I don’t know about you, but every time I go to the borders book store, I end up leaving with a book or three. This time, I strolled over to the Art section and sparked a different side of me.

I typically check out the Computers/Technology section in borders, but they didn’t have anything new since the last time I went there (two days ago). So I decided to try something different and check out the Art Section where the Graphic Design books reside.For the most part, all my books I’ve read mainly consist of programming and code as you can see in the picture below. While I’m still going to further increase my skill set in that area, I think I’ve got a nice grip on programming fundamentals and how to do it. Besides, once you learn one OOP language, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to learn the rest.

I’ve read through all books completely on the bottom have, and skimmed through all the books on the top. There’s more scattered around the room plus more coming from amazon.com.

Diversity

I thought about diversifying my book collection (and skillset) and step over the horizon towards web and graphic design.

That’s just me justifying my purchases at amazon last week . I brought the following books: no aff links

1. Basics of Design
2. Grid Systems in Graphic Design
3. Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (thanks to matto)
4. Creativity for Graphic Designers
5. Graphic Design Solutions, Third Edition
6. Thinking Creatively
7. The Designer’s Complete Index(returned)

I tried not to get books that are too redundant, I know they’ll all have some sort of intro to graphic design which is fine, but everything else should be discussing different topics within, but we’ll see. I really needed books to teach me how to pull my creative design ideas out and sketch them on paper or digitally. So I’m hoping I’ve got the right set to begin with, and browse more if needed.

Before I left Borders, I also went and bought two web design magazines, Practical Web Design, and Computer Arts.
Instead of always being online searching for inspiration and ideas, I brought these books and magazines to pull me away from the computer, get more creative and learn more about what’s going on in the graphic industry.

I learned that by diversifying your inspirational resources, you’ll start to come up with more creative unique ideas rather than imitating what everybody else is doing, which is a common mistake beginning web designers do.

Now onto the Magazines – What’s in them? Why get them?

I came across Practical Web Design and Computer Arts because they stood out from the crowd with their unique designs. I haven’t read them thoroughly, but I came across something interesting in the Computer Arts mag. On page 36, there’s this article called “The copycat creatives” which talks about plagiarism in design and ways people dealt with it. This article is very similar to an idea I plan on writing about in the near future and it gave me some more insight into it.Once I read through both of these magazines, I’ll make a decision on whether their worth subscribing to.

I’ve got some awesome wood floor around my house, might use that for my redesign? haha, no.

Magazines seemed to be overlooked a lot nowadays and I can understand why. You might say, why pay for a magazine when you can get it online for free? Well, you’re not paying for the information; you’re paying for the convenience of having the information brought to you in portable and organized fashion. This also applies to books and eBooks as well.

Getting My Design Freak On

Down to the point, I know how to design websites, its just, when I come up with new creative ideas for layouts or graphics I have a hard time translating (or communicating) them into digital masterpieces.

So that’s why I got all these books and magazines. I plan on reading through all from them and get a solid foundation on graphic design.
In addition, I’m also going to start reading up on some more design/graphic blogs and read more articles about it. While I’m at it, a good idea would also be to learn more on Photoshop and Illustrator too which should speed up my productivity. Thanks to lynda.com, that’s possible.

In the next article, I’m going to be doing an assessment for this blog and where its going. I don’t like where the design is going so I’m going to talk about a redesign (I love redesigns!). It also seems like every body is redesigning their blogs too so I kind of feel left out.