This isn’t your typical sketchbook. Robin Landa, Professor of Design at Kean University in New Jersey, collaborated with some of the nation’s top creative experts to bring readers a brainstorm session in the form of a journal. Contributors include Rick Valicenti of 3st, Pentagram’s Michael Bierut, and design critic Jessica Helfand, among other well-known artists and designers. “Consider this journal your creativity coach or personal exploratory zone sans pressure,” Landa writes in the introduction. Seattle’s Modern Dog Co. designed the book.

Take a Line for a Walk (available from Amazon: US|UK|DE ) is divided into 103 prompts — mostly blank pages with short directives — and nine longer projects. Landa’s intent: to give readers “a space to play in new ways.” The idea is that readers will use the prompts and projects to expand their ability to think creatively. Landa writes:

“The more you conceive and sketch, the more your thinking evolves.”

Prompts invite readers to free associate visually or verbally directly in the journal. Some prompts are conceptual, such as the one found on page 14, a contribution by Steven Doloff, Professor of Humanities & Media Studies at Pratt:

“You’re an inventor. Your invention is the size of a toaster.
What can it do?”

Other prompts ask the reader to explore form making. Jessalyn Lambert, who recently graduated from Kean University with her BFA, gives clear instructions on page 91: “Place a bunch of dots randomly on the paper. Then connect them. What do you see?”

Some prompts are seemingly introspective, yet they relate to the professional experience of the contributing designer. “Describe yourself using only six carefully chosen words,” suggests veteran brand identity designer Bart Crosby on page 58, “Then create a single symbol or illustration that represents the combination of all those words.”

Landa includes a series of projects to complement the prompts. Projects are more involved exercises that demand additional time and materials. Project II, for example, is a contribution by new media artist and Florida State University Professor Gail Rubini: “Collect 10 objects and attach/glue them together in an interesting way.”

Project III comes from Pentagram Partner Michael Bierut. He contributed to the book by offering an assignment he gives his graphic design students at Yale University:

“Do a design operation that you are capable of repeating every day for 100 days…The medium is open.”

You don’t have to be a designer or an artist to enjoy Take a Line for a Walk. Anyone in need of a creative jumpstart may find its pages stimulating. The best part? All you need is a pencil to start playing. No prior experience required.

Publisher Information

Take a Line For a Walk was published by Wadsworth Cengage Learning in July 2011.

You can support The Designer’s Review of Books by buying Take a Line For a Walk from Amazon (US|UK|DE ) or The Designer’s Review of Books Amazon store.

About the Reviewer

Aggie Toppins is an adjunct faculty member and an MFA candidate in graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She is passionate about making work that helps people share their stories. Aggie lives in Baltimore with her husband Jason and their basset hound Jolly.

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A nice little book from Magpie Studios honoring the postmen and women – in the UK we say “posties” – who are working so hard at this time of year (we hope):

At some point growing up, we stop listening out for sleigh bells and start listening for door bells. Our Santa still wears red, still fights the elements and the clock, still strives to deliver Christmas joy. Here’s to the humble postie.

Working with photographer John Angerson, this year’s card is a celebration of often-overlooked doorbell-pushing heroes. A portraiture book of our locals, printed on postcard weight paper and bound with the postman’s unassuming red rubber band.

It’s actually their Christmas card to all their collaborators and clients this year, but maybe if you get in touch or send them a tweet and say something nice they’ll send you one too.

My posties in Germany seem to be laden with Amazon.com boxes at the moment. One guy reckoned about 60% of their deliveries are from Amazon at the moment. While we’re at it, a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of you out there in designer book land.

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This is going to be a short review because there have been so many reviews and commentaries about the Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson (Amazon: US|UK|DE) that it seems there is almost nothing left to say. The question this review sets out to answer is, “why should designers read Steve Jobs’s biography?”

