The Story

From the back of the book:

Graphic Design: The New Basics brings a much-needed new focus to the study of graphic design. Ellen Lupton, best-selling author of such books as Thinking with Type, and her colleague Jennifer Cole Phillips have developed an up-to-date basic design text for people who want to understand graphic design in a critical, rigorous way, informed by contemporary media, theory, and software systems. Through visual demonstrations and concise commentary, their book looks at structures ranging from point, line, and plane to scale, hierarchy, layers, and transparency. These concepts underlie any work of design, from a logo or letterhead to a complex web site.

In an age when endlessly quoting and recycling popular media has become second nature, artists and designers are hungry to explore visually intensive, form-based thinking in a manner in tune with contemporary art, life, and technology. This colorful, compact, clearly written volume does just that.

The Response

This covered a lot of the same content as another graphic design book that I have read recently (A Primer of Visual Literacy) – points, lines, scale, texture, etc. Only, Graphic Design: The New Basics covered it in a much more interesting and relevant sort of way.

This book was, without a doubt, written for modern day readers. What with our shorter attention spans, it can be hard to grab our attention. This book covers each topic quickly and concisely, then goes on to show many examples of what it just described. It’s easy to understand each concept that’s presented in this book, and provides such a wide variety of examples that one can see how different concepts and techniques can be put to use in different ways.

Because most of these illustrations were done by a variety of designers – a good majority of them students – it gives a huge difference in styles, which keeps the book interesting.

I will definitely be keeping this book, and continuing to flip through it for inspiration when needed.

The Bottom Line

This would be a good introduction to the graphic design field. Highly recommended to those in the field.

The Story

From the back of the book:

Research gives designers the competitive advantage that brings them into the boardroom as strategic partners and innovation experts.

All good design work begins with thoughtful research. This essential handbook will help readers understand what design research is and why it is necessary, outline proven research techniques and methods, and explain how to incorporate them in any design development process.

Understanding a client’s needs, preferences, and market is essential to creating value through design. As such, a designer’s ability to gather valuable research is as important as the ability to design a memorable and successful identity or develop a complex user interface. By engaging in quantitative and qualitative research, customer profiling, competitor analysis, ethnography, and other proven research techniques, designers can bring solutions to the table thta reflect a commercial value far beyond a well-crafted logo, product design, or building.

In today’s competitive market, designers can’t afford to skip this vital part of the development process. By thoroughly researching the design challenges, goals, and indended audience, designers can’t help but create stronger and more innovative work that delivers true value.

The Response

I picked this up because it’s one of the book recommended for the test to become a member of the Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario association. I wanted to take the test this year, but I didn’t actually start any of the books until… now. So obviously, I failed at that. Boo to me.

ANYWAY.

This book was surprisingly readable. Maybe because it has practices that I can put to work in my day-to-day working life. Maybe because there were lots of illustrations and diagrams showing the ideas that were being presented. Maybe because I actually find the topic really interesting. Usually I have to drag myself through non-fiction (even if I’m enjoying it), but this one I practically sped through!

The book is broken down into four chapters. The first one deals with what different types of research are (focus groups, literature review, etc etc). While I haven’t used most of these, I did know what they were – so that chapter was a little bit boring, in all honesty. Just going over the basics of what different kinds of research are available to use. Anyone who has ever studied any marketing (or done any marketing, really) will know what these are.

The rest of the book, though, was great! The second chapter, which went into actually applying researching methods to the practice of design, was extremely informational and educational, and I’ll definitely be going back to that one for guidance. Then the third chapter covered why different types of people (students, teachers, professionals) need to research when designing, as well as what practices might be best for them to be familiar with.

The last chapter, though, was definitely the most interesting – they were all case studies where you could see how these research practices were put to use. For example – how research helped make the How Magazine redesign go over so well. See? Interesting!

I rather wish that this book had been available when I was still a student, when I was forming my own design habits. Now it’s going to be a little bit tougher to modify them and convince myself that in the long run it’s worth it to do that extra research – that, theoretically, the research will make the project go smoother and have less room for error and bad response to it. Yes, yes.

