Cook Up Inspiration with Graphic Design Cookbook

Flipping through books and magazines is one way to get ideas for a layout. One book designed for all kinds of inspiration is Graphic Design Cookbook. It offers hundreds of thumbnails of borders, page numbering ideas, grids, mixing type sizes, text columns, pull-quote styles, drop caps, cropping, and other ideas for entire pages and parts of a page. Stuck for a new way to do initial caps? Turn to that section for inspiration. Tired of the typical square coupon with a dashed line? Get circular, wavy, or graphic options. It's not cutting-edge and some examples aren't great, but as an idea-starter that's easy to thumb through it's useful for jumpstarting the layout process.