Design is important for so much of our lives these days, especially so if you are involved in campaigning. Refining your message and building relationships with your stakeholders hold the key to victory but, often, the first thing people will see of a campaign is something visual: a leaflet, a banner, an advertisement.
But you didn’t go to design school! So how do you pick up the skills to get you started doing design?
The first place to start would be Robin P. Williams’s book The Non-Designer’s Design Book. Williams is an excellent communicator and it shows as she walks you through basic design concepts such as proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast. Using those four concepts will revolutionize your design work. She also touches on using colour and type effectively.
As evidence of this book’s usefulness, I don’t currently have a copy because I’ve lent my copy to friends and never seen it back. This has happened twice! I’ll shortly be buying my third copy to have on hand for review.
Williams also has several other books that deal with design in specific settings such as Photoshop, Indesign, and Web Design. I have the Indesign book and it’s a very well-written guide on how to use Indesign to design using the four concepts outlined in this book.
Goodreads gives this book a 3.97 out of 5 with 970 people rating this book which is a very good review for a technical manual. And it’s fairly cheap and available in many libraries as well.
Check it out!