The Bottom Line

I really wish I had read this book back when I was in college, and forming my own design habits. I highly recommend anyone working in the design field looking to improve their work.

Other Reviews

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

From the back of the book:

There is no unique branch of design known as in-house design, nor skills possessed solely by in-house designers. The corporate creative is a designer who simply works in an in-house environment. While there are benefits to working in a corporate environment (access to more resources, greater security, better benefits, more regular hours and camaraderie), in-house designers also have to deal with many frustrating and demoralizing challenges.

This book focuses on key strategies and tactics to help you establish yourself and your team as powerful players in your company. Experienced in-house designer Andy Epstein shows you how to: communicate clearly and effectively; hire and train a winning team; work with other departments within the company; maximize efficiency within your group; cut through the red tape to create great design.

Surviving and – more importantly – succeeding as a creative in the corporate environment requires you to be a project manager as well as a designer, a businessperson as well as a creative. The Corporate Creative provides all the tools you need to achieve success.

The Response

One day during the summer, a friend and I made a trip to Swipe, this awesome bookstore in Toronto that focuses mainly on design and architecture books. Among the books that I picked up was this little gem – Andy Epstein’s “tips and tactics for thriving as an in-house designer.” After having a bit of a discouraging week at work last week, I picked it off the TBR pile and dove into it. And I have to say, this is quite possibly the best nonfiction book I’ve read this year. As someone who works as a corporate creative, it was both an insightful and reassuring read, and has helped me get a better perspective both on myself, those that I work with, and how I relate to the company that I have been working for for the past 5 years.

The book covers a number of topics, ranging from communicating with business types, to the importance of having a creative environment to work in (even if it’s just your cubicle), to how to best present your work to get the most respect, to (most importantly) how to avoid becoming disenchanted with working in a corporate environment.

I have to admit that some of what the author spoke about hit a little bit close to home. Especially when Epstein spoke about how designers typically alternate between two typical reactions to working in a corporate environment for a long period of time:

As creatives immersed in the often restrictive conservative corporate culture of their host companies, designers tend to reflexively react to their environment by either rebelling and asserting their artistic persona or succumbing to corporate culture and assimilating so completely that they forsake their creative innovative spirits. Often, the vacillate wildly between the two.

At least I know I’m not the only one who has done that. Thankfully, there were a lot of tips included in this book that I’m going to start applying to my own day-to-day work that will hopefully help with not losing the creativity in the corporate environment, while still surviving in that same environment.

The biggest thing this book helped me realize was that I needed to start thinking of the business I work for as a client – already I have started doing this, and that in itself has made a world of difference in my mind.

The Bottom Line

Definitely a very good read! Informative and not dry! Highly recommended to graphic designers working in a corporate environment.

Other Reviews

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

From the back of the book:

Responding to the need she so clearly perceives, Ms. Dondis, a designer and teacher of broad experience, has provided a beginning text for art and design students and a basic text for all other students-those who do not intend to become artists or designers but who need to acquire the essential skills of understanding visual communication at a time when so much information is being studied and transmitted in non-verbal modes, especially through photography and film. Understanding through seeing only seems to be an obviously intuitive process. Actually, developing the visual sense is something like learning a language, with its own special alphabet, lexicon, and syntax. People find it necessary to be verbally literate whether they are “writers”: or not; they should find it equally necessary to be visually literate, “artists” or not.

This primer is designed to teach students the interconnected arts of visual communication. The subject is presented, not as a foreign language, but as a native one that the student “knows” but cannot yet “read.” The analogy provides a useful teaching method, in part because it is not overworked or too rigorously applied. This method of learning to see and read visual data has already been proved in practice, in settings ranging from Harlem to suburbia.

Appropriately, the book makes some of its most telling points through visual means. Numerous illustrated examples are employed to clarify the basic elements of design (teach an alphabet), to show how they are used in simple syntactic combinations (“See Jane run.”), and finally, to present the meaningful synthesis of visual information that is a finished work of art (the apprehension of poetry…).

The Response

So. I purchased this at the beginning of the year because it was one of the texts for the RGD Ontario test. When I had just started making my way through this text, the test requirements changed, as did some of the books that were recommended to be read, and this was no longer on the list. Le sigh.

