This bibliography lists text and media resources, organized by unit, for student and faculty design research and practice. Specific readings by topic will be organized (soon!) in the Topics menu.
Please use the Make a Suggestion form to suggest openly licensed resources for inclusion.
NOTE: Many of the texts in this list, unless otherwise noted, require a City Tech or CUNY Library Card to access online. Additional openly licensed resources will be added as they become available.
Main Text
Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory : Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Groundwork
Hall, Sean. This Means This, This Means That : A User’s Guide to Semiotics, Laurence King Publishing, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Johansen, Jørgen Dines, and Svend Erik Larsen. Signs in Use : An Introduction to Semiotics, Routledge, 2002. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Norman, Don. Emotional Design : Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things, Basic Books, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Davis, Meredith. Graphic Design in Context: Graphic Design Theory. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2012.
“A History of Symbols” by A Short Introduction to Graphic Design History CC BY-ND 4.0
Bennett, Audrey. Design Studies : Theory and Research in Graphic Design, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
de Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics Trans. Wade Baskin, New York, Philosophical Library, 1959
Saussure: a Guide for the Perplexed : A Guide for the Perplexed, Bouissac, Paul. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Kress, Gunther & Theo van Leeuwen. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. 2006
- Kress and van Leeuwen on Multimodality [text and video]
- Literacies as Multimodal Designs for Meaning [text and video]
Ellen Lupton and J. Abbott Miller, Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996
Origins
Vit, Armin, et al. Graphic Design, Referenced : A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design, Quarto Publishing Group USA, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Heller, Steven, and Greg D’Onofrio. The Moderns : Midcentury American Graphic Design, Abrams, 2017. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
I Heart Design : Remarkable Graphic Design Selected by Designers, Illustrators, and Critics, edited by Steven Heller, Quarto Publishing Group USA, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Blackface: The Birth of An American Stereotype, National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian, blogpost.
BIPOC in Design, George Larkins, Communication Design Department, OpenLab at City Tech, Website/OER, 2021.
F.T. Marinetti: Manifesto of Futurism (1909), design manifestos .org
Aleksandr Rodchenko, “Who We Are: Manifesto of the Constructivist Group (1922)” in Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009: 22-24, 52, ProQuest Ebook Central
El Lissitzky, “Our Book (1926)” in Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009: 25-31, ProQuest Ebook Central
El Lissitzky: The Topology of Typography, design manifestos .org
Arp, Hans, and El Lissitzky, eds. The Isms of Art. Zurich: Eugen Rentsch, 1925.
“Hans Arp and El Lissitzky, The “isms” of art” The Charnel-House, blogpost.
Müller, Lars, ed. Josef Müller-Brockmann. Baden: Lars Müller, 1994.
Müller-Brockmann, Josef. The Graphic Designer and His Design Problems. New York: Hastings House, 1983.
Müller-Brockmann, Josef. “Grid and Design Philosophy.” in Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory : Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009: 63, ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Smock, William. Bauhaus Ideal Then and Now : An Illustrated Guide to Modern Design, Chicago Review Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Poulin, Richard. Graphic Design and Architecture, A 20th Century History : A Guide to Type, Image, Symbol, and Visual Storytelling in the Modern World, Quarto Publishing Group USA, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Tselentis, Jason, et al. Typography, Referenced: A Comprehensive Visual Guide to the Language, History, and Practice of Typography, Quarto Publishing Group USA, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Hollis, Richard. Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920–1965. London: Laurence King, 2006.
Enger,Reed. Obelisk: A New History of Art, [Art/Design History Resource]
Reed Enger, “Art History Methodologies, Eight ways to understand art,” in Obelisk Art History, Published June 24, 2017; last modified October 06, 2021, http://arthistoryproject.com/essays/art-history-methodologies/
Expansion
Kroeger, Michael. Paul Rand : Conversations with Students, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Marchessault, Janine. Marshall McLuhan : Cosmic Media, SAGE Publications, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
PaulRand.design – Articles by Paul Rand [Website]
Rand, Paul. Design Form and Chaos. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Rand, Paul. “Good Design is Goodwill.” AIGA Journal of Graphic Design 5, no. 3 (1987): 1–2, 14.
