Customer Reviews

Graphic Design: A User's Manual

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The content of Graphic Design: A User's Manual is fantastic. I enjoyed and learned something from every entry, and I would recommend it to anyone who has anything to do with graphic design in even the most tangential capacity. Every essay, without exception, contains nuggets of gold. I've bought copies for friends and I recommend you too, dear reader, secure a copy for yourself.

The only problem, and a glaring one in my opinion, is the lack of a table of contents. Without a table of contents good luck in getting a content overview. For that you have to physically flip through the pages of the whole book! What a pain in the neck. The index is comprehensive enough but I'm sorry, it doesn't help in this regard.

Someone wasn't thinking and whoever that someone is should carefully read and take to heart the section on 'Wayfinding' so clearly articulated on page --let me see now I have to flip through the whole book to find it.... ah yes, that would be on page 299. And while this person is at it they should also glance through the section on 'Accessibility'. One second now, that...would...be...page...8.

Other than this one criticism, congratulations on a fantastic book!

Graphic Design: A User's Manual written and designed by Adrian Shaughnessy is an absolute must read for a graphic designer. Actually, I should rephrase that, this book is an absolute must-reference for any designer. Structured as a very concise reference tool with each chapter, titled simply with a letter of the alphabet, addressing common and not so common topics in the design world.

If you're anything like me when flipping through a new book, regardless of it's topic there has to be plenty of visual stimulation and an equal amount of brain bending insight pulled from the text to summarize what I'm about to read (or summing up what I just read). [...].

Shaughnessy's 'Graphic Design: A User's Manual' covers all aspects of the creative process. It includes insight into business practices, media use, self-promotion, education and research, among others. Shaughnessy presents the information in a friendly, accessible manner without talking over your head or boring you with long-winded details.

At least once a week, I crack this baby open to a random subject and start reading. I'm almost always glad I did. There's just so much material in here, and it's not meant to flow in a linear fashion, so it's easier that way. This book is also good if you just want to read about a particular subject like 'kerning' etc...Adrian writes through his own experiences which are obviously more vast than my own. In that way it helps, even if you disagree with his opinion. Just one little caveat: WHERE'S the dang index?

I definitely made a mistake by reading this book the whole way through. When I first started the book, I was incredibly excited to start reading it. Definitely the book is really well laid out and the designs are quite interesting--something very important with a novel about graphic design.

Shaughnessy gives a lot of useful information to the beginning/intermediate/experienced graphic designer. Unfortunately for me, it is definitely a user's manual, i.e. something not really meant to be read through, but instead kept as a reference. Some of the information was purely for information's sake while other information was useful in the career of a graphic designer.

By the last third of the book, however, I was completely overwhelmed by all the information. It began to feel more like I was sloughing through the book rather than reading for enjoyment. Still, I like this book and it has enough information that I would go through it for different definitions, but I won't read it all the way through again.