I kept reading anyway. And I will admit that this was not the most entertaining read. It was educational and informative, yes. But it was rather like reading a text book, which explains why it took me more than two months to read a book that is less than 200 pages long. (I will admit that I kind of fell asleep in it a couple of times.)

The book begins with the very basics of visual images (dots, lines, colours, etc), gets into the history of design and visual literacy, and then into application as it is today. As the book was written in the 1970′s, I felt like this last portion was a bit out of date… I rather wish the book had been reissued with updates in that respect, especially for an inclusion of the Internet. This is such a huge factor in the way people communicate now that it is such a shame that it hasn’t been included.

I can see why this book was originally recommended for the RGD test. And not only did it refresh some things that I had already known and hadn’t thought much about in a few years, but it also taught me some new things. I didn’t really study art history in school, so I found the brief information of different art movements most interesting – and actually rather wish those portions had actually been more in depth.

The Bottom Line

There was good information here. There really was. It was just written in a very dry manner. Read it if you’re interested in the topic, but don’t expect to be entertained while learning.

Other Reviews

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

There’s a lot more push on industries and companies becoming more environmentally conscious, becoming more sustainable, reducing their carbon footprints, etc etc. The graphic design industry isn’t typically one that people think of when they think of industries that can have a large impact on the environment. However, when you consider that graphic designers are typically the ones in charge of what printed items look like and what they are made out of, it shouldn’t be a surprise that graphic designers should be a lot more conscious about the types of products they are designing and using.

Green Graphic Design sets out to educate graphic designers on why we should care about being green, and where we need to look to change our habits – everything from choosing the right types of clients (those who promote sustainability, etc. vs those who don’t care about the environment at all), to taking a fresh look at package design so that the press sheet is used in the most effective manner, to choosing the best papers for piece that is being created.

The Response

There was so much that I liked about this book. I liked how it engaged me right from the beginning, and how it wasn’t dry at all. I liked how it had real-life examples of things other designers have done that can be considered “green.” I like that it had an appendix that included which pantone colours should be avoided as they don’t recycle very well, and what kind of solvents are best for drying inks, and what kinds of paper are best for our forests, and an example scorecard to help you decide what kind of good options you have when creating a product.

It showed how and where graphic designers can challenge themselves to look at alternative solutions to become greener, but didn’t spell out a “this is the only way to do it,” which means that the designers involved still have to be a part of the problem solving portion to get to a good solution. Obviously, the same solution is not going to work in every situation. Instead of spelling out how things should be done, this book takes the readers through the design process – encouraging us to look at it backwards (Where will this piece ultimately end up – in a landfill or in a reclying bin? How will this product get transported to the consumer – does it need to be couriered immediately, or can it take a much slower journey which will be more environmentally friendly?) and through this, we can figure out how best to design items that are greener.

Unfortunately, because a lot of what I do is online, not everything the book talked about is applicable to me. BUT, I seemed to have decided to read this at the right time anyway – right now, we’re doing a whole rebranding thing at work, and if I can get my say in this, we’ll be looking at ways we can make each of the products that we do as green as possible.

I think one of the strongest things about this book is the fact that the author (and the author’s firm) does what he’s written about. So it’s obvious that he knows what he’s talking about when he gives real life examples of things he’s done. He knows the green graphic design industry, and he knows the right suppliers, so when he mentions a paper manufacturer, it’s important to take note of who they are. It’s all very relevant information.

I have to say, this book challenged me to really think about how what I am creating is having an effect on the environment. It’s a great tool to be added to any graphic designer’s bookshelf, and I highly recommend it.

The Bottom Line

As most of what I do isn’t printed, and I don’t do ANY packaging, it wasn’t as relevant to me as it would have been if I had done more of what was discussed. But even though that was the case, it certainly challenged me and made me think about how I CAN change the small portion of stuff that I do that is printed. Highly recommended to other designers.

Other Reviews

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

The Story

Smashing Magazine is, imo, one of the best online magazines for web designers and developers. They have awesome articles, inspirational gallery posts, showcase great fonts and icons, and are just generally all-around useful and a fabulous resource. I’m subscribed to the RSS feed, and I go through the older posts on an almost daily basis for help with what I’m working on at that point in time.

