Description
Book SynopsisA new and updated 3rd Edition of Rockport's best-selling Design Elements, a visually rich and accessible handbook that presents the fundamentals of design in lists, tips, brief text, and examples. With new images and diagrams, the book covers everything from working with grids, color application, typography, and imagery to how to finally put it all together. Features include:
- The ultimate primer on graphic design's basic visual toolkit—dot, line, plane, texture, space, and contrast—and how these basics underpin all successful layouts
- An in-depth look at color—from its optical qualities and its effect on type to its potential for communication concepts and emotions
- One of the most thorough compilations of typography concepts to be found—including information on letterform structure and optics, combining typeface styles, the mechanics of detailed text typesetting, and using type as image
- An extensive overview of imagery—the endless possibilities of medium, depiction, abstraction, stylization, and how these all communicate effectively
- Methods for integrating type and image, including a tutorial on using grid systems to structure layouts
- Twenty rules for making good design—and the best ways to break them
Being a creative designer is often about coming up with unique design solutions. But when the basic rules of design are ignored in an effort to be distinctive, design becomes useless. In language, a departure from the rules is only appreciated as great literature if recognition of the rules underlies the text. Graphic design is a "visual language," and brilliance is recognized in designers whose work seems to break all the rules, yet communicates its messages clearly.
Table of ContentsWhat Is Graphic Design?
Twenty Rules for Making Good Design
FORM AND SPACE
DEFINING VISUAL LANGUAGE
ATTRIBUTES OF FORM
PUTTING STUFF INTO SPACE
COMPOSITIONAL STRATEGIES
COLOR FUNDAMENTALS
THE IDENTITY OF COLOR
CHROMATIC INTERACTION
COLOR LOGIC AND SYSTEMS
WHEN COLOR MEANS SOMETHING
COLOR IN THE REAL WORLD
Choosing and Using Type
STRUCTURE AND OPTICS
ISSUES RELATED TO STYLE
THE MECHANICS OF TEXTSETTING
TYPE IS VISUAL, TOO
TYPE AS INFORMATION
The World of Imagery
THE NATURE OF IMAGES
MEDIA AND METHODS
CONTENT, CONCEPT, CONTEXT
NARRATIVE MASSAGE
Putting it all Together
MERGING TYPE AND IMAGE
WORKING WITH GRIDS
INTUITIVE ARRANGEMENT
DESIGN AS A SYSTEM
THE WORKING PROCESS
Causin’ Some Trouble: Breaking Every Rule in This Book
Index (By Subject)
Directory of Contributors
About the Author and Acknowledgments