On a personal level, reading through the history of the development of Jobs’s main two successful companies, Apple and Pixar, was fascinating and at times moving, because I’ve worked on so many of the Macs mentioned. I first saw an Apple Lisa (or it may have been an XL) at an architect’s house and was fascinated, especially having whiled away my youth on a BBC Micro and a ZX Spectrum. At college I wrote my first essays on a Macintosh Classic, did my first exercise in Photoshop 2.0 on a Macintosh LC II, my first interactive work after HyperCard using Macromind Director 3.0 on those same LC II’s and, later, my first video and audio work on a Quadra 700. The first Mac I ever owned was a Quadra 650 – the machine that got me through my BA.

I’ve long been excited about the development of 3D animation from very early days and remember being enthralled by the possibilities in a 1984 book that I was given, Computergraphia, that captured some of those early computer graphics years. When I started seeing Pixar’s short films, I knew animation was going to change radically in the years to come. I also realized how crucial good storytelling was to the process – there were a lot of tragically computer science directed “films” (better called demos) floating around in those days.

So much for taking you on a trip down my technology memory lane. Should you care? I think, as designers, most readers will have had similar experiences and, at the very least, it is a nostalgia trip. In some ways reading it also honors Jobs and the things he created that made our current professions possible.

A few months ago I wrote a piece for Core77 that argued that, unlike the hard sciences, design has failed to develop a coherent voice in public discourse. When Steve Jobs died, I realized that he was pretty much it – the one person in widespread public discourse about design who made the case for its value. Whatever you or others may think about his personality, the “reality distortion field”, or Apple’s products in general, there is no debating that an awful lot of non-design people knew of his name, his views and his work. Some of that comes across in the biography, but none of this is really going to make you better and designing things, although it might make you a little more thoughtful as you consider the tips given to him by his father:

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.”

The parts of the book that seem to have been less commented on, but that I found more usable in a practical way, were the stories about the interpersonal relationships that made or broke the critical deals that Jobs made. Some of them multi-million dollar ones, such as the deal between Pixar and Disney.

I suspect many designers have somewhat of an aversion to, if not a phobia of, the corporate world and the kind of Big Deal Making that sometimes goes on and that equally seems averse to designers and everything they stand for. While I am sure that Jobs’s approach was pretty unusual, most of the other parties to those deals were more classically corporate folk. For a designer, this book is worth reading just for an insight into how people build and lose companies and client relationships and for understanding how personalities play 90% of the role in working life.

Despite the prevalence of talk about design and Jobs’s deep love and understanding for it, some of the more interesting parts of the book are not about design at all.

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Who can resist a book that provides a paper doll of Saul Bass?

Jam-packed, whirlwind, and charming are the three best words to describe A History of Graphic Design for Rainy Days from Gestalten Press. On a rainy afternoon “somewhere in some country” the reader is introduced to the two main characters, Gramps and Kiddo. The young bored Kiddo ventures into the office of his Gramps, who is working on a letterpress machine.

Kiddo asks the simple question, “What in the world is graphic design?”

To answer the question, Gramps takes the curious Kiddo on an illustrated journey through time to learn the history of graphic design. Designed by Studio 3, the book is an inviting graphic novel that is easy to pick up and immediately start reading. It is also very ambitious.

Beginning at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in 1776 and traveling through time to the Digital Revolution of the 1990s Gramps and Kiddo make an appearance on every spread as they jump from historical events like Art Nouveau, Polish Poster Designs, and Postmodernism. The reader will find Kiddo holding a conversation in the men’s bathroom with Jan Tschichold and later see him stumble into a bar as Aleksander Rodchenko throws one back with his Russian Constructivist buddies. There is also something delightful about watching Gramps grill a burger in an IBM apron as Paul Rand suns himself in a nearby lounge chair.

However, do not let the humor undercut the historical and intellectual merits of the book.

In Bauhaus, the information is spread through several pages using text-heavy talk bubbles and displaying diagrams like the Bauhaus course wheel and Johannes Itten’s Farbkreis color wheel. There are even small timelines that mark current events like when the BBC was founded or when the Great Depression began.

Building on their experience from Hyperactivity Typography from A to Z, Studio 3 infuses every inch of A History of Graphic Design for Rainy Days with informative texts about leaders of design, seminal works and important technologies.

Each spread uses two colors with famous design pieces reworked as one-color illustrations. Cartoons of important design figures like Paul Rand and Jessica Helfand pop up throughout the book. This graphic stylization allows for visual consistency while maintaining the iconic integrity of each piece and person.

