graphic design rules improve your designs

Author: Chen Meihuan
Format: Paperback
Publication date: 1 February 2026
280 pages

The book includes 60 essential rules for creating unique designs and ensuring a design message resonates with a specific audience.

Graphic Design Rules is a book that comprehensively analyses graphic design, starting from the seven most basic principles that guide the choice of colour, layout and font, acting beneath the surface to make the work stable and balanced. While everyone has their own design habits, there are some common rules that every designer should pay attention to and follow to ensure an effective and attractive composition. This book introduces readers to over 60 of these rules, applied to the main elements which dominate graphic design, organising them into three categories – colour, type & typography, and image & shape – and showing how they are implemented in 40 projects. They see how artists and designers use colour to portray mood, light, depth, and point of view, while images throughout the text show how designers apply these basic elements to create logos and graphics for unique brand identities. With tips indicating what not to do to ensure a design message resonates with a specific audience, this book will help readers tell their story in a more engaging and evocative way.

Author: Chen Meihuan, PhD in Design, is the deputy director of the Information Fusion Teaching and Research Centre of the School of Visual Arts and Design of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts, and a young artistic talent of the National Art Fund. Her works have won many awards and have been selected for the 14th National Art Exhibition, Guangdong Art Exhibition, Florence Biennale, and other exhibitions.

Selling points: A collection of basic design principles and rules to guide students and help professionals to better check their projects. Graphic Design students and designers will find a wealth of examples on how to design better without forgetting issues that could ruin the desired effect of a design. A practical book that is not only a showcase of the best solutions but also a useful reference work.