Graphic Design. The New Basics

In Graphic Design: The New Basics, bestselling author Ellen Lupton and design educator Jennifer Cole Phillips explain the key concepts of visual language needed for any design job, from a logo or letterhead to a complex website. Through visual examples with side-by-side commentary, they introduce the formal basic elements of 2D design, such as point, line, plane, scale, hierarchy, layers, and transparency. The new, revised edition adds a new chapter on formstorming and gestalt principles, as well as numerous new examples of work from students and professionals illustrating topics such as working with grids and color.

"This book is a guide to creating visual forms, from which designers will learn how to build variety and complexity on the basis of simple connections. Here we sought to bridge the gap between software — and visual thinking. When we talk about form, we think of the pioneering works of designers of the modernist era, from Joseph Albers and László Mogoj-Nady of the Bauhaus to Armin Hoffmann and such outstanding teachers as Malcolm Greer.

We started working on this guide when we noticed that it is not easy for our students to formulate an abstract concept. They were fine with the vocabulary of pop culture and interpreting its elements, but were much less comfortable when dealing with scale, rhythm, color, hierarchy, grids, and relationships in diagrams.

So this book is primarily for students and aspiring designers, and is illustrated primarily with the work of our students in the BA and MA programs at Maryland Institute College of Art, MICA. […] The work we feature on these pages is very diverse, and this diversity reflects a natural difference in skill and sensibility.” —Ellen Lupton, Jennifer Cole Phillips

The book was published with the funds of an institutional support grant