The Black Experience in Graphic Design: 1968 and 2020 – Letterform Archive, Jul 8, 2020. (Original publication in Print includes Prof. Dorothy Hayes, COMD)
Barban, Arnold M. “The Dilemma of ‘Integrated’ Advertising.” The Journal of Business, vol. 42, no. 4, 1969, pp. 477–496. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2351882. [City Tech Library Card Required]
100 Years of Design. AIGA.org [Website]
Heller, Steven, and Mirko Ilic. Stop, Think, Go, Do : How Typography and Graphic Design Influence Behavior, Quarto Publishing Group USA, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Lasn, Kalle. “Design Anarchy.“Vancouver: Adbuster Media, 2006. in Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009: 107 , ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Barnbrook, Jonathon, et al. “First Things First Manifesto 2000.” First published in Eye no. 33 vol. 9, 1999
van Toorn, Jan. “Design and Reflexivity.” in Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009: 102 , ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
McCoy, Katherine with David Frej. “Typography as Discourse.” in Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory: Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009: 81, ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Lupton, Ellen. “Deconstruction and Graphic Design: History Meets Theory.” http://www.graphicdesigntheory.net.
Heller, Steven. “The Cult of the Ugly.” Eye No. 9, Vol. 3, 1993. http://www.graphicdesigntheory.net
Marchand, Roland. Creating the Corporate Soul: The Rise of Public Relations and Corporate Imagery in American Big Business. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
Poynor, Rick. No More Rules: Graphic Design and Postmodernism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Scher, Paula. Make It Bigger. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2002.
Abrams, Janet and Peter Hall, eds. Else/Where: Mapping New Cartographies of Networks and Territories. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Design Institute, 2006.
Bennett, Audrey. Design Studies : Theory and Research in Graphic Design, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech/CUNY Library Card Required]
Fiell, Charlotte and Peter Fiell, eds. Graphic Design for the 21st Century: 100 of the World’s Best Designers.Cologne: Taschen, 2003.
Galloway, Alexander R. and Eugene Thacker. The Exploit: A Theory of Networks. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2007.
Hara, Kenya. Designing Design. Translated by Maggie Kinser Hohle and Yukiko Naito. Baden: Lars Müller, 2007.
Helfand, Jessica and John Maeda. “Dematerialization of Screen Space.” in Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory : Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Heller, Steven and Veronique Vienne, eds. Citizen Designer: Perspectives on Design Responsibility. New York: Allworth Press, 2003.
Citizen Designer Now! AIGA NY. http://www.citizendesignernow.org/ [Website]
Heller, Steven. “Underground Mainstream.” Design Observer blog, entry posted on April 10, 2008. [Website]
Ilyin, Natalia. Chasing the Perfect: Thoughts on Modernist Design in Our Time. New York: Metropolis, 2006.
Klein, Naomi. No Logo. New York: Picador, 2002. [Website]
Lasn, Kalle. Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America. New York: Eagle Brook, 1999.
Laurel, Brenda. Utopian Entrepreneur. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001.
Manovich, Lev. “Import/Export, or Design Workflow and Contemporary Aesthetics.” ( PDF), 2006. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlikelicense (CC BY-NC-SA)
Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
Lévy, Pierre. Cyberculture. Translated by Robert Bononno. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2001.
Lovink, Geert. Zero Comments: Blogging and Critical Internet Culture. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Lupton, Ellen and Julia. “All Together Now,” Print 61, no. 1 (January/February 2007): 28–30.
Maeda, John and Antonelli, John. The Laws of Simplicity, MIT Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech/CUNY Library Card Required]
Rick Poynor “First Things First Manifesto 2000,” AIGA Journal of Graphic Design 17, no. 2 (1999): 6–7.
