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Graphic Design: Open Educational Resources

This guide will help graphic design students with materials and resources for the Graphic Design programs

Video Sites

Beginning Graphic Design 

(GCF/YouTube)

GRAPHIC DESIGN TUTORIALS by De-light Hands Graphics

Open Online Courses

Learning to Use a Vector Editor - Gravit.io

This is a unit on learning how to use a vector editing program (gravit.io) used for online graphic design class. This program is free and runs in the browser 

Intermediate Graphic Design - CTE Online Model

This course provides students with an understanding of the processes and systems common to careers in publishing, printing, and other forms of media distribution. Representative topics include graphic design concepts; art and copy preparation; image generation and editing; desktop publishing; on-demand publishing; school yearbook and magazine layout; advertising and promotion; printing technology; binding and finishing; and screen printing.

Teach Yourself Graphic Design: A Self-Study Course Outline

Visual Design — Open & Free

Professional Organizations & Associations

The Society for Experiential Graphic Design

SEGD exists to "educate, connect and inspire" the global, multidisciplinary community of professionals creating experiences that connect people to place.

AIGA

As the profession’s oldest and largest professional membership organization for design—with more than 70 chapters and more than 25,000 members—we advance design as a professional craft, strategic advantage, and vital cultural force.

Graphic Artists Guild

The Graphic Artists Guild is a guild of graphic designers, illustrators, and photographers and is organized into seven chapters around the United States.

ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale)

ATypI is the premier worldwide organisation dedicated to type and typography. Founded in 1957, ATypI provides the structure for communication, information and action amongst the international type community.

All the Free Stock

Sourcing material for creative projects that is free and open for use can be difficult.  All the Free Stock has created a collection of photos, audio, video clips, templates, icons and fonts sourced from sites around the web that allow their media to be used freely.

Best graphic design tutorials - Digital Arts

Leading graphic designers share their expert design tips and tutorials to help you master patterns, textures, typography, vectors and more

Design Museum Devoted to contemporary design in every form from furniture to graphics, and architecture to industrial design

Textbooks

Read more about Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning

Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning offers a comprehensive introduction to the world of Art. Authored by four USG faculty members with advance degrees in the arts, this textbooks offers up-to-date original scholarship. It includes over 400 high-quality images illustrating the history of art, its technical applications, and its many uses.

 

Read more about Graphic Design and Print Production Fundamentals Graphic Design and Print Production Fundamentals

This textbook -- written by a group of select experts with a focus on different aspects of the design process, from creation to production -- addresses the many steps of creating and then producing physical, printed, or other imaged products that people interact with on a daily basis.

 

Read more about Introduction to Computer Graphics Introduction to Computer Graphics

Introduction to Computer Graphics is a free, on-line textbook covering the fundamentals of computer graphics and computer graphics programming. This book is meant for use as a textbook in a one-semester course that would typically be taken by undergraduate computer science majors in their third or fourth year of college.

 

Read more about Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Cloud - Revised Edition Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with the Adobe Creative Cloud - Revised Edition

Digital Foundations uses formal exercises of the Bauhaus to teach the Adobe Creative Suite. All students of digital design and production—whether learning in a classroom or on their own—need to understand the basic principles of design in order to implement them using current software. Far too often design is left out of books that teach software for the trade and academic markets.

 

Read more about Blueprints: Creating, Describing, and Implementing Designs for Larger-Scale Software Projects - version 2.3 Blueprints: Creating, Describing, and Implementing Designs for Larger-Scale Software Projects - version 2.3

Blueprints is a concise yet comprehensive coverage of Object-Oriented Analysis and Design concepts, suitable for a second programming course in Computer Science. It introduces and teaches application development in a command-line environment, and assumes basic expertise with the Java programming language.

 

BlenderWikiBookCover Blender 3D: Noob to Pro

Blender 3D: Noob to Pro is a product of shared effort by numerous team members and anonymous editors. Its purpose is to teach people how to create three-dimensional computer graphics using Blender, a free software application. This book is intended to be used in conjunction with other on-line resources that complement it.

 

Cover image for Computer Graphics and Computer Animation: A Retrospective Overview Computer Graphics and Computer Animation: A Retrospective Overview by Wayne E. Carlson (2017)

This book was developed in an attempt to maintain in one location the information and references that point to the many important historical developments of the short life of the computer graphics world as we know it.

 

Beginning Drawing 

LibreTexts

 

 Introduction to Computer Graphics

Version 1.3, August 2021

A free, on-line textbook covering the fundamentals of computer graphics and computer graphics programming. This book is meant for use as a textbook in a one-semester course that would typically be taken by undergraduate computer science majors in their third or fourth year of college. 

 

Cover for Web Design Basics for Educators Web Design Basics for Educators

Trust, T.(2019).Web Design Basics for Educators. EdTech Books.

 

Principles of Design for Print

 

Designing for The Web [free online ebook]

 

Cover image for Introduction to Design Equity Introduction to Design Equity textbook 

Introduction to Design Equity, an open access book for students and professionals, maps design processes and products against equity research to highlight the pitfalls and potentials of design as a tool for building social justice.

 

Tutorials of Visual Graphic Communication Programs for Interior Design

 

textbook cover image Digital Foundations

This book is a mash-up of the Bauhaus Basic Course and open source software such as Inkscape, Gimp, Firefox, and Processing. We have taken some of the visual principles and exercises from the Bauhaus Basic Course and adapted them into exercises for these applications.

 

Digital Imaging 1: Digital Photography Basics

 

Digital Imaging 2: Digital Image Editing