The authors of Smashing Magazine decided (with the help of their readers) to put together a more in-depth book covering some of the big topics for successful websites. The book covers topics that anyone who is even remotely involved with website creation would find useful. The book covers user interface design, basic CSS layouts, typography, usability, colour, optimization, conversion rates and branding. It also has interviews with some of the better known web people, and the story behind Smashing Magazine.

The Review

First, the good: this book does go in depth into these topics. It’s not just some brief overview or a couple of pointers for great websites. It explains what things mean and why you should do things certain ways – for example, it explains that you don’t want to open links in new windows because it takes control away from the user, it makes the website operate in a way that they don’t expect, and it can basically make a user unhappy. And an unhappy user is a user who doesn’t stick around on your website. (I so want to lend this book to an old boss just for that chapter, as he has a bit of a penchant for opening every single link in a new window.)

Another good thing is that there are a lot of images involved to illustrate what they are talking about – especially helpful for the chapters on colour, conversion rates and branding. It’s especially nice that the images were high quality and that they were printed in colour &ndash not all books would do this, as it can be more expensive for printing, but it was definitely highly appreciated.

A fair amount of information I have read before, but it was a good refresher. And there were some things that I have marked off that I have already started putting into practice on my work’s website.

Now for the not-so-good: because the book was written by so many people it didn’t read all the same. Which wasn’t bad for a lot of it, but when there are multiple authors for certain chapters, and each section of the chapters read differently, it was a little distracting. For example, in the usability chapter the section on web forms gives stats on what is used how often, but the section on dropdown menus gave examples of why each option is good or bad. I would’ve liked to hear pros and cons for forms, or stats for dropdown menus, as well, just to keep it consistent.

The other not-so-good thing was that, while it’s awesome there were so many images, the images weren’t always near the text that was talking about it. In the chapter about branding, there were a number of times when the screencaps of websites described were a whole double page spread away from the text about it. Or, if the images couldn’t be closer, a URL to the website that was being spoken about would have been most helpful.

The Bottom Line

This book isn’t necessarily a must-have for web developers and designers – the majority, if not all, of the content covered in the book can be found online. That said, even if you’ve read the content before, it definitely is a good refresher, and there are parts that would come in handy if you prefer to get your info from a quick flip through to the right chapter as opposed to searching on the internet for what you’re looking for. Would recommend it as a read to those who are involved with creating websites – whether it’s the front end or the back end.

Other Reviews

Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

This has been sitting on my TBR shelf for… I don’t even know HOW long. And it was on the TBR list for even longer. I should’ve read it much sooner because it was so quick to get through. 100 Habits of Successful Graphic Designers is exactly what it says it is – a collection of habits that people who are successful graphic designers practice. The 100 habits are separated into 8 chapters: self-promotion, working with clients, workflow and in-house dynamics, continuing education and professional development, community involvement, technology, personal growth and keeping creativity alive, and partnerships and strategic synergies. With the help of a number of contributors, this book lays out 100 suggestions of what you can to do keep creative this field, and to further your business. Each habit was given one to four pages to give a explanation as to why this habit is good, and to display work done by the contributor that talks about that habit.

Some of the contributors included people from Why Not Associates, Chase Design Group, Wieden+Kennedy (both Tokyo and New York offices) and Miles Murray Sorrel FUEL. It includes people who are involved with design art shows, design books, people who were involved in the Seattle Grunge scene, and people involved in education. There is such a vast range of experience in this book. My only problem (and it wasn’t really a PROBLEM per se, but more like a bit of a disappointment) with the contributors is that most people were at agencies, and the others were educators or freelancers. There are a lot of designers that don’t work in agencies, and there are a lot of companies that do design in-house. It would’ve been nice to hear from someone who DOES work for a company that does their design work in-house instead of hiring an agency or studio to do the work.

