation and information is provided by solution pages and a glossary, and a loose–leaf section contains stickers, die–cut templates, and coloured paper to help readers complete the activities. Illustrated with typefaces, poster design and pictograms by distinguished designers including Otl Aicher, Pierre Di Sciullo, Otto Neurath and Gerd Arntz, the book will be enjoyed both by graphic designers, and anyone interested in finding out more about visual communication. An excerpt from the book: How many ways are there of saying 'hello'? Probably a zillion. And there are surely just as many ways of writing it. In CAPITALS, and with an exclamation mark ! Or with a question mark ? Or maybe both ?! As a tiny black word in the middle of a white page; or with large, multi–coloured, dancing letters ; maybe with a simple shape or an image. Being interested in graphic design means looking at and understanding the world around us. And being aware of the multitude of signs that shape our daily life day after day and freight it with meaning – whether it's a stop sign, a cornflakes packet, a psychedelic album cover, a seductive headline on the cover of a magazine, the more subtle typography of a page in a novel, a flashing pharmacy sign or the credits of a sci–fi film. Thinking about this plethora of signs was what led us to conceive this introduction to graphic design as a collection of beacons and benchmarks – as a toolbox for exploring and learning in a simple and intuitive way through play, alone or with others, whether you're a child or an adult. These are experiments, a series of suggestions, with no right or wrong answers. The four sections of this book – typography, posters, signs, identity – are all invitations to dive in, explore and let your eyes and your hands take you on a voyage of discovery! – Sophie Cure and Aurélien Farina

From a professional for professionals, here is the definitive word on using grid systems in graphic design since 1981.

Here is a complete, comprehensive drawing reference for design students and professionals alike who want to implement drawing as a professional tool. In Drawing for Graphic Design, Timothy Samara empowers readers to add drawing to their design vocabulary, featuring case studies of commercial projects from start to finish along with a showcase of real-world projects that integrate drawing as an intrinsic part of their visual communication. Filled with original author drawings and sketches, it’s a must-have reference that will benefit designers of all levels.

More Than Sixty Course Syllabi That Bring the New Complexity of Graphic Design to Light All graphic designers teach, yet not all graphic designers are teachers. Teaching is a special skill requiring talent, instinct, passion, and organization. But while talent, instinct, and passion are inherent, organization must be acquired and can usually be found in a syllabus. Teaching Graphic Design, Second Edition, contains syllabi that are for all practicing designers and design educators who want to enhance their teaching skills and learn how experienced instructors and professors teach varied tools and impart the knowledge needed to be a designer in the current environment. This second edition is newly revised to include more than thirty new syllabi by a wide range of professional teachers and teaching professionals who address the most current concerns of the graphic design industry, including product, strategic, entrepreneurial, and data design as well as the classic image, type, and layout disciplines. Some of the new syllabi included are: Expressive Typography Designer as Image Maker Emerging Media Production Branding Corporate Design Graphic Design and Visual Culture Impact! Design for Social Change And many more Beginning with first through fourth year of undergraduate courses and ending with a sampling of graduate school course options, Teaching Graphic Design, Second Edition, is the most comprehensive collection of courses for graphic designers of all levels.