Check out this useful and engaging book… perhaps a last-minute gift?!

The latest in the “100 Ideas that Changed…” book series, this reference guide, now in paperback, demonstrates how ideas influenced and defined graphic design, and how those ideas have manifested themselves in objects of design.  This is exactly the type of book I love to flip through to get a sense of design history and various approaches.

The 100 entries, arranged broadly in chronological order, range from technical (overprinting, rub-on designs, split fountain); to stylistic (swashes on caps, loud typography, and white space); to objects (dust jackets, design handbooks); and methods (paper cut-outs, pixelation).  It provides a great overview to the history and the innovations i

"100 Ideas that Changed Graphic Design" By Steven Heller

To give you a taste of the book, below are a few examples of the types of entries.  For anyone who knows me, my favorite entry is likely “white space” as I am a vocal proponent of thoughtful use of negative space.

Here is an example of an image for “dust jackets,” bringing graphic communication to the book industry.  A lovely type treatment for one of the great modern novels:

Dust Jackets

Found Typography

Public Service Campaigns

Steven Heller has written and edited over 135 books on graphic design, satiric art and popular culture and is the co-founder and co-chair of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts, New York. He is also co-founder of the MFA in Design Criticism, MFA in Interaction Design, MFA Social Documentary Film and MPS Branding programs. Although he does not hold an undergraduate or graduate degree he has devoted much of his career to fostering design education venues, opportunities and environments.  He has been an art director for various underground and mainstream periodicals. For 33 years he was an art director at The New York Times (28 of them as senior art director New York Times Book Review). He currently writes the “Visuals” column for the Book Review and “Graphic Content” for the T-Style/The Moment blog. 

He is editor of AIGA VOICE: Online Journal of Design, a contributing editor to Print, EYE, and Baseline, and a frequent contributor to Metropolis and ID magazines. He contributes regularly to Design Observer and writes the DAILY HELLER blog for Print Magazine.

His 135 books include Design Literacy, Paul Rand, Graphic Style (with Seymour Chwast), Stylepedia (with Louise Fili), The Design Entrepreneur and Design School Confidential (both with Lita Talarico), Iron Fists: Branding the Twentieth Century Totalitarian State, and the most recent, Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig.

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