Books like Forms of Color by Karl Gerstner

A comprehensive guide to graphic design and typography, offering practical advice and design techniques for students and designers alike.

Massimo Vignelli’s The Vignelli Canon distills his principles of good design through clear rules, criteria, and practical examples spanning product, signaletics, graphic, and corporate design.

The Elements of Graphic Design, Second Edition, presents a refreshed, color‑rich exploration of typography, layout and visual hierarchy, featuring over 750 images and new content on web design, modularity and motion.

A foundational manual for graphic designers, typographers, and exhibition designers, detailing how to use grids to create clear, organized, and visually appealing layouts.

Color codes: An exploration of color in philosophy and art history by Charles A. Riley

Dimensional Color explores how hues shape perception, mood, and design, blending research from environmental psychology, visual perception, and color theory to help artists and architects create psychologically resonant spaces.

An examination of how color influences perception and emotional states, exploring the principles of harmony and aesthetic experience.

For designers working in every medium, layout is arguably the most basic, and most important, element. Effective layout is essential to communication and enables the end user to not only be drawn in with an innovative design but to digest information easily. Making and Breaking the Grid is a comprehensive layout design workshop that assumes that in order to effectively break the rules of grid-based design, one must first understand those rules and see them applied to real-world projects. Basics include composing typographic space, format determination, and sequencing and systemization. Various types of grids a manuscript, column, modular, hierarchical a are also covered. Text reveals top designers' work in process and rationale. Projects with similar characteristics are linked through a simple notational system that encourages exploration and comparison of structure ideas. Each project is shown comprehensively so readers can see its structure revealed over several pages, at a size that allows for inspection of detail. Also included are historical overviews that summarize the development of layout concepts, both grid-based and non-grid based, in modern design practice.