Subject Resource Guide for Graphic Design

Selected and updated by reference librarians in support of the TC3 Program in Graphic Design. Selection criteria include quality, content, reliability and currency.

Journals and Magazines

Tompkins Cortland Community College Library subscribes to a number of Databases which provide access to full-text design-related articles from journals and newspapers. You can also consult our list of Electronic Journals by Title & Subject which lists holdings in Art, Architecture & Applied Arts and Advertising. Artnews, Communication Arts, How, and Print are available in the library for browsing. The titles are listed below are available through our Databases.

• Advertising Age
• Adweek
• AJR NewsLink
• Art News Online
• Communication Arts
• Core 77
• Design News
• Design Observer: Writings on Design and Culture
• Design, Type and Graphics Magazine
• Design Week
• Graphic Arts Monthly - Full-text in Proquest
• Graphis
• IDOnline.com - The International Design Magazine
• Information Week
• Mediaweek
• Metropolis
• Packaging World Magazine
• Printworks Magazine

Advertising

• The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920
• Ad Council
• Clio Awards

Associations & Organizations

• Alliance Graphique Internationale
• American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) - Provides a Designer Directory, a list of Medalists, and Symbol Signs - "the complete set of 50 passenger/pedestrian symbols developed by AIGA is now available on the web, free of charge" from AIGA the professional association for design."
• Art Directors Club - With podcasts including Opposites Attract: Ed Fella & Post Typography
(06/12/2008) about Ed Fella and Post Typography.
• Graphic Artists Guild
• IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance)
• Society for Environmental Graphic Design
• Society of Illustrators

Design Blogs

• Design Observer - See Posts by Michael Bierut many of which appeared in Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design, Princeton Architectural Press, 2007.

Design Schools

• Art Center College of Design
• Art Institute of Chicago
• Cranbrook Academy
• Parsons
• Pratt Institute
• Rhode Island School of Design
• School of Visual Arts

Designers

• American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) - Has information on Medalists
• Alvin Lustig (1915-1955) - "Modern design pioneer."
• Bruce McCall: Nostalgia for a future that never happened - YouTube
• Christopher Colville-Walker
• Harriet Russell
• Milton Glaser
• Monuments of the Future: Designs by El Lissitzky
• National Design Awards
• Peter Max
• William Morris Society

Books in the TC3 Library (a selection)

Graphic design history edited by Steven Heller and Georgette Balance [NC998.4 .G667 2001]

Masters of design: logos & identity: a collective of the world’s most inspiring logo designers by Sean Adams [NC1002.L63 A32 2008]

Meggs’ history of graphic design by Philip B. Meggs, Alston W. Purvis. [Z246 .M43 2006]

Swiss graphic design: the origins and growth of an international style, 1920-1965 by Richard Hollis [NC998.6.S95 H65 2006]

Typography and graphic design: from antiquity to the present by Roxane Jubert [Z246 .J83 2006]