The book introduces historical genres at every turn. Readers learn the conventions of Art Nouveau as Eugene Grasset sits and cheers his fellow designer outside a Paris Café,

“Merci, Cheret! Indeed, this movement is really focusing on organic forms and the female shapes and that is also where I find my inspiration. But what I find most delightful is that we no longer copy directly from nature nor from the past. We invent!”

Even the influence of graphic design in outer space is covered.

“Did you know that the first typeface to ever walk the moon was Futura? NASA used it on the commemorative plaque for Apollo 11 which they left on that big piece of rock in 1969.”

The book is peppered with activities and timelines for topics like the Bauhaus, Penguin Books and Punk Design. There are fill-in-the blank exercises, crossword puzzles and even a color-your-own Rietveld Red, Blue Chair in the Bauhaus section. While these activities are engaging and fun, they can be difficult to answer correctly if the reader is not familiar with graphic design history.

Coming to the book as a relative novice to the topic, I was stumped by a fill-in-the-blank asking for the names of the design duo that created Émigré magazine. (Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko) I flipped to the back of the book hoping to find an answer key. No luck. It was frustrating not to have answers to reference. A credit page states that the answers are posted online at graphicdesignforrainydays.com but unfortunately, at the time of publishing this review, there was no answer key on the book’s website.

However, I did find a nice surprise at the back of the book. Here, a series of paper pieces beg to be cut out. Readers can trim and display a First Things First Manifesto or construct a Macintosh computer circa 1990. Or, they may simply play with the paper dolls of Josef Müller-Brockmann and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

For those new to graphic design history, the book is an easy introduction to important people and ideas. Experienced history buffs will be entertained by the graphic translation of serious genres, and even get to test their knowledge on the various quizzes and interactive elements. The strength and charm of the book lies in its illustration style and humorous narrative of the history of graphic design.

And also, that paper doll of Saul Bass.

Publisher Information
Graphic Design History for Rainy Days is set to release in the US, November 2011 through Gestaltan Press. You can support the Designer’s Review of Books by ordering from Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE )

About the Reviewer
Ann Liu Alcasabas is graphic designer, educator and devout coffee drinker. She is currently freelancing and teaching graphic design in Baltimore at the Maryland Institute College of Art. You can follow her @annmaryliu, and find her work online at annmaryliu.com.

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“I often get questions like this from students, and whenever I do, I get the sense that they are fishing for a recipe to become a successful designer.”  Steff Geissbuhler

Critically prefaced via email correspondence by designer Steff Geissbuhler, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer by Debbie Millman, claims not to provide a recipe on how to think like the extraordinary designers interviewed in this book but rather proves to be

“a glimpse into the minds of these revered masters, in order to understand the way they think and why.”

Containing an interview line-up that is no doubt a who’s who list of contemporary graphic design, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer contains an abundant supply of bravery, audacity, candor, humor, and yes, even inspiration from notables like: Michael Bierut, Neville Brody, Seymor Chwast, Chip Kidd, Milton Glaser, Jessica Hefland, Paula Scher, James Victore, and Massimo Vignelli.

At the beginning of all twenty interviews, Millman provides readers with a brief introduction to each designer’s work (although regrettably there are no visuals for reference), their place in the canon, and a glimpse of their personality, making the book accessible to budding graphic design students, the mid-career designer, and seasoned veterans alike.

In each interview, Millman strikingly inquires about topics one would hope to ask given the opportunity to be in the same room as these design idols. Quintessential questions presented to creatives act as ice-breakers: What was your first creative memory? What did you want to be when you grew up? Do you have any particular creative process? As these mundane questions dissipate, readers are left with what feels like an intimate one on one conversation. By the end of each interview readers learn not only about the interviewees’ passions, concerns, and thoughts on design but also about their personal infatuations, obsessions, oddities, and manifestos.

