Book Description
Cutting-edge concepts, a beautifully illustrated text, and a dazzling array of award-winning design make the third edition of this standout best-seller one of the most highly acclaimed design texts in the world. Graphic Design Solutions continues to provide a clear and comprehensive introduction to graphic design and advertising design, with step-by-step visual solutions that readers can apply with confidence to their own design and advertising projects. A highly illustrative, straightforward assessment of developing winning graphic design solutions for a variety of media-including print, Web, television, and unconventional formats-helps designers think critically and creatively about their work while understanding the demands of the graphic design profession in today's world.
Customer Reviews:
Favorite Graphic Design Book.......2007-09-21
I just finished reading all but one or two chapters of this book for a class where this was the primary text. I have to say that this book goes everywhere with me and has become a favorite. Compared to the other text books I had this semester (and many others as well), this was a breath of fresh air. The writing was never dry and it never dragged. What I read really stuck with me and I looked forward to my weekly reading. Also having the exercises at the end of most of the chapters is wonderful for a student for further learning that truly is self-paced. I plan on doing most, if not all of these exercises for further practice. I am definitely going to have to look into Landa's other titles as well.
Best G.D. Book out there!.......2007-04-04
Was advised to buy from instrucor as additional class materials and found I love this book! Covers from core information to breaking down new media and cutting edge styles. Would not go without this book if you are interested in learning about graphic design as an art and a science. Great organization and use of information -good for any level designer.
Don't pay retail... GET IT ON AMAZON!
Graphics Student.......2007-02-23
I am taking a night course that required this book. Amazon.com had the best price. The book itself has many beautiful graphic illustrations and the text is fairly easy to read. It is not the total snoozer I thought it would be and has many fun projects to illustrate the points made in the text. All-in-all not a bad course book although this is not something I would have ever picked up for personal reading.
Great for Intermediate Designers.......2007-02-20
This book is a big help if you have been thrust into a job where you must come up with a great design for a poster or flyer. Gives you as many or as little steps as you think are necessary. Good reference.
Great Text For Art students.......2007-01-04
Combining great illustrations along with good information, this text truly delivers what many are lacking in. From print to web design, this book explores many facets of Design.
Customer Reviews:
Poor introduction and a so-so reference.......2007-06-27
As many reviewers have noted, this book is a poor chose for those seeking an introduction to LaTeX. However, I find that I rarely use it as a reference either; it often takes me much longer to find information in this book than on the internet. The index is horribly designed, using the same index for concepts and commands. Finding something in this book feels like finding something in code.
The best guide for everyday use.......2007-02-21
For anyone coming to LaTeX from a background in mathematics many sources of help are available, but it is more difficult for someone coming to it from a feeling of dissatisfaction with the results obtainable with typical WYSIWYG word processors. When you are surrounded by people who think that Word is wonderful and that its equation editor can handle any equations you need, getting to the point with LaTeX where you can use it to advantage may seem more trouble than it is worth. You will probably start with Leslie Lamport's "LaTeX: a document preparation system", but although that is a good and authoritative start it is not really enough, as there is a great deal more to know than can be found in a short book, and in particular you need to know about all that is now available in the form of packages.
Fortunately there are some excellent sources of more detailed information, and two of these stand out: Kopka and Daly's "Guide to LaTeX" and Mittelbach and Goossens's "LaTeX Companion". I acquired both of these about six months ago, but decided to defer posting reviews until I had discovered by experience which of them I actually used more, and the winner is clearly Kopka and Daly, mainly because it is much the easier to find one's way around. It is quite adequate as a complete guide to LaTeX (i.e. you don't really need to start with Lamport, though it's probably a good idea if you do), as the opening chapter on "basics" really is about basics, and the book progresses from there in a reasonably gentle way..
A very very useful book.......2005-06-23
I have been using this book a lot, in the recent months, and I am finding it very useful. I am not *at all* an expert latex user, but I do have decent programming skills, and I usually use a computer for hours every day, so my IT skills are decent, overall. For writing technical documents I have been using for years a fairly dated version of ScientificWorkplace, but I am now slowly switching to do more and more in latex, which gives me greater flexibility. What I usually do now is writing my documents in ScientificWorkplace, and then taking care of formatting and other unusual features editing the documents in Latex, through a program called WinEdt. In almost all cases, when I am in trouble with some commands or options, I find a clear solution in this book. For this reason, if your profile sounds a bit like mine, I would highly recommend this book. The new (fourth) edition also includes extensive references to the "hyperref" package, which is very very useful to create great pdf output that includes links to footnotes/sections/equations etc., bookmarks, and active buttons.
Not the best for absolute beginners, but great reference.......2005-02-07
For starting out in Latex, I recommend one of the many free online tutorials, such as the "not-so-short introduction to Latex". That will get you more than started. This book is a great add-on reference to that, and the level is just right: not too wordy, but easy to follow. It has much deeper coverage of how to do graphics and drawings, how to create a bibliography, how to create postscript and pdf files, etc, in addition to the basics, of course.
Brief, effective introduction to Latex.......2005-01-10
This is an ideal introduction to the TeX line of text formatting tools. It starts with a high level overview of the toolset. Then dives into document construction, then into tables, lists, mathematical formatting, and into user constructions and extensions for bibliographies, as well as other topics. PDF and Postscript formatting is covered. As well as AMS-TeX which is more extensions or mathematical formatting.
On the downside the substance of the text is only two-thirds of the book. Appendices make up the rest. Which necessarily means that the coverage is a little more terse than you would expect for a book this size.
That being said, this is still an excellent introduction to the TeX set of tools for anyone who is just starting out.
Book Description
Includes 80 full-color pages addressing the important issue of color in typographic design.
* New case studies showcase design for Web sites, CD-ROMs, and environmental graphics in addition to the existing case studies which detail examples of visual identification systems, book and magazine design, film and video text, and wayfinding graphics, along with outlines for analysis and solutions.
* Revised technology section emphasizes current digital type technology.
* Five new typefaces are included in the type specimens chapter.
* New information is included on legibility and the Internet.
Customer Reviews:
Fair primer.......2007-07-04
I imagine this book working well as a text for an introductory course on typography. Part of that impression comes from the clear need for an instructor to tie the material together and bring it to life with practical exercises.
The format addresses an audience that reasons in visual terms. Each two page spread, sometimes each page presents a complete thought. Illustration demonstrates each of the points made. The first section presents a history in sound-bites, highlighting the history of print and placing it in