Image Collections

AIGA Design Archives - Over 20,000 images browsable by subject (book design, package design, typographic design, illustration etc.)
Ad*Access - Online image database of over 7,000 advertisements printed mainly in U.S. newspapers and magazines between 1911 and 1955. From the collection of the John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising, and Marketing History at Duke University. Here are a few examples from the collection:
Something for Grandparents to Get Up in the Air About - Ad for American Airlines, Ladies' Home Journal, 1951.
Just As - Ad for Charles of the Ritz, New Yorker, December 2, 1944.
Give her anything by Charles of the Ritz - New Yorker, December 10, 1947.
a noble urge this quest for beauty - Ad for Germaine Monteil, New Yorker, 1944.
"Magnet Red" inspires Lilly Dache - Ad for Coty, Harper's Bazaar, 1940.
When you're in love wear Muguet des Bois - Ad for Coty, Good Housekeeping, 1947.
Make much of the sun- or make light of it! - Ad for Coty, Life, 1945.
Build your beauty on your youth! - Ad for Elizabeth Arden, Vogue, 1945. Artist: R R Bonche.
Archive of Popular American Music - Sheet music covers. Examples: Mummy Mine, The Sheik of Araby
Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz - Berlin. [Most of the site is in German.] Contains 12 million images (250,000 of them online) "from all areas of fine art, culture and history." Try a Quicksearch for plakat, plakate or Plakatentwurf (poster or posters), Jugendstil or search (Bildsuche) by item number for these posters:
Georges de Feure - Isita, 1895 (00072355)
Jules Chéret - Folies Bergère, 1896 (00003141)
Peter Behrens - Deutsche Jahrhundert Ausstellung Berlin 1906 - Nationalgalerie, 1906 (00079602)
Ludwig Hohlwein - Audi, 1912 (00010925)
Jan Tschichold - Napoleon, 1927 (00024448)
Adolphe Mouron Cassandre - Holland America Line, 1928 (00003941)
Herbert Matter - Skigebiet Pontresina, Engadin, 1936 (00040574)
Cartoonbank - Searchable database of over 20,000 New Yorker cartoons and covers.
Cooper-Hewitt Collections Online
Corbis
Finding Art Images Online
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco Thinker Imagebase
Getty Images
Google Image
Library and Archives of Canada
Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog - On 29 September 2009 "5073 Records were found containing the word advertisements."
Merrill C. Berman Collection - " Merrill C. Berman has put together a collection of graphic design and modernist art which is comprable to the collections of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is one of the most significant bodies of work in private hands today."
New York Public Library Digital Gallery - See also the NYPL Picture Collection.
Robert Opie Collection - British advertising imagery.
Graphic Masters II: Highlights from the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Timeline of Art History - Metropolitan Museum of Art
United States Patent and Trademark Office - Has a Design Search Code Manual. You can search for trademarks on the Trademark Electronic Search System (Tess)

Museums

• Archives of American Art - See their Collections Online: Primary Sources on American Art and Artists
• Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum - New York
• Design Museum - London
• Museum of Arts and Design - New York
• Musuem of Modern Art - New York. Search their collection for E. Mcknight Kauffer, A. M. Cassandre. A search for A&D Graphic Design retrieves over 2,000 images. You can also search Dadabase: Online Catalog of The Museum of Modern Art Library, Archives and Study Centers
• Stedelijk Museum - Amsterdam. You can search the collection. They sponsor the De Best Verzorgde Boeken / The Best Designed Book award competition.

Library of Congress Subject Headings

Try these suggested subject headings to find books in the TC3 Library Catalog as well as in the SUNY Union Catalog and WorldCat.

Advertising layout and typography
Art - History
Art - Technique
Book design
Color
Commercial art
Communication in design
Decoration and ornament
Decorative Arts
Design
Design - History
Drawing
Graphic arts
Graphic design
Illustrators
Illustration of books
Industrial Design
Layout (Printing)
Magazine covers
Magazine design
Printing
Television
Type and type-founding
Typography
Video art
Visual communication
Names of specific artists and designers

These are the Library of Congress classifications numbers if you just want to browse the TC3 collection

HF5801-6191 Advertising

N Art - History

NC (all) Drawing, Decorative

NC997-1003 Commercial art

NK (all) Decorative/Applied art

NK1500 + Design & ornament

QA76 + Computer graphics

T351-785 Drawiing; Computer Graphics

TR (all) Photography

TR900 + Photomechanical work

TT (all) Arts and crafts

Z116-549 Book industries, Printing; Typography

Posters

• Art of the Poster (1880-1918) - Lawrence University Library
• By the People, For the People: Posters from the WPA, 1936-1943
• Canadian War Poster Collection
• The Chairman Smiles: Posters from the former Soviet Union, Cuba and China
• International Poster Collection - Colorado State University
• Library of Congress Poster Collection
• 1920s Transit Posters
• Polish Poster Collection - RIT
• Posters American Style
• Swiss Poster Collection
• World War II Poster Collection

Reference

• Getty Union List of Artist Names - Try a search by role (designer, graphic designer, poster artist, typographer etc.)
• Library of Congress Name Authority
• SIRIS-Smithsonian Institution Research Information System
• SYMBOLS.com: Encyclopaedia of Western Signs and Ideograms

Search Engines & Subject Directories

• ADAM: Art, Design, Architecture & Media Information Gateway
• Artcyclopedia: the Fine Art Search Engine

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Typography

• Letterbox
• Emigre - Has information on
• FontSite
• Herb Lubalin Study Center of Design and Typography
• Hoefler & Frere-Jones
• Microsoft Typography
• Type Directors Club