[I wanted to be] “ A Catholic Priest.” Stefan Sagmeister

“What actually drove me to the therapist was that I had a very unhealthy obsession with laundry.” Michael Bierut

“I have very few “interests.” I have not been to the movies in 12 years. I listen to music at home, but I don’t go to concerts.” Milton Glaser

“Oh my God, how much time do you have? I live in almost constant terror. Here’s a tiny portion of the list: cancer, vaginas, giant cockroaches, Kathy Lee Gifford’s latest Christmas album, burning to death, tornados, gristle, children, choking on a small toy, root rot, Deborah Sussman’s eyelash extensions, Republicans, and Sucralose. And the idea that Pat Robertson is not dead yet.” Chip Kidd

“Love is a cake that comes in layers.” Massimo Vignelli

After just a few interviews a reader can easily find parallels between themselves and these notables, realizing that although they may hold an enduring seat in the canon, they are at the very least humans too – who feel love, pain, passion, and frustration. Millman creates a strong internal dialogue for her audience by questioning a designer’s social responsibility, the difference between design and art, and the dilemma of personal expression vs. commercial endeavor in the industry. One begins to connect their own personal design manifestos with the beliefs of these “great ones” sending an appreciable sense of encouragement, empowerment, and inspiration to every reader.

In addition to constructing strong cognitive connections with viewers the book makes tactile bonds as well. The sleek cover reflects a battered and empty pin board as if all of the ideas, quotes, reflections, and inspiration have been removed and placed neatly between the covers. A perfect size for transport the book is an effortless addition to any designer’s library, providing a jolt of influence with each turn of the page.

A strong balance of logic and lyricism, How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer is the perfect read after a most horrid client meeting, while battling a formidable creative dilemma, or following an exhausting day of design. In a filling 224 pages, Millman and her eminent cast provide readers with a robust reminder of how and why we fell in love with this arduous yet delectable profession.

How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer is published by Allworth Press and can be purchased from Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE).

About the Reviewer
Jenny Venn is a designer and professor who packed up everything and headed west determined to change the world through education and activism. Find her work at studiojenvenn, her thoughts at @jenvenn, and her calling at uwyo.

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If every typography book were written like Just My Type: A Book About Fonts (Amazon: US|UK|DE), more people would care about the subject. British author and journalist Simon Garfield’s tone is so accessible, it feels like he lived through 600 years of history and just popped by to talk about it. Font geeks will enjoy his snappy vignettes on influential designers, why quick brown foxes jump over lazy dogs, and the life and death of something called an interrobang. For the casual font user, Garfield demystifies industry-specific hang-ups, such as the difference between a font and a typeface, or why someone might choose Gotham over Gill Sans. This is not a technical manual. It’s not merely “a book about fonts” as Garfield humbly suggests. Just My Type is a collection of stories about people — the men and women behind this age-old craft — and purpose — the way type has influenced culture and vice versa.

The book is divided into 12 short chapters that contain easy-to-read anecdotes with unexpected twists. About half of these are followed by “font breaks,” which go into detail about one or a few fonts. “Type is a living element,” writes Garfield. So the book is not organized according to classification or chronology. Instead the reader may choose from a tome of stand-alone stories which can be read in or out of order, as a whole or in parts. It begins with a defense of Comic Sans, but waits until the end to list “the worst typefaces in the world.”

Now may be the first time a book like this makes sense. In Garfield’s words, “Computers have rendered us all gods of type.” Everyone now uses fonts and many find pleasure in making their choices. But why should anyone care to learn about typography’s past? Garfield writes:

“One can wander around the streets admiring typefaces on signs and shops with not a care for their history. But it may increase our love of them if we know who made them, and what they were aiming for.”

Typophiles will pore over the chapter about Doves, the font that drowned. All will likely recoil at type designer Eric Gill’s various forms of experimentation (in and out of the foundry). The delicate swashes in the typeface Caslon make more sense when we consider that its creator first worked as a gunsmith. And typographer John Baskerville’s dishonorable burial is all too ironic since he first worked as an engraver of headstones. In a chapter called “Can a font make me popular?” Garfield describes designer Matthew Carter as a man who matches his type: “a classicist with a ponytail.” Carter’s love of type began with his mother, who cut letters out of paper and stored them in a box. Years later, when Carter found them, he discovered, “They were Gill Sans, and they had tooth marks in them.”