As far as the content goes, though… some of these habits don’t make sense to me. Some of them are contradictory (one tells you to grow through teaching, one tells you to never teach), but that’s to be expected when you’re getting advice from a handful of different designers – they’re all going to have different ideas of what works best and what doesn’t work at all. But the examples of work that has been done by these designers? Some of them are GORGEOUS. And brilliant! Some of the examples didn’t work too well for the medium (frames of commercials doesn’t translate too well to a book), but the ads, pictures of spreads of books, pictures of sculptures, oh goodness! That in itself was rather inspiring.

If you’re looking for a book with a lot of stuff to read and is more like a guide to becoming more successful, as opposed to highlighting examples of how successful graphic designers have used these habits, then this probably isn’t the book for you.

This book was published by Rockport Publishers, one of my favourite publishers of graphic design books. If I could, I would own all of their graphic design books… but sadly, there are so many other books out there that I want to own as well. But they are just All So Pretty!

The Bottom Line: I would have to say that this I recommended for graphic designers just for some of the examples of awesome design included in the book. The 100 habits aren’t always the best, and a lot of them you’ve probably heard before, but personally I’m going to come back to this book again and again just to flip through it whenever I need inspiration.

I’ve found the Logo Lounge books and website to be one of my favourite resources when doing logo work. Catharine Fishel, one of the co-authors of the books and an editor for LogoLounge.com, also wrote How to Grow as a Graphic Designer.

Each chapter in this book (and they are all quite short – only a few pages each) talks about a different Graphic Designer and works in a bit of advice that the designer is giving. A lot of the advice this book presents could be applied to any career, really. What I really did like about how this book was presented was that it took people from so many different areas of expertise in the Graphic Design field. Fishel also made it feel like you were sitting down with the Graphic Designer the chapter is about and having a conversation with them, instead of writing the book so it was just spouting out advice at you.

Of course, there were chapters I enjoyed better and got more out of than others. The ones that stick out particularly in my mind are those about Diti Katona of Concrete, Noreen Morioka of AdamsMorioka, Michael Bierut of Pentagram and Terry Marks of Terry Marks Design.

I probably would have retained more of what it said if I had only read a small bit at a time, but it’s arranged in an easy to navigate way so that if I need to go back at some point in time, I’ll be able to find what I’m looking for easily. Even now, after reading through it so quickly and not getting as much from it as I probably could have, I’ve put some of the advice it has given to good use – mainly making a list of goals and where I want to be a few years from now. Hopefully, I will have the motivation to actually work towards these goals.

I don’t normally blog about the Graphic Design and reference books I read, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to share this one. If you’re a fairly new Graphic Designer, or studying Graphic Designer, this is a positively wonderful little book. Heck, even if you’re a veteran Graphic Designer or someone who even just understands typography and wants to improve themselves for kicks, this is a good book to pick up. Because it’s more than just reference – it is so amusing.

The book is split up into two different parts, The Ten Commandments of Typography, and then, flipped over and upside down is Type Heresy: Breaking the Ten Commandments of Typography. The first half talks about the rules you should abide by in typography – “Thou shalt lay headlines large and at the top of the page” and “Thou shalt employ no other type size than 8pt to 10pt for body copy” for example – and gives example of each of the rules in use. The other half of the book, obviously, talks about breaking the rules and why you should break the rules – again providing lovely examples of how it can be done.

The main points brought across in this book is that you need to know the rules before you can successfully break them, and that continually following them, without pushing yourself to go further, can make the stuff you design quite boring. If a designer makes the text look interesting, it’s going to not only bring the reader back to read it again, but it should also help to “stimulate our sense as well as engaging our intellect.”

This book is worth buying for the Prefaces* and the Introduction. They are very amusing and left me with a small smile on my face:

Satan is the adversary of God. Thus, Satan is typographic evil personified. . . Satan, or the devil as he is often called, was allowed to set up his own design kingdom in Hell and to send out Fallen Angels to prowl the earth for converts to the dark side of typography. The demonic world seems to have been allowed for one purpose only: to tempt humans to turn away from God’s rules. Many believe that Satan can ‘possess’ designers. Possession is bodily invasion by the devil, who forces a designer to break the rules of typographic design.

* The plural in Prefaces is due to there being on in both the Ten Commandments of Typography and the Type Heresy sections.