Manifesto Project [website]
Rock, Michael. “The Designer as Author.” Eye 5, no. 20 (Spring 1996): 44–53. [website]
Siegel, Dmitri. “Designing Our Own Graves.” Design Observer blog. http://www.designobserver.com [website]
Toorn, Jan van. Design’s Delight: Method and Means of a Dialogic Approach. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2006.
Dutch Profiles – Jan van Toorn [Vimeo – interview]
Wild, Lorraine. “The Macrame of Resistance.” in Armstrong, Helen. Graphic Design Theory : Readings From the Field, Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central – Page 84 [City Tech Library Card Required]
Future Now
“Design as Participation” by Kevin Slavin, Journal of Design and Science (JoDS) is licensed under CC BY 4.0
“Extra Bold: A Feminist, Inclusive, Anti-racist, Nonbinary Field Guide for Graphic Designers” by Ellen Lupton, Farah Kafei, and Jannifer Tobias [City Tech/CUNY Library Card Required]
“Design Gets More Diverse,” by Alice Rawsthorn, New York Times (2011)
“Diversity in Graphic Design,” Rodney Ross (2012)
“ Learnings from Harvard’s Black in Design conference,” Michele Y. Washington. (2018)
The Observatory– Michael Bierut and Jessica Helfand on design, current events, and current enthusiasms. [Soundcloud/Podcast]
Design Matters – Debbie Millman features interviews with designers, artists, and cultural leaders. [iTunes/Podcast]
“Age of Entanglement” by Neri Oxman, Journal of Design and Science (JoDS) is licensed under CC BY 4.0
“Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need,” Sasha Costanza-Chock, The MIT Press. (2020)
Design Practice
Graphic Design Thinking : Beyond Brainstorming, edited by Ellen Lupton, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Lupton, Ellen, and Jennifer Cole Phillips. Graphic Design : The New Basics, Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Leborg, Christian. Visual Grammar, Princeton Architectural Press, 2006. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Lupton, Ellen. Thinking with Type : A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students, Princeton Architectural Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Inclusion & Exclusion
- Madeleine Morley, Celebrating the African-American Practitioners Absent From Way Too Many Classroom Lectures, September 24th, 2018
- Cheryl D. Miller, “Transcending the Problems of the Black Graphic Designer to Success in the Marketplace”, Pratt Institute, 1985
- Cheryl D. Miller, “Black Designers: Missing in Action”, Print, 1987
- Brenda Mitchell-Powell, “Why is Graphic Design 93% White?”, AIGA, 1991
- Sylvia Harris, “What is it: searching for a black aesthetic in American graphic design” , 1996
- “African-American Designers: The Chicago Experience Then and Now: A Conversation with Pioneers”, Chicago, 2000
- Maurice Cherry, “Where Are the Black Designers?”, 2005
- Maurice Woods, “Envisioning Blackness in American Graphic Design” (a series republished on Medium in 2017–2020), 2006
- Maurice Cherry, Revision Path podcast (weekly interviews with Black designers, developers, and digital creatives), 2013–
- Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller, “Black Designers: Still Missing in Action?”, Print, 2016
- “Diversity & Inclusion Hiring Survey Results”, AIGA Chicago, 2017
- Michele Washington, “Why Black in Design Matters: Learnings from the Harvard conference”, 2019
- Anne H. Berry, “The Black Designer’s Identity”, Recognize Vol. 1, 2019
- “Where Are the Black Designers?” conference site and video recording, 2020
- Emory Douglas & The Black Panther
- Amos Kennedy Jr
- Amos Kennedy Jr in Online Archive
- Laini (Sylvia Abernathy)
- Hunter Saxony III
- Chip Thomas
- Abdoulaye and Ibrahima Barry, “Inventing the Adlam Script”
- Silas Munro, “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America”
- “W. E. B. Du Bois’ Hand-Drawn Infographics of African-American Life (1900)” The Public Domain Review, Source: Library of Congress, Found via Open Culture. See also Hyperallegic / Slate / Smithsonian, Public Domain.