From Gutenberg to Gotham, type’s legacy is in social impact. Garfield shows how the invention of the first mechanical printing press, which was the inception of type in the 1440s, directly resulted in a more learned world. He discusses how the use of  “a type consciously chosen to suggest forward thinking without frightening the horses,” helped elect President Barack Obama. This font, called Gotham, was more sophisticated, more contemporary and more flexible than the team’s original choice, Gill Sans.

Where will type go next? Garfield doesn’t talk about digital publications or web typography. But those who fear that print is dying can get some perspective by reading this book. History shows that every technological development — be it hot metal compositing (late 1880s), Letraset (1959) or the Macintosh computer (1984) — opened new doors for type design, even if it did send the industry into panic. Today’s advancements are coming at a faster pace, but type will surely endure. After all, “the leaden army that conquers the world” doesn’t have to be made of lead.

Throughout the book, Garfield questions the impulse to continue designing new typefaces. There are over 100,000 fonts in circulation today. And after 560 years of movable type, why do we continue to make more fonts? The question has been asked since Helvetica was a newborn. Jonathan Barnbrook, a renowned British typographer said in the book:

“Typography truly reflects the whole of human life and it changes with each generation. It may as well be the most direct visual representation of the tone of voice with which we express the spirit of the time.”

Garfield adds to this:

“The world and its contents are continually changing. We need to express ourselves in new ways.”

Will there ever be a perfect typeface — one that is legible, readable, versatile, beautiful and culturally stimulating? Of course not. No one font can be everyone’s type.

Publisher Information

Photos above show the UK edition, published by Profile Books in 2010.  Just My Type was also released in the Unites States by Gotham Books in September 2011.

You can support The Designer’s Review of Books by buying Just My Type from these Amazon links (US|UK|DE) or The Designer’s Review of Books Amazon store.

About the Reviewer

Aggie Toppins is an MFA candidate in graphic design at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has worked for several years at agencies in Chicago and Cincinnati doing environmental graphics, brand identities and communication design. She is passionate about making work that helps people share their stories. A proud Midwesterner, Aggie currently lives in Baltimore with her husband Jason and her basset hound Jolly.

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A small part of the book White is about color:

“it is ‘all colors’ and ‘no colors’ at the same time. This identity as a color that can ‘escape color’ makes white very special. If white is not simply a color, mightn’t we be able to understand it as functioning like a design or expressive concept?”

As a well-known graphic designer and art director at Muji, author Kenya Hara uses a variety of colors all the time. He does not even especially love white. As he has progressed in his career, though, he has slowly moved away from bright, vivid colors and gravitated to subtler, more natural hues. Inspiration was found in items like sand, handmade paper, seeds, rust, milk, cardboard, clouds, and weathered books. Of those, white has had the most profound impact for him.

The Japanese character for white is part of the compound character for emptiness. The connection between those words is a strong one throughout this slim volume.

“The mechanism of communication is activated when we look at an empty vessel, not as a negative state, but in terms of its capability to be filled with something.”

Paper is compared to the principle of itoshiroshi (shiro is Japanese for white), described as an intense purity full of potential. Hara has a strong conviction that simply holding a sheet of paper is like standing before a blank canvas, in that it will trigger the imagination of creative people.

Photography, painting, poetry, architecture and even tea ceremonies serve as solid examples of Hara’s concepts. For instance, he writes that Hasegawa Tohaku’s spare, foggy “Pine Trees” painting provokes our senses with its strong brush strokes and deliberate lack of detail. And, the effective use of white space between the trees actually suggests many more trees beyond what we can see.

“In other words, an unpainted space should not be seen as an information-free area: the foundation of Japanese aesthetics lies in that empty space and a host of meanings have been built upon it. An important level of communication thus exists within the dimension we call ‘white.’”

That empty space in communication is an interesting point. He writes about the power of non-verbal communication—a nod, or eye contact—that can convey so much. He acknowledges that Japanese communication, often leaving much unsaid (like subjects of sentences), can be difficult to understand when compared to the more direct western system. But, he views people reaching a consensus in silence to be a highly refined level of communication. And he reminds us that listening is a crucial part of effective communication.

