Customer Reviews

Typographic Design in the Digital Studio

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

 

 

I am using this book and workbook not as a graphic designer but as an artist and writer who often needs to produce well-designed print presentations. It's a text that welcomes you into it; the introduction, a history of printing and type design, is fascinating, lucid, and thorough, but never descends into mere specialist obsession. The lessons cover both sides of type design: why printed pages look and work the way they do; and how to make them look and work the way they should. I'm finding it both easy to use (even though I'm not in a classroom, but using it on my own) and really illuminating.

This book would be a great intro text for a type design or graphic design course, but also (and this is a real rarity) an excellent tool for working artists and writers and other professionals who need to do handsome presentations. To top it off, it's even suffused with a charming sense of humor.

I'm very happy to have found it.

"Typographic Design in the Digital Studio" is a good introduction to typography. It presents an extensive history of typography and shows how letterforms have changed over the centuries due to various cultural and technological changes. The book is well-illustrated throughout. Certainly designers and design students will benefit from it, though it is written so that even non-designers will be able to enjoy it as well. The book also explores how to effectively use typography in graphic design. "Typographic Design in the Digital Studio" contains chapter review questions and exercises at the end of every chapter. It is one of the best introductions typography I have seen.

I haven't had this book very long, so I can't provide an in depth review of it... I will say that while the written information seems very well laid out and useful- the author does assume you will purchase the "Application Skills Module" book & accompanying CD in order to complete the activities at the end of each chapter. I cannot find these additional materials and am very frustrated with my apparent need for them. Considering how much I spent on this book, I think it should include everything I need to work through it. I will hobble my way through- for the text is certainly worthwhile, but I do feel as though I'm missing out on a huge part of the experience I was expecting and paid for.

Typographic design in the Digital Studio by David A. Amdur is a valuable resource for teaching and learning. I am a full time professor of graphic design and find the book to be helpful in that it offers me interesting projects for my course syllabi, quiz resources, exercise assessment criteria and demonstration files for teaching and learning. There is also a companion Application Skills Book that includes QuickTime movies demonstrating software, exercise resources, and type specimens. In short this is an excellent resource for both teacher and student and I found it to be very organized and user friendly.

Every year more colleges seem to be dropping dedicated typography courses, leaving it up to those of us who teach computer applications to beef up that extremely important component of our curriculum. This book enhances the digital aspects of type instruction and use, increasing its value compared to the raft of otherwise fine titles out there that are not medium-specific. The structure is intelligent, rational, and obviously written by a teacher for teachers, but college students (and precocious high-schoolers) who recognize the importance of typography will find this an ideal vehicle for self-guided study.

I got the workbook and companion dvd, too.

The adoption of this new text is top priority for my next meeting with my department head. Help is here for design teachers needing to merge type study into computer classes!