Making Magazines, Vol. 7 Book

Great book about graphics design. There are chapters about business cards, signs, logos, etc. Almost everything is about designing paper material; the single chapter on web design is woefully outdated. Every page has a sample (sometimes several), and this helps to see what the author means. Sometimes the author shows how a project is improved from a boring initial version (which looks like something I'd whip out using Word!) to a professional finished product.

The book is supposedly for non-beginners, and there's a "test" in the beginning which I flunked, but it's actually easy to read even without previous design experience. It has changed the way I think about design.