- Saki Mafundikwa, “A Typophile’s Twenty-Year Adventures in Zimbabwe”
Design Archives & Collections & Inspiration
- AIGA Design Archives
- Cooper Hewitt Design Collection
- Cooper Hewitt Design’s Museum’s Blog
- MoMA Collection Filter by Graphic Design or Design
- MoMA Design Store
- ArtStor
- Peoples Graphic Design Archive
- BIPOC in Design, OpenLab OER
- Paul Rand Archive
- The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
- Digital Public Library of America
- Recognize a design anthology featuring Indigenous people and people of color
- Archives of American Art (Smithsonian Institute)
- Arts of the Book Collection
- Print Magazine
- Museum of Art and Design
- Chicago Design Archive
- Women in Australian Graphic Design
- Corita Kent Archives Corita Kent was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice.
- Isotope Revisited, V&A Museum Exhibition
Blogs, Interviews, Podcasts
- AIGA: Diversity and Inclusion Webcast series
- AIGA Design Journeys
- The Observatory– Michael Bierut and Jessica Helfand on design, current events, and current enthusiasms. [Soundcloud/Podcast]
- Design Matters – Debbie Millman features interviews with designers, artists and cultural leaders. [iTunes/Podcast]
- Revision Path Podcast highlighting black creatives
- Adbusters / Vimeo Channel
- Baseline Magazine – Blog (last updated 2018)
- Co.Exist
- Mule Design Blog. Writings from Mike Monteiro and others associated with his UX/UI firm, covering a wide range of design topics.
- Creative Review
- Design Observer
- Designboom
- Eye Magazine
- Icograda – International Council of Design
- Ted Talks: Search by Topic
- Ubuweb
- Broadcast
- codex 99 a website about art, design and history
- Future Feed and online space where writers, artists + thinkers are invited to publish poems, essays, manifestos, letters, critical essays, videos, video essays, experiments, plays, work-in-progress, audio, dreams, comics, short stories, images, interviews, digressions, or lists.
Additional Theory / History
Decentering Whiteness in Design History Resources, Victoria Rose Pass, et al, 2020.
Bierut, Michael. 79 Short Essays on Design, Princeton Architectural Press, 2007. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech Library Card Required]
Vit, Armin, et al. Graphic Design, Referenced : A Visual Guide to the Language, Applications, and History of Graphic Design, Quarto Publishing Group USA, 2014. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Thackara, John. In the Bubble: Designing in a Complex World. Cambridge: MIT, 2006.
Lupton, Ellen. “Writing Lessons: Modern Design Theory”, 1988
Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin, Design: Explorations in Design Studies, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
“Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?: An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky” 88 min | Documentary, Animation | 25 November 2013 (USA)
Victor Margolin. Clive Ashwin “Drawing, Design and Semiotics” Design Discourse: History, Theory, Criticism, University of Chicago Press, 1989.
Jessica Helfand. Screen: Essays on Graphic Design, New Media, and Visual Culture. www.jhwd.com/screen
Adams, Hazard and Leroy Searle, eds. Critical Theory Since 1965. Tallahassee: Florida State University Press, 1986.
Barthes, Roland. Image/Music/Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.
Baudrillard, Jean. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign. Translated by Charles Levin. St. Louis.: Telos Press, 1981.
Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Drucker, Johanna and Emily McVarish. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2008.
Eskilson, Stephen J. Graphic Design: A New History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007.
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” In Josué Harari, ed. Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979, 142–160.
Hollis, Richard. Graphic Design: A Concise History (World of Art). London: Thames & Hudson, 1994.
Jubert, Roxane. Typography and Graphic Design: From Antiquity to the Present. Translated by Deke Dusinberre and David Radzinowicz. Paris: Flammarion, 2006
Meggs, Philip B., and Alston W. Purvis. Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2016. ProQuest Ebook Central [City Tech/CUNY Library Card Required]
Terranova, Tiziana. Network Culture : Politics for the Information Age, Pluto Press, 2004. ProQuest Ebook Central. [City Tech Library Card Required]
Millman, Debbie. How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer. New York: Allsworth Press, 2007.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. New York: Routledge, 2006.
Jeffery, Ken. Design and Print Production Fundamentals is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
