Adobe InDesign f/x and Design: A Straight-Shooting Lesson Plan for Professional Publishers to Hit the Ground Running with Adobe's Hot New Page-Layout Program

Average customer rating:

Where's the F/X?
WOW!

Adobe InDesign f/x and Design: A Straight-Shooting Lesson Plan for Professional Publishers to Hit the Ground Running with Adobe's Hot New Page-Layout Program
Elaine Betts
Manufacturer: Coriolis Group Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Desktop Publishing | Graphic Design | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

Adobe InDesign | Graphic Design | Computers & Internet | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1576105180

I recommend this book to anyone interested to take a forward step toward Design.

The New Typography (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism)

Average customer rating:

Helpful but dogmatic
A founding document of modern history
Good Historical Value, But No Applicable Lessons
Interesting, if you're into type history
Impresionante estudio historico y psicologico

The New Typography (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism)
Jan Tschichold
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Arts & Photography | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0520250125

First, the messages for typographers. The book itself is part of that message: sanserif body text, bright white paper, and geometric red and black graphics. Tschichold uses a few conventions that I quite like. Footnotes are indicated inline and at the end of the page by a heavy black mark. At first, it looked like a blot on the gray of the body type. After seeing it a few times, though, I realized that the heavy mark was very helpful for recovering my place in the reading after my eyes moved away to read the footnote. Emphasis is shown with heavy rules in the outer margins around text, much the way I mark books myself. My only complaint about the book as a whole has to do with indistinct paragraph breaks - there is clue from indentation or line spacing, so it is actually possible to miss a pragraph break altogether.

The second half of the book shows a number of examples, good, bad, and (today) historically interesting. Almost all examples are bold red and black - the first two colors to be used up in most sets of crayons. It is easy to forget that these examples were often designed for letterpress, since photocompostion barely existed as we understand the term. Despite Tschichold's passion for modernity, the style now looks as dated as Bauhaus, streamlined locomotives, and Art Deco.

The first half of the book is for typographers, but also for any modern student of polemic. Not many people have strong feelings about typography, so the ranting can be considered by itself. Tschichold's style is based on "the spirit of our age" somehow revealed to him alone, and on Germanic philosophical absolutes. It is ironic that, during the cultural purges of pre-WWII Germany, Tschichold was among those rounded up for politically incorrect artwork - another absolute in conflict with his own.

Happily, Tschichold was able to emigrate to Switzerland before war broke out. He had a long and influential career, and later regretted the strident excesses of youth that this book captures.

This is useful as a guide to typographic style, but beginners will probably get more from modern texts. It gives a very informative view of the DIN standards for paper and business correspondence. Most of all, however, it captures a time and a mentality that no longer exist, but that guided one strong school of typographic practice for over 80 years.

Despite the dominance of computer typesetting and printing in trade publishing, new, private letterpress publishers are on the increase. This timely book celebrates the diversity of the original work being produced by graphic designers and typographers using letterpress around the world.

The book examines US and European private presses, top international graphic designers working with letterpress, the use of letterpress as a commercial medium in developing countries, and new developments in letterpress technology.

It is designed to support the trend for non-computer design techniques now enjoying a period of new growth and reinvention.

Stanley Morison is one of those personalities, and one of the people who made 20th century typography what it was. He had a unique insight into the type trade of the first half of that century, as well as a wealth of history about several other centuries of type design and designers.

The most strinking feature of this book is the way each chapter about some important typeface is set in that face. Seeing and reading a whole page of body text, set and spaced in the usual way, is fundamentally different from seeing menu of "quick brown foxes" or pages of nonsense words. Reading the type is different from looking at letterforms, so this gives real information that specimen books can never provide. (As a personal matter, I realized just how much I dislike the italics with slope angles different in the capitals than in the lower case.)

Don't pick this up as a text on typography; beginners won't get much they can use. If you already appreciate that subtle art, if you want to learn more about its history and practice, this is a very enjoyable way to learn.

This book takes a fresh look at the role of the newspaper in United States civic culture. Unlike other histories which focus only on the content of newspapers, this book digs deeper into ways of writing, systems of organizing content, and genres of presentation, including typography and pictures. The authors examine how these elements have combined to give newspapers a distinctive look at every historical moment, from the colonial to the digital eras. They reveal how the changing "form of news" reflects such major social forces as the rise of mass politics, the industrial revolution, the growth of the market economy, the course of modernism, and the emergence of the Internet. Whether serving as town meeting, court of opinion, marketplace, social map, or catalog of diversions, news forms are also shown to embody cultural authority, allowing readers to see and relate to the world from a particular perspective. Including over 70 illustrations, the book explores such compelling themes as the role of news in a democratic society, the relationship between news and visual culture, and the ways newspapers have shaped the meaning of citizenship.

As printing and design technologies have evolved over the past decade, so too have designers’ approaches to type design and typography. Today’s innovative designers have overturned established rules about type, turning letters into images and using typefaces in increasingly experimental ways. New Typographic Design covers a wide variety of applications from design for print--ranging from books, magazines, and brochures--to signage systems and screen-based typography, presenting the most current trends and directions of modern typography.
The book’s introduction discusses changing attitudes to innovation in typography through the 19th and 20th centuries, including the changing role of the designer, the question of legibility versus form, how type has become image, and the differing requirements for screen-based and print-based type. Four accompanying sections illustrate the key areas of typography today: type as form (how can existing type be handled in order to create an original design?), type as image (designs inspired by vernacular typography and noted for their hand-drawn aesthetic), type as experiment (the work of designers who push the boundaries of typographic recognition and legibility), and type in motion (how type can function in a three-dimensional or screen-based environment).
Authored by esteemed designer Roger Fawcett-Tang, this lavishly illustrated volume will provide a rich source of inspiration for both practicing designers and students.
Featured designers include:
Philippe Apeloig (France)
Ruedi Baur (France, Switzerland)
Oded Ezer (Israel)
Grandpeople (Norway)
Non-Format (England)
Sagmeister (U.S.A.)
Helmut Schmid (Germany)
Stiletto Design (U.S.A.)
Struktur Design (England)
3 Deep Design (Australia)