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41 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
More of a great thing, May 17, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Layout Index: Brochure, Web Design, Poster, Flyer, Advertising, Page Layout, Newsletter, Stationery Index (Flexibound)
I wrote a positive review of J. Krause's first book, the Idea Index, and have to remark on this one as well. Filled with lots and lots of images and very little commentary, these books are a bit hard to explain to non-designers, but they make perfect sense to people in the creative visual arts. I constantly use the first book, Idea Index, to help me get ideas flowing for logos and images. The new book, Layout Index, is packed(!) with full-color idea-starters for all kinds of print and web media. There is hardly a spread in this very fat little book that does not capture and hold my interest for one reason or another; hardly a page that does not offer serious fuel for creativity, no matter what the project. As the author says in his intro, these are NOT answer books, they are "WHAT IF" books. They get your mind cranking on all kinds of possibilities very quickly. I have shelves full of design books, but I keep these two on my desk, within reach at all times. A superb duo!
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40 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Definitely a sequel., August 15, 2003
This review is from: Layout Index: Brochure, Web Design, Poster, Flyer, Advertising, Page Layout, Newsletter, Stationery Index (Flexibound)
While Idea Index provides actual ides for nice graphical renderings, the layout index is very simple and very scarce when it comes to layout ideas. It has a limited number of sample ideas which only look good due to the images present in the layout. The layouts provided don't really add much to the presentation of the information in the examples. Also, the web layouts are especially horrendous - despite looking semi-pretty, they do not consider at all the medium (e.g. giant images take longer to load, etc.). I was pretty disappointed by this book after liking Idea Index so much. Overall, the book is so-so. Going through it at a library will give you all the layout ideas this book could ever provide - there's no need to keep it on your shelf for future reference. If you're looking for good, or at least original print layout ideas, you better look elsewhere.
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26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing book, January 30, 2002
This review is from: Layout Index: Brochure, Web Design, Poster, Flyer, Advertising, Page Layout, Newsletter, Stationery Index (Flexibound)
Like other reviewers of this book, I am a professional designer. This book is one of the most helpful tools I have ever found. With all due respect, I would like to emphatically disagree with the comments of some other reviewers--I beleive that it is very easy to misunderstand a book like this. The author mentions in the intro (I'm paraphrasing) that this is NOT a book a answers, it's a book of suggestions. A person might think that some of the layouts are unfinished, or plain (not always the case--some layouts are finished and beautiful); I think that this is because a significant effort has been made to avoid presenting layout ideas that leave no room to build. The essentials of good design are never dated. If you are able to look at this book as a treasure chest of ideas, rather than a showcase of someone else's finished work, you will find endless fuel for your own work. As for the size: i LOVE the small format and the plastic cover!! It sits unobrusively on my desk at all times--easy to grab at a moment's notice. This is an amazing book, not like any other in concept, content or form.
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