My first book is Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. This book is chalk full of history, examples, diagrams, and more. It has a section on the anatomy of typography, a section on how to pair different typefaces or different fonts from the same typeface. It has examples of how to utilize typography on different mediums like print and web. Even the layout of the book is appealing and enjoyable.

My other book that I love to reference for color is The Designer’s Dictionary of Color by Sean Adams, an author who has written some other favorite design books of mine. This book goes through and studies individual warm, cool, neutral, and specialty colors. It provides different examples of the color’s use in everyday life and it provides different color palette options based on the given color. This book is colorful (duh…) and enjoyable to flip through and it’s also very informative.