Customer Reviews

Alas! Smith & Milton: How Not to Run a Design Company

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I bought this book for its sub-title: "How not to run a design company" - expecting to find insight into the management of consultancies, and especially practical insight into how not to do it. In fact the book offers little if any insight into this - so the authors and publisher shoud be prosecuted under the trades description act! - only kidding!! Instead, the book offers a lively (and, as you would expect from a design book, heavily illustrated) account of the life and times of a graphics, packaging and communications design agency based in London - from its start up in the 1980s, through its going into recievership in the late 1990s and subsequent rebirth. I read it with great enjoyment from cover to cover and would certainly recommend it to anyone interested in the history of the sector, how it has developed (e.g., through the impact of computers), and operates (client relationships, the coming and going of staff, etc). If, on the other hand, you are looking for practical guidance as to how to run, or not run, a design agency, this is not the book you are looking for (but buy it anyway!).