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Few books on design or art attempt to explain or break down the creative process in a way that these books do. Each one covers a different industry from design, advertising, comic books to animated shorts. However, the issue is always the same: how do you tell a better story in a visual format? Dig deeper and develop better ideas by reading these books. You won’t be disappointed.

A Smile in the Mind

This text explores witty thinking, looking at clever ideas rather than funny drawing, and gathering together the best examples of graphic wit since the 1960s. Work is included from more than 300 designers in the US, Britain, Europe and Japan.

This book not only contains some of the wittiest design from the last couple of decades, but it takes a good stab at explaining what made it witty in the first place. Interestingly, you quickly learn that what makes design witty is pretty much the same thing that makes it innovative. If you’re intent on mastering the art of graphic design, or if, like Paul Rand, you just want to know what you’re doing, this is your book.

–Martin Neumeier

Buy A Smile in the Mind $26 from Amazon.

Advertising: New Techniques for Visual Seduction

Advertisers are engaged in a constant search for new ways to grab the interest and appetites of consumers. Often they use words, but just as frequently they use eye-fooling, mind-bending images—optical illusions—to pull viewers up short and force them to glance again. The second look is the key to successful communication, and images that elicit that reaction are an indispensable trick of the advertising trade.

Uwe Stoklossa knows the secrets behind the second look. He shares this knowledge here in hundreds of examples of ads he has collected from around the world, and also in his intriguing essays on perception, optical tricks, and illusion.

A myriad of new techniques and concepts make this a rich source of ideas and inspiration for anyone involved in advertising or the business of communication. 500+ color illustrations.

Buy Advertising: New Techniques for Visual Seduction $41 from Amazon.

Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art

A comic book about comic books. McCloud, in an incredibly accessible style, explains the details of how comics work: how they’re composed, read and understood. More than just a book about comics, this gets to the heart of how we deal with visual languages in general. “The potential of comics is limitless and exciting!” writes McCloud. This should be required reading for every school teacher. Pulitzer Prize-winner Art Spiegelman says, “The most intelligent comics I’ve seen in a long time.”

In “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art,” Scott McCloud not only takes apart comic books, he puts them back together again. Certainly comics are a neglected art form. Put Superman, Batman, Spawn and Spider-Man on the big screen and there will be some cursory comments about the actual all-in-color-for-a-dime, and names like Stan Lee and Frank Miller will get kicked around, but nobody really talks about how comics work (the exception that proves the rule would be the Hughes brothers talking about adapting the “From Hell” graphic novels). Part of the problem is conceptual vocabulary: we can explain in excruciating detail how the shower scene in “Psycho” works in terms of shot composition, montage, scoring, etc. That sort of conceptual vocabulary really does not exist and McCloud takes it upon himself to pretty much create it from scratch.

That, of course, is an impressive achievement, especially since he deals with functions as well as forms. To that we add McCloud’s knowledge of art history, which allows him to go back in time and find the origins of comics in pre-Columbian picture manuscripts, Egyptian hieroglyphics and the Bayeux Tapestry. Topping all of this off is McCloud’s grand and rather obvious conceit, that his book about the art of comic books is done AS a comic book. This might seem an obvious approach, but that does not take away from the fact that the result is a perfect marriage of substance and form.

– Lawrance M. Bernabo

Buy Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art $16 from Amazon.

Ideas for the Animated Short: Finding and Building Stories

Learn how to generate and develop successful story ideas that fulfill the unique storytelling challenges of animation shorts between 2-5 minutes in length. Build your skills in the development of story ideas that will command an audience for your animated short. Packed with illustrated examples of idea generation, character and story development, acting, dialogue and storyboarding practice this is your conceptual toolkit proven to meet the challenges of this unique art form.

The companion DVD includes in-depth interviews with industry insiders, 18 short animations (many with accompanying animatics, character designs and environment designs) and an acting workshop to get your animated short off to a flying start!

This is a pretty good book. I would of named the book, The Animated Short – A blueprint for creating your own animated short. As that is what this book is. What this book covers is the following:
Chapter 1 – Story background and theory. Here they give ideas on creating a story, and some pretty useful advice. As with all chapters in here, the topics covered are only to whet your appetite, you do need more information, and the books chosen here (and the dvd) are quite good.
Chapter 2 – Building better context – tips and ideas to consider while still in the design stage of your project
Chapter 3 – Acting – how you need to learn acting, the basics, and more
Chapter 4 – Building character and Location – ideas for designing your characters
Chapter 5 – Building Story – Tools and tips on making a better story
Chapter 6 – The Purpose of Dialogue – I think you can figure this one out
Chapter 7 – Storyboarding – Thoughts on making storyboards – this is a pretty good chapter, and covers a huge amount of this topic
Chapter 8 – Staging – Really good stuff, but a tad too short.

– Jason

Buy Ideas for the Animated Short $20 from Amazon.

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