Book excerpt: Offers insight and information to help design students apply their skills to the commercial industry. Graphic design is a fast growing industry with thousands of new designers and students joining its ranks every year. The explosion of the graphic design field has resulted in the release of hundreds of new books, with subjects ranging from logo design to web design, design history to design criticism; today there are very few subjects related to the industry that have not been written about in one form or another. While the wealth of information and resources available to the graphic designer is extensive, it makes it hard to gain an overall perspective of graphic design and its practical applications in the field, as the content and subject matter of most books is very specialized. Design educators, especially at the collegiate level, have an increasingly difficult task of teaching a well-rounded course in graphic design, as they have to pull curriculum ideas from many sources, and require the students to purchase numerous texts. The Complete Graphic Designer is that well-rounded course in graphic design. It is not an instructional “how to� book, nor will it feature a series of suggested curriculum or problems for designers or students to solve. Rather, this book will be a concise overview of the many facets of graphic design, such as communication theory and why it is important; various types of problems that designers confront on a daily basis; and the considerations that must be made when trying to solve those visual problems. In addition, it features prominent designers and design firms that are renown for work in a certain type of design, and frequent “sidebars� or articles that include useful information on graphic design. This book provides a complete an comprehensive look at what graphic design is and what it means to be a graphic designer from an applied perspective, with chapters including Design for Communication, The Design Process, Page Layout, Visual Problems, Corporate Identity, and Branding.