From the monthly archives:

March 2009

Paul Rand: Conversations with Students

Conversations with Paul Rand

What would Paul Rand have been like as a teacher? He was renowned for his stinging critiques ornery manner, yet in Paul Rand: Conversations with Students (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE) Philip Burton chooses the word ‘compassionate’ to describe him. It seems that almost all of Rand’s students have praise for his brutal honesty and integrity. As painful [...]

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Thank you, An Event Apart

Thank you to An Event Apart Seattle who have sponsored The Designer’s Review of Books throughout March. If you enjoyed the review of Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks you can see him live there along with Jared Spool, the man Zeldman, Eric Meyer (who looks slightly shocked in his photo) and [...]

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Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World

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(Guest Review by David Sherwin
Underwhelmed.
We’ve all had this reaction when encountering a product or service that just didn’t cut it.
Take, for example, the alarm clock next to my bed. There are two alarm switches side by side: one for me, and one for my wife. Invariably, every morning I hit the wrong switch and the [...]

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Designing Design

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“Creativity is to discover a question that has never been asked. If one brings up an idiosyncratic question, the answer he gives will necessarily be unique as well.” – Kenya Hara, Designing Design.
This philosophy is the thread that runs through the entire text of Kenya Hara’s deep and thoughtful book, Designing Design (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE). The [...]

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Designing Universal Knowledge: The World as Flatland – Report 1

Designing Universal Knowledge

Given that it is a book about classification, Designing Universal Knowledge: The World as Flatland – Report 1 (Amazon: US|CA|UK|DE) by Gerlinde Schuller is oddly difficult to classify.
Schuller is head of the Information Design Studio in Amsterdam and begins the book by reminding us of the relationship between knowledge and power:
“Knowledge is power. If one [...]

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The Design Entrepreneur: Turning Graphic Design into Goods that Sell

The Design Entrepreneur

Guest review by Colin Ford
Clients blow.
Designers the world over know this to be the unfortunate truth. Clients come to you for your artistic vision and then try to drag your design back into mediocrity by insisting that 12-point Times New Roman be used for all body copy, or that their second cousin thinks chartreuse would [...]

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How do you like it?

Eggs. Everyone likes them different and each of us eats them in a certain way, just like blogs. Okay, so you don’t fry blogs, but humour me with the metaphor for a moment.
The Designer’s Review of Books has been running for a few months now and I am very grateful for all the readers and [...]

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