The book’s design is clean and quiet: almost all text, with black serif type on white paper. Four images, including a 4-page gatefold of the “Pine Trees” painting, are placed together at the back of the book.  It would be more effective if the visuals were placed near the text where they are mentioned. A white ribbon marker adds a nice touch.

There is a calm, almost soothing rhythm to the text that feels appropriate. I think there is an over-reliance on quotation marks and on the phrase “in short,” but overall the writing is simple and clear.

Reading this has encouraged me to take a step back and look at white and emptiness in a more thoughtful manner. Perhaps my own design work can benefit from an occasional knowing nod rather than a shout. I am also more aware of the different nuances and levels of white that exist. While I have always been a big fan of white space, I now understand white to be much more than a color.

Designers of all kinds should find something of value in this book. Though it may seem as if Hara, also author of the much heftier Designing Design, is advocating a minimalist style, it runs deeper than that:

“The roots of expressions like … ‘less is more’ are subtly different than those that underlie emptiness. Emptiness does not merely imply simplicity of form, logical sophistication and the like. Rather, emptiness provides a space within which our imaginations can run free, vastly enriching our powers of perception and our mutual comprehension. Emptiness is this potential.”

White is published by Lars Müller Publishers and you can purchase it from Amazon (US|CA|UK|DE).

About the Reviewer
John Clifford is Creative Director at Think Studio, an award-winning graphic design firm in NYC focusing on brand identity, web sites, collateral, packaging, and books.

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As a design educator I am always looking for new ways to teach the unavoidable “Introduction to Graphic Design” course. I have read and used many textbooks over the years, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. It was with the goal of gathering new information in the introduction to graphic design category that I read and explored The Elements of Graphic Design by Alex W. White. Like the other books I have read in this category (one that is large and continues to grow because it seems that everyone wants to be a graphic designer), The Elements of Graphic Design has both strengths and weaknesses.

Design – whether graphic, industrial, interior, or architecture – is the process of taking unrelated parts and putting them together into an organized unit. Each discipline works with solids and voids, and each must respond to three questions: What are the elements I have to work with? Where do these elements go? What structure is necessary so they go together?

The main strength of this book is the way the information is broken down. There are only so many ways that you can introduce and explain the principles and elements of design (balance, hierarchy, space, color, etc.), but this book does it in a way that I had not seen before. Rather than listing one at a time and discussing each, there are four sections: Space, Unity, Page Architecture and Type. The traditional principles and elements are then discussed in the context of these umbrella topics. I like this approach because it puts the different elements of design into a larger context that is easier for the student to understand. There is more connection between the different elements, and it is clear to see that the foundational principles and elements of design are not used in a vacuum, but interact with each other. This fact is one of the hardest things to help my students realize in introductory classes. For example, just because you are focusing on the use of scale in a project, does not mean that you can ignore balance or contrast. It is made clear that everything works together.

Another strength of The Elements of Graphic Design is the choice of example images. There is a good mix of illustrative graphics, historical and contemporary design to emphasize a point and exercises that can be given to the students as assignments. It is refreshing to see good quality contemporary examples from well known designers and firms. I have seen textbooks use examples that in most design courses would be shown as less effective pieces of graphic design. It is important for students to be exposed to contemporary design early in their education. Too many textbooks rely heavily on historical examples to illustrate the use of principles and elements of design. Historical work is important, and used here when appropriate, but students respond well to seeing work that is only one or two years old rather than two or three decades. Another nice feature is various quotes from well-known designers, which support the author’s text. The addition of each designer’s portrait is helpful in that they put faces to names and humanize work that a student may already be familiar with.

As strong as the content is, the design of the book is confusing. Every spread has four distinct but related areas of content. On the left page are examples of work that exemplify the subject of the chapter. The right page has a row across the top made up of another, smaller set of examples and explanations. There are also captions for the examples and exercises on the left page, the main content of the chapter and a portrait and quote from a well known designer. I had to read each spread four times just to get all the information, and then reread the last paragraph of the main text to remind myself of the topic before I moved on. It takes quite a while to get through everything, and there is a lot of information vying for your attention. The design is not bad, just very active with no clear focal point. Maybe this is good for students that are used to managing 3 or 4 distinct streams of data all at once, and they won’t have any problems gathering and absorbing the presented information. I found it a little confusing and hard to get through.

