Graphic Design: The New Basics
December 28, 2009 10:00 am Aesthetics, BooksGraphic Design: The New Basics Ellen Lupton & Jennifer Cole Phillips
As it says this is the New Basics.
Firstly, it really is the basics, but those basics are the starting points for all designers; point, line, colour etc.
The Basics – I have read about, practiced all these topics before (in various art and design courses) but I’ve never had them all together in a design text book, which is good for reference before. I found reviewing them again useful, and they were well presented with nice and varied examples which helps provide inspiration.
The New – The New bit refers to some additions which have been made to the ‘usual’ basics which includes looking at; transparency, animation and computer generated images. This was nice to see as they are the new basics.
What I liked the most was that it was teaching the underlying concepts not the software (except a bit of Processing in places), it is the basics and some of the exercises seemed to be implied rather than stated, it’s not just a reading book, if you want to become a designer you have to read, look at the examples and then go off and design your own, I didn’t think that was stated explicitly enoug8h.