Customer Reviews

Elements of Design: Rowena Reed Kostellow and the Structure of Visual Relationships

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I do believe I am somewhat qualified to review this work. After all I was one of Rowena's "boys" in the early 1960s.
The last time I saw Rowena in 1985 she told me she was working on a book. At the time, I was teaching three dimensional design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. I too wanted to write a book about three-dimensional design and had given it a good start. Along the way I realized the impossibility of writing about dimensional design. It can't be done. It can be approached, as this present work does. But when you get right down to understanding the words on the page, they are as slippery in writing as they were with Rowena in person. I couldn't conceive how she could write it down. It is not surprising that she did not finish it. Her thoughts were too abstract to concretize them.
I recall one dialog with her:
"Not quite," she said turning my work. "Just look at it."
"I'm looking, Rowena, "I replied.
"Well look at it some more. You need to get the balance."

The book outlines a series of exercises that Rowena used to develop the ability to see dimensionally. As her student, I did all those exercises, and looking at them in the book and reading the comments of others (many of whom were my classmates) brings back many memories.
I recall how, four years after graduation, I was working in an ID office designing a typewriter, when suddenly it all became clear. I phoned her that evening. "Well, you were a smart kid, Winston. I figured you'd get it."
And then six more years from there, seeing the "convexity" problem that my parents had so proudly displayed in their living room, and realizing that I now *at that instant,* saw why she had been disappointed with it. My experiences are echoed by many of those quoted. It is nice to know that I was not alone.

The reader can look at the projects shown (and beautiful pictures they are!), and read her words and the words of her pupils, and perhaps they will get a glimmer of what an amazing force this woman was. But her text is slippery, and by being that slippery, it is the quintessential Rowena.
Her method, as is stressed in the book, was completely experiential. You can read *about* it but to fully understand it you have to do it-- and do it with guidance. You need to *do* the work in three dimensions and have her (or someone who studied with her) standing over you to say, "Not quite. Look at it some more."
If this book can get a younger generation interested in doing this work before all the "old guys" die off, then it will be a even more lasting monument to her vision.

This is a technical book that is an attempt to teach what RRK developed over a lifetime obsession with visual compositions. She did one thing, over and over, refining it over a long and productive career at Pratt, in Brooklyn. As such, I believe that it would best be used in the classroom, rather than as a simple read for those who want to understand modern design. Being ignorent about issues in studio design - really doing it, rather than observing it like I do - I got a lot out of it. But I will need to refer to it and read through many more times to truly absorb the exercises. For what it is, the book is a masterpiece as an exercise in visual thinking and the method left its imprint on many of the greatest American designers from before WWII to the 1980s.

Recommended, but for designers rather than design critics.

I was a student of Ms. Reed at New York's Pratt Institute. This work by Gail Hannah is an important, and accurate, description of Reed's visual design methodology that has had far reaching positive consequences for our nation. Anyone seeking to understand how the visual design of three-dimensional objects can be taught, and subsequently successfully implemented, will appreciate this book. The practice of designing three-dimenional objects for use by people is an oft misunderstood subject since it is not conventional engineering nor an art unto itself. Industrial design is a unique combination of skills that forms a bridge between the end user of objects and the manufacturer. Hannah's work on Ms. Reed, her origins, and her teaching technique, begins to fill the gap in our knowledge of American ingenuity and our ability to invent. Highly recommended.

I agree with one of the reviewers in that the rules presented in this text should not be applied loosely and expected to produce "a beautiful design". As far as industrial design goes it still is not even so great. HOWEVER what it does teach is basic 3-dimensional design. There are lessons in here that anyone who works in a 3-d medium (interior, industrial, fashion, sculpture, etc) should be fluent in. I did the exercises and it has allowed me to get such a tighter grasp on my work and understand all the subtle effects I can produce in it. It is also invaluable to me as a reference guide. Study this book in order to help develop your sense of 3 dimensional structure and compositions but not as a base for design education (only because design incorporates much more than "beauty").

To truly get the most out of this book, you need one of Rowena's dwindling number of students still left at Pratt teaching to stand over your shoulder. The exercises in this book can all produce amazing results in terms of beautiful abstract relationships but to "know" what is right or wrong with an object using this visual language really takes someone showing you what is wrong with a transition or how this proportion is too similar to that one or how this spacial relationship is not quite right. In the end, you need to know what is wrong in order to really be able to see what is right and it takes someone to show these things to you over and over again. The book is an excellent companion and record of Rowena's interesting and effective exercises, but it's difficult to use as a guide for someone not dialoguing with one of her former students and even that is challenging because each one delivers her gospel of 3D a little differently.

Update: 02/12/2010

A couple more of Rowena's former students (Lenny Bacich and Dan November) have recently passed away. It's sad to see them go and I will always be reminded of them, and their visions of Rowena's legacy, when I return to this book.

This book is a nice window into a professional display of techniques and exercises that garner superior forms and shapes. I bought this book for an industrial design class, it was not mandatory, but completley necessary and helpful. i highly recommend it.

I was a student of Miss Reed's (1972-73), even have her hand written notes in my class notebook that I kept, and have always kept these notes close to me, they included everything that she wrote on the blackboard at Pratt Studio. This book will become the the most valuable guide and should be in the library of every designer. So glad to see this book happened, to share some of her teachings. The first thing that I have written in my class journal:" Structural principles parallel visual analysis can create an aesthetic disipline." the next line is "I don't like to go around saying that gray haired men were my students, but they were.."(former student, now GM executive dropping by her class to say hello) then back to her lecture, basic relationships: volume,plane,line,value,texture,color,space. This book covers these topics.

It was very fast to get the product and I experience a very good seller!

The book is old and pretentious. It describes Design as it was some sort of a religion (with Roweena as its prophet), that a Designer needs to stick to some basic rules, in order to generate a beautiful product.
It doesn't really take the engineering part into consideration. For example, that a functional product kept very simple is usually beautiful.
Also it hardly has any examples and some of the few are about 30 to 40 years old and not really convincing either.
Maybe this book explains why most cars from the 70ties are somewhat unsightly.
And last but not least the letters are pretty small, a pain to read.