The Elements of Graphic design is a great resource with strong content that approaches a common problem from a unique direction and puts the principles and elements of design into a context that allows students to see how they work together. It is a shame that the design of the book makes the content harder to access than it should be.

The Elements of Graphic Design, Second Edition is published by Allworth and is available from Amazon (US|CA|UK|DE).

About the Reviewer

Jonathon Russell is a designer and educator at Central Michigan University. More of his writing can be found here.

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I would think that most designers with an eye on the lo-fi will be familiar with the aesthetic of toy cameras. As an arty type with an interest in lo-fi technology and photography I have a couple of toy cameras myself, so when the opportunity came about to review Kevin Meredith’s book on toy cameras, Toy Cameras, Creative Photos: High-end Results from 40 Plastic Cameras, I was keen to get my hands on it and see what other plastic fantastic cameras are out there.

So what is a toy camera? As Kevin Meredith states in his introduction, it might be a better to ask: “what is a serious camera?”

The answer to that question is simpler, a serious camera is one that has been designed to capture a scene with as much accuracy as possible. The resulting images, while technically perfect, can seem a bit lifeless to some people. Toy cameras are ideal for photographers who don’t want to capture a polished version of the world.

The book’s setup and approach is straightforward – 40 toy cameras and examples of photographs taken by those cameras. How the book is structured is also simple – each camera gets a page with an image of, and a few paragraphs about, the camera in question and then several spreads of photography will follow, the photographs illustrating the cameras foibles and quirks. With many images the film type and other details such as the processing technique are given.

The text is informative and succinct. With each camera a little background or description is given, Meredith giving his opinion on the cameras practicality, drawbacks and quirks; for each camera information is given on lens type, aperture, shutter speed, film type, ISO and similar and variant models. The photography throughout the book is excellent. As well as the photography of the author, Meredith has also roped in a load of contributors all who have supplied quality photography.

I was initially surprised at the inclusion of digital cameras, but by Meredith’s own definition a toy camera can be digital and including them supports the inherent inclusiveness of toy cameras. The random ‘happy accidents’ of light leak and vignetting also add to this inclusiveness – no matter what your proficiency in photography the same random results will happen. This is were the divide happens – to embrace such lo-fi photography you have to accept and embrace these random quirks – control freaks should stick to their high-end SLR’s.

The book ends on brief but informative sections on film formats, processing, and toy camera basics: Film speed, shutter speed and aperture.

I don’t have any real criticisms of this book, It is a simple proposition executed well. I would have preferred to have seen larger images of the camera’s themselves, and the overall design, the graphical elements, furniture and colour, is a little derivative. It looks, well, like a Lomography product. Lomography is the commercial trademark of Lomographische AG, an Austrian company whose name is taken from the former Russian state-run optics manufacturer LOMO PLC, and their camera the LOMO LC-A, which Lomographische AG distribute around Europe. Lomographische AG have very cleverly promoted and nurtured a large worldwide community whose interests are cheap plastic cameras, soviet imports and processing techniques such as cross processing and redscale. The design throughout Toy Cameras, Creative Photos echo the Lomography branding used throughout their publications and marketing material. Of course there is nothing wrong with this, in fact from a marketing perspective it is probably the right approach as Lomography is such a recognisable entity and has such a large community. I guess I feel that there has been a missed opportunity for this book to have an identity of it’s own, but this is a minor gripe and overall the important bits – the photography and text – are given plenty of space to breath.

For a newcomer to lo-fi photography and toy cameras this book will be a great introduction. To someone like me who has already got the lo-fi camera bug it is still a great buy. There are cameras featured in this book that I never knew existed, the action sampler cameras really stoked my imagination, I can see myself trawling ebay for an Oktomat sometime soon. The Ikimono looks cute too.

This book also works well as a reference book or a source of inspiration – there really is some great photography featured and anyone with an interest in photography, be it lo-fi, digital or film will appreciate the qualities of the images.

Toy Cameras, Creative Photos: High-end Results from 40 Plastic Cameras is published by RotoVision and available in Amazon’s UK or The Designer’s Review of Books Amazon stores.

About the Reviewer

Owen Priestley is the Senior Art Director at digital agency Kerb and is a contributor to the arts, culture and politics blog www.20three.com.
Follow Owen on Twitter – http://twitter.com/owen20three

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While graphic design does not have as long of a history as some of the other visual mediums, say sculpture or painting, it has certainly come a long way in establishing itself through the work, writings and published thoughts of the designers, typographers, artists and writers involved in its evolution. There have been many books published about the work, ethos and personas associated with the different aspects of graphic design. Bibliographic is a book that chronicles some of the most important of these texts.

As an avid collector of design books, anthologies and monographs my Amazon wish list was quite long before even cracking this book open. By the end, it had nearly doubled in size.

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Written by Jason Godfrey, with a foreward by Steven Heller, Bibliographic is a selection of a total of 100 books that Godfrey feels might be influential to any practicing designer today. In the words of the author:

Bibliographic is a library dedicated to the subject of graphic design. It’s not a history of graphic design through its books, and it does not pretend to be the definitive list of 100 books on the subject. Instead, it represents a cross-section of books that would be a welcome addition on any studio’s shelves.

Each book is given a full two-page spread showing the cover of the book and several spreads and details from within its pages. Godfrey notes that many of the books are long out of print and that some of the copies that were photographed came from libraries of designers from all over the world. The photography of the book is thoroughly nice and is kept consistent throughout the book, each photo shot from directly above the book, every page perfectly in its place. They are all set on a white background which makes them feel pristine, even if some are a little worse for the wear.

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The margin of one page for every spread, varying between the left and right page depending on the layout of the photos of the book, are where Godfrey places a detailed description of the book, its contents and its author or authors. Special attention is paid to the edition of the book and extra effort is made to list other editions that are currently in publication or that were published after the edition shown. Godfrey does an excellent job of covering a lot of information and giving you a feel for the content in the few short paragraphs he has written for each book .

This book is a passionate tribute to the omnipotence of Helvetica. In his sermon-like introduction, its auther, the designer and publisher Lars Müller (1955–), calls it ‘the shift worker and solo entertainer of typefaces’. He traces the roots of its popularity from its introduction as Neue Haas Grotesk in 1957, and praises its ‘forgotten designer’ Max Miedinger (1910-1980).

The book is divided into six sections, corresponding to the subject matter of the books contained within each section: Typography, Sourcebooks, Instructional, Histories, Anthologies and Monographs. Most sections are about the same size, containing 10-15 books each, except for the section on Monographs which has 36. Each section is separated by a spread featuring a different color and the title of the section.

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Intriguing details about each book include information about its binding, end papers and overall production. Often times Godfrey adds notes on how the book was printed and even includes some personal reactions when the production value was either extravagant or somewhat lacking. Each spread contains 2-3 captions to selected photographs which usually relate back to the information provided in the margin. There are even notes about other books that could be resources of information relating to the subject of the featured book.

Finally, contained throughout the book are “Top 10″ reading lists from working designers, typographers and writers. Each list contains the book featured on the page the list is printed on as well as 9 others. The contributors include well respected figures in the field of graphic design such as Peter Saville, Matthew Carter, David Hillman and Michael Bierut

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While there may not be a ton of written information included within the book there are so many jumping off points that it proves to be an excellent reference resource. Many of the books are still in publication in one form or another and a fair chunk of the ones that aren’t are easily found for a reasonable price. Their are also a great many that are very hard to find or are first editions, this makes the book a superb chronicling of many books I may never get to actually hold in my lifetime. It is a must-have for all designers, especially students of design who need quick yet massive exposure to the detailed histories they can not be a part of.

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Bibliographic is published by Laurence King Publishing and is available from Amazon (US|CA|UK|DE).

About the Reviewer
Dominic Flask is a designer by nature, a teacher by application and a thoughtful companion by friendship. You can find his work here, his thoughts here, and his passion on Design is History.

No related posts. Sorry about that.