A 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.
