Library Guides: Open Educational Resources (OER): Art & Architecture

Art, Architecture, & Design

Please note: This is a collection of select materials which serve as examples of OER within this discipline. Consider these "jumping off points" for further review and discovery. Need help finding something for your class? See the Get Support page for more information.

Books from ISU Authors

Tutorials of Visual Graphic Communication Programs for Interior Design
This book is for the beginning level of both architecture and interior design students who learn computer graphic communication software. The author developed multiple tutorials to teach three computer graphic applications, AutoCAD, Revit, and Enscape.
Tutorials of Visual Graphic Communication Programs for Interior Design, Volume 2
This book is for advanced-level architecture and interior design students who have in-depth knowledge and skills with computer-aided visualization software.

Repositories & Collections

Smart History
A website with images, videos, and information about art from Prehistoric sculptures to 20th century Architecture.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Public domain images from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Art History Teaching Resources
A peer-populated platform for art history teachers, AHTR is home to a constantly evolving and collectively authored online repository of art history teaching content including, but not limited to, lesson plans, book reviews, image clusters, and classroom and museum activities.
Art History: Curriculum Resources from the Met
Although focused on the needs of K-12 instructors, these resources from the Metropolitan Museum of Art provide useful overviews of ancient art from around the world.

Art & Art Appreciation

Illustration, An Introductory Course
This book serves as a general introduction to illustration for the college-level student. Students will learn about professional aspects of the field and consider assignments in botanical, poster, middle grade narrative, comic and picture book illustration, and illustration for self promotion.
Art Appreciation 101
Art Appreciation thoroughly investigates how quality is determined and created by artists in order to evaluate and appreciate art on a deeper level. Students are first introduced to the elements and principles of art and then different periods in art history, different techniques in art, and how to research and evaluate art.
Look At This!: An Introduction to Art Appreciation
Look At This! is designed to help you approach and appreciate the visual arts wherever you find them. It explains how artists use the visual elements of their work to create moods and effects, teaches you how to break down complex images into their parts, and gives an overview of major themes in art.
Introduction to Art: Design, Context, and Meaning
Authored by four USG faculty members with advance degrees in the arts, this textbooks offers up-to-date original scholarship and over 400 high-quality images illustrating the history of art, its technical applications, and its many uses.

Art History

Where Does Art Come From?
Where Does Art Come From? focuses on global arts and culture for the UTA core curriculum art history introductory course ART 1317 “Arts of Africa, Asia, Islam, Oceania, and the Indigenous Americas.”
Herstory: A History of Women Artists (Gustlin)
Herstory: A History of Women Artists is a remarkable and comprehensive textbook that offers a detailed and thorough exploration of the contributions of women artists throughout history. With ten chapters covering the earliest days of art to the present day, this resource is essential for students studying Art History and Gender Studies.
Creating the Modern: Intersections of Art & Society in the Nineteenth Century
The aim of Creating the Modern is to facilitate access to the research by providing an online platform readily available to learners interested in examining the relationships between art, society and culture at the dawn of modernism.
19th Century European Art History
Part textbook, part shared knowledge, this book is the co-creation of the instructor and students of Red Deer Polytechnic's ART 305, 19th Century European Art History class.
Understanding New Media Art
Understanding New Media Art is an OER for introductory college art and art history courses that builds on scholarship in the field to propose a long historical context for the technologies and ideas related to New Media Art in the 21st century.
The Bright Continent: African Art History
This book aims to act as your map through the world of African art. As such, it will help you define the competencies you need to develop–visual analysis, research, noting what information is critical, asking questions, and writing down your observations–and provide opportunities for you to practice these skills until you are proficient.

Graphic Design

Colour Theory: Understanding and Working with Colour
Colour theory covers a long history from antiquity to modern times. It includes academic and scientific investigations into how we see and understand colour. It also includes practical applications for using colour in creative work.
Digital Foundations: Introduction to Media Design with Adobe Creative Cloud
Digital Foundations uses formal exercises of the Bauhaus to teach the Adobe Creative Suite. All students of digital design and production—whether learning in a classroom or on their own—need to understand the basic principles of design in order to implement them using current software.
Digital Photography for Graphic Communications
The purpose of this book is to serve as a reference for a one-semester course in digital photography for graphic communications.
Introduction to Computer Graphics
Introduction to Computer Graphics is a free, online textbook covering the fundamentals of computer graphics and computer graphics programming.
Computer Graphics and Computer Animation: A Retrospective Overview
This book was developed in an attempt to maintain in one location the information and references that point to the many important historical developments of the short life of the computer graphics world as we know it.

Architecture & Interior Design

Basic Concepts of Structural Design for Architecture Students
This book aims to narrate fundamental concepts of structural design to architecture students such that they have minimum involvement with math problem-solving.
Building Information – Representation & Management
The book goes beyond the surface to explain why AECO digitization matters with respect to information. It presents information in the framework of representation, introduces a semantic typology of data and connects process to information management, towards a coherent and transparent theory of building information for the digital era.
Building Information Modeling using Revit for Architects and Engineers
This book offers a web-based multimedia platform to enable students in Architecture, Civil Engineering, and Construction Engineering to learn fundamentals of BIM using Revit and be able to create building architectural, mechanical and structural models, develop construction documentation and analyze building performance.
AutoCAD for Interior Designers
This resource includes step-by-step image and video tutorials for an interior design project using computer-aided design software.
Interior Materiality
This book is authored to form a comprehensive resource for the “hows” and “whys” surrounding the functional and aesthetic contributions of a wide selection of materials and finishes used in multiple spatial design contexts.
Introduction to Design Equity textbook
Introduction to Design Equity, an open access book for students and professionals, maps design processes and products against equity research to highlight the pitfalls and potentials of design as a tool for building social justice.

Abbey Elder

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Subjects: Research & Publication, Sociology