Design Elements: A Graphic Style Manual

✍ Scribed by Timothy Samara

• Publisher: Rockport Publishers
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 273
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

The graphic design equivalent to Strunk & White's The Elements of Style

This book is simply the most compact and lucid handbook available outlining the basic principles of layout, typography, color usage, and space.

Being a creative designer is often about coming up with unique design solutions. Unfortunately, when the basic rules of design are ignored in an effort to be distinctive, design becomes useless. In language, a departure from the rules is only appreciated as great literature if recognition of the rules underlies the text. Graphic design is a "visual language," and brilliance is recognized in designers whose work seems to break all the rules, yet communicates its messages clearly.

This book is a fun and accessible handbook that presents the fundamentals of design in lists, tips, brief text, and examples. Chapters include Graphic Design: What It Is; What Are They and What Do They Do?; 20 Basic Rules of Good Design; Form and Space-The Basics; Color Fundamentals; Choosing and Using Type; The World of Imagery; Putting it All Together?Essential Layout Concepts; The Right Design Choices: 20 Reminders for Working Designers; and Breaking the Rules: When and Why to Challenge all the Rules of this Book.

✦ Table of Contents

Content: Preface : Graphic design: what it is --
Introduction : Twenty rules for making good design --
1. Form and space : Seeing form and space ; Categories of form ; Putting stuff into space ; Compositional strategies ; A foundation for meanings --
2. Color fundamentals : The identity of color ; Chromatic interaction ; Color systems ; Emotions and messages --
3. Choosing and using type ; Structure and optics ; Issues related to style ; Mechanics of text ; Texture and space ; Type as information ; How color changes type --
4. The world of image : Real, unreal, and otherwise ; Media and methods ; Presentation options ; Content and concept --
5. Putting it all together : Visual logic ; Structuring the page ; Intuitive arrangement ; Integrating type and image ; Layout systems --
App. A. The right design choices: twenty reminders for working designers --
App. B. Causin' some trouble: when and why to challenge anything in this book.
Abstract:

Outlines basic principles of layout, typography, colour usage and space. This book presents the fundamentals of design in lists, tips, brief text and examples. It includes chapters on Graphic Design: What It Is; What Are They and What Do They Do?, Choosing and Using Type and Breaking the Rules: When and Why to Challenge all the Rules of this Book. Read more...