Customer Reviews

Graphic Design Cookbook: Mix & Match Recipes for Faster, Better Layouts

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

This book is a lifesaver! I was put in charge of creating a company newsletter and I didn't know where to begin. Someone handed me this book and suddenly the world of design opened up to me. The book is organized around the five major considerations one should have when deciding how to arrange information on a page. There is no expanatory text, just hundreds of examples to show how it can be done. For example, if you need to use a pull quote in a large block of text, this book gives you 24 different ways to do it. And its for more than just newsletters -- brochures, magazines, posters, anything can benefit from the creative ideas presented in this book. And the whole idea is to mix and match so the end result of your work is something different and creative every time.

I highly recommend a book like this for people like me with no design experience or even for designers who may not be having a very creative day. The ideas in this book gets the creativity flowing and shows you how to look at documents with design in mind -- to see how the pieces of information fit together, and how one interesting detail can make a dull document come alive.

I almost didn't buy this book because of the mixed reviews. After flipping through it in the bookstore, I purchased it. I'm so glad I did!

Seems to me the negative reviewers here are not rating it well because they expected it to go beyond it's intended scope. The book clearly states up front that it provides various layout options, to be used as-is or to mix and match. It's purpose is to jump-start your creativity when your in a rut, not tell you exactly what to do with your content or cover layout theory. It is a reference of visual layout ideas. There are no lengthy explanations.

Overall, great buy. I love it!

It's 10:00 at night, and you still have several hours of design ahead of you. How do you keep your designs creative and original? The first book I grab is The Graphic Design Cookbook. It's not a book of canned designs, but a catalog of design concepts and structures to hang your own artwork on. I wouldn't go into my studio without it.

If you know what to expect you will not be disappointed with this book, unlike some of the other reviewers. Graphic Design Cookbook is an extremely useful tool for graphic designers looking for layout ideas. Rather than sorting through dozens of graphic design books to get ideas, this book has sections for every aspect of page layout placement including: page numbers, paragraph placement, titles, and MUCH MORE!!
This book has virtually NO writing or explanations in it. This reference should be used only for visual layout placement ideas, and not for concrete explanations. I use this book whenever I need to make flyers, print ads, or any other print materials. EXTREMELY HELPFUL source and for this cheap cheap price, you can't beat the resourcefulness of this little book.
Another great resource that is very similiar to this book is Jim Krause's "Layout Index."

There is nothing to read (well, except for the introduction), just thousands of "mix & match" line drawings for layout ideas. This recipe book has been around for a while, but you'd never know it. All the ideas are both classic yet fresh. The least amount of money you'll ever spend for gazillions of ideas.

A must have in every design library.

A quick way to jump start ideas at the beginning of a new layout. The book assembles a variety of sample layouts in categories such as: page borders, page partitioning, visual entry points, word relationships, text layout systems, ordering, and pictorial treatments. To inexpensive not to own!

O.K. I was not expecting an in-depth graphic design book. What I was looking for (and couldn't find) was a source of inspiration. This book supposedly gives you ideas to quickly incorporate them in your design tasks. "Mix & Match"... yeah right! Of course you'll find many useful ideas, but some of the examples shown in the book (most of them as a matter of fact) are either obvious examples of basic design or just repetitive.

If you want a source of inspiration, a place where you really grab an idea from here, a concept from there and beauty and awe from somewhere else, you should buy a design annual. A book with real examples where you can also "mix & match" various ingenious and downright amazing ideas... (or get a Muse!)

As an 8-year veteran newspaper and magazine editor, I thought this book was great for jump starting creativity without having to read all the psychobabble or starving artist type talk that some other graphic design books I've browsed at bookstores. This book was instrumental in my redesign of a magazine that recently got me an award.
If you're a veteran looking for some basic concepts to play with and customize, this book is great. If your looking for a book that tells you why 8-point fonts work great on red backgrounds with purple elephants, then this is not the book you're looking for.

On the surface, books like "Graphic Design Cookbook" can often be viewed as chop-shop, cliff-note style templates for non-creative people looking for ideas to steal/copy. As a professional graphic designer, I looked at this book cover with a smirk at first, but I decided to check it out anyhow. Boy was I surprised. What makes "GDC" work is that they provide many examples of effective, smart, layouts using graphical elements, text measures, pull quotes and grids. But what makes the book sing is that the elements are abstract geometric shapes -- not completed designs -- so your imaginiation / creativity runs wild. Any copy that is used is Latin, so your eyes arent distracted into READING the text, just view it as a functional element in relation to the physical page. It's true -- many look at magazine ads or print annuals looking for layout ideas, but this one actually allows your ideas to flow -- not form fit someone else's creation. It's a caffeine kick to the right brain.

I like this book, alot. It doesn't have any wordy explanations behind the techniques, just various ways to design common elements.

People complain that the book is too basic, but the purpose of the book is to be used as reference and to combine several of the techniques into one design. I think the simplicity of the designs are important because you are not distracted by a pretty photo or bright colors, all your attention is on layout.

This book is a great guide to generate ideas for your designs, buy it.