Customer Reviews

365: AIGA Year in Design 21

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This annual is a good example of how pretentious, self important design of a book can ruin it. Otherwise (probably) terrific examples of the latest in American design are reduced to irresponsible unreadable game of the apparently self-important book designer (J. Sterling?) who thinks that her design is more important than the actual pieces selected for this prestigious contest. A complete parody of the functionality of graphic design. 4 stars for the work itself, 1 star for the interior editorial design. Sorry spectacle AIGA.

The previous reviewer is right on the mark. The book designer intruded into the pieces that are supposed to be the highlight of the book, it took me a few page turns to realize that the grids on top of the full page images were in fact not a part of the pieces on display. What bothers me most about this book is the pretentiousness of the books editors/judges in making this the book that will forever divide the web designers from the print designers. This book is being used by the print firms to suck projects back into their court by putting a "manifesto" of sorts in the back explaining why there are no website projects profiled. They really show their colors by saying websites are poorly designed because the designers are not a big part of the process anymore. What a great way to convince clients that will be looking at this that they need go with a "print firm". They also say that the web suffers from the Jakob Nielson usability first, design last effect. I suggest that other designers (i work in print and the web) follow my lead and burn your AIGA membership cards and forget about collaboration. It seems that the judges do not like working on an even playing field with developers and site arhitects (I would like to see Michael Beirut design global flash narratives across a 6000 page intranet)... hopefully this book will have little effect on our community.

To show your design skills is not what design is meant for when you have over a hundred other designers whose work you are trying to showcase. I really felt that the pieces that were shown in this book where destroyed by cutting them up into different sections and not showing the whole. How could you get a sense of the pieces as they are not shown in their entirety? Many of the pieces I have seen in other publications so I know this is the case. I love what they chose to be included and agree with them on their beauty, but how can you not show the whole work? Would you show four different pieces of a Ray and Charles Eames piece of furniture, part of a Frank Gehrey building or a little of one of Phillip Starck's industrial designs? No, people would be upset....and that is my point. This isn't the designer of the books work but a collection of other peoples work . If the book was a Photonica catalog (which it strongly resembles) then I would say great job! This is just another designer (whose work I love) stepping on other peoples toes...sorry.

Very dissapointing book overall. Although creative, it doesn't do what is suppose to do -- communicate. It shows off the the designer's trendy style, but does no justice to all the winning participants. If my work were shown in this book in little distorted details, I would have asked for my money back.

How you'd rate this depends on whether you're rating it as an object or on it's content. What was AIGA's purpose here? I thought it was to showcase the award winning work within not just Jennifer Sterling's work. I left this book on the shelf at my local bookstore.
There are plenty of books on the market sold as objects. I don't see the purpose of disrespecting other peoples work to create an object in what is supposed to be a showcase to honour what they have done.
I like Jennifer Sterling design work but if she wants to sample other peoples work she should record a hip hop album next time. And why did AIGA approve this?

I've never had such a violent reaction to a book before. They call this a book yet it bears little resemblance to me. They show samples of great design by showing several photos all cropped differently. Not one showing the full page. Then there is the text, sometimes repeated 3 times on a page adding to the visual confusion the rest of the design creates.

I couldn't get through the whole book, I returned my copy.

The book itself looks wonderful, with a nice, strong design on all of the pages. The sad part is this design comes at a price, and that price is the content it's trying to display is completely truncated, and ineffectual. As far as inspiration books go, this is definitely one of the worst books I've purchased. You can tell that there are some real gems located within, but the sad part is you only see the top corner, or little snippets. Maybe next time AIGA should focus on letting us see why the winners are in the book, instead of trying to make an artsty statement in and of itself.

Although the text is insightful and the layout is creative, it does a poor job displaying the work of those who were talented enough to be included in the book. How dissapointing it must be to people who paid entry fees only to have small sections of their award winning work shown. This book layout was all form, no function and self indulgent on the designer's part. Plus the cover curves up.

This book is a good example of where art and design go their separate ways. It's a beautiful book, clearly put together by a very creative individual. But it's "designed" very poorly, it doesn't serve it's function. It's hard to read, you can't see the pieces it's supposed to highlight, and the binding breaks very easily because of the chosen materials. Again, they look great, but they don't do their job. Design that's honored by the AIGA should live up to higher standards in my opinion.

Sterling miss 2 stars for the cropping, its true that I can't see what the winners' works look like.
But the cropping itself makes the content more interesting.
Think different, .. its amazing that I enjoy reading this book more than any other AIGA publications. I don't get any inspirations from the works. I do get more how Sterling thinks..