We have numerous books on the shelves and online, which provide an overview or introduction to a topic. You will find the majority of the Graphic Design book collection at classmark 700 through to 779 (on the 3rd floor at Augustine House). Don’t forget, our library houses lots of resources covering a variety of subjects which are also here for you to access, check LibrarySearch to see if there are other areas that could be useful. Here are suggestions of useful subject areas:

• 006.6 Computer Graphics
• 302.2244 Graffiti
• 658 Product Development and branding
• 659.1 Advertising
• 676.2 Papermaking
• 686 Book Design
• 686.2 Printing
• 686.22 Typography and type design
• 741 Drawing and Drawings
• 741.2 Drawing Techniques
• 741.6 Graphic Design
• 741.652 Magazine Design

To find a book, use LibrarySearch either by typing in words from a title or a topic. Once you have found a book, remember to check if it is available and if it is a 7-day loan or 4-week loan. This is important as the shorter loan books are on the open shelves in the middle of each floor and the 4 week loans are in the moving shelves. Some of the books may be in a large format (oversized), always ask if you need help to find these books.

You can see what online journals are available by using LibrarySearch. Try entering the title in to the search box or using the Find e-journals link.

Here are examples of Graphic Design journals and professional magazines:

• Acta Graphica
• Art History
• Ceramics Monthly
• Creative Review
• Design Issues
• Eye: International review of Graphic Designs
• Illustration
• International Journal of Design
• Journal of Art & Design Education
• Journal of Visual Culture
• Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation
• Print
• Visual Resources Association Bulletin
• Wired

Run a quick search in LibrarySearch to find full-text journal articles to read online. Try searching for a key word or phrase connected with your research topic i.e. “graphic design”. See our LibrarySearch quick guide for more information.

Open access journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals includes journals such as Acta Graphica. Open access journals are often scholarly, but the difference is, they believe in making their research accessible to anyone with an internet connection. This means that you (or your institution) don’t have to have a subscription to the journal to be able to read the articles they publish.

We have databases that are collections of academic resources organised by subject. These are great for more detailed searches for your research. You can access these via the ‘Find databases’ link in LibrarySearch. The following are databases which relate to Graphic Design:

a-n Artists Information Company: Online access to a-n Magazine and information for and about visual artists and their professional practice, including job opportunities and details about professional organisations.

Art Full Text: An index of art journal articles from periodicals published throughout the world. Some journals are available in full text. Read the Guide to Art Full Text to find out more.

Artstor Public Collections: More than a million images sourced from cultural institutions worldwide. Subjects include art, design, architecture, sculpture, fashion, history, manuscripts, social sciences and technology. Read the guide to Artstor to find out more.

Digital Public Libraries of America: Digitized content held within America’s libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions. Over 35 million images, texts, videos, and sounds from across the United States. All of the materials found through DPLA (photographs, books, maps, news footage, oral histories, personal letters, museum objects, artwork, government documents) are free and immediately available in digital format.

Europeana: Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for.
Dedicated thematic collections on art, fashion, music, photography and World War I contain galleries, blogs and exhibitions.

John Johnson Collection: This collection provides access to thousands of items selected from the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

JSTOR: An archive of core scholarly journals, dating from the first issue up until two to five years ago. Subject coverage includes art and art history, with over 190 journal titles relevant to your subjects.

Libby: a free app which allows you to borrow e-books, digital audiobooks and popular magazines from our CCCU OverDrive library. You can stream titles with Wi-Fi or mobile data or download them to use offline. You can also connect to your public library account using Libby. See our Overdrive guide.

Oxford Art Online/ Grove Art Online: Provides web access to the entire text of the Grove Dictionary of Art with quarterly additions to new material and updates to the text, plus extensive image links. It also includes the full text of the Oxford Companion to Western Art, the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms and the Encyclopaedia of Aesthetics. Read the Guide to Oxford Art Online to find out more.

Project MUSE: Databases providing full-text access to high quality journals. Good for art and architecture, animation, graphic design, illustration and other topics

Vogue Archive: You can search the entire collection of Vogue. Subjects covered includes; textiles and dress, fashion history, popular culture, gender studies, photography and graphic design and marketing.

Web of Science: We hold the arts and humanities section within web of science. Check out our database guide to see how to search the collection.

World Advertising Research Center (WARC): An online service offering advertising best practice, evidence and insights from the world’s leading brands. Also includes company profiles, articles, case studies and research on key marketing topics. Log in via Open Athens.

Ads of the World: News and community site devoted to creating and using graphics, gives you the latest news on graphic design.

Advertising Archives: Archive of searchable images including press and TV advertising, magazine covers, cinema posters, cigarette cards, and more

Artcyclopedia: Large database, searchable and browsable by artists, movements etc.

Arts Council: Champions of artistic and cultural experiences.

Art History Resources: Links to resources for art history on the internet

V&A National Art Library: Online collections From ancient Chinese ceramics to Alexander McQueen evening dresses. 5000 years of human creativity.

Kanopy is a great video-streaming service which includes a number of documentaries such as Helvetica: Typography, Graphic Design and Global Visual Culture. Plus, we have access to Box of Broadcasts (BoB) which archives British TV and radio broadcasts.  You can search for a topic and find BBC, Channel 4 and Sky documentaries. Another great feature is that you can take clips of programmes and put them in your presentations or analyse the transcripts. Look at the CCCU Box of Broadcasts guide.

• Take our short Visual literacy modules on the Learning Skills Hub to learn about finding, using and analysing images.
• Art discovery group catalogue  search art-historical literature records from a collection of specialised art libraries
• GettyImages: Large image databases, mainly commercial, personal registration may be required
• Google Arts & Culture: An online platform to access high-resolution images of artworks housed in the initiative’s partner museums
• Life/Google Image Archive: Search millions of photos from the Life Magazine photo archive, stretching from the 1860s to today.
• SCRAN – digital collection of over 300,000 multimedia resources from museums, galleries, archives, libraries and the media based in Scotland
• The Metropolitan Museum OASC: Open and free access to around 400,000 digital images from the collection
• VADS (the Visual Arts Data Service): growing collection of visual art collections comprising over 100,000 images that are freely available and copyright cleared for use in teaching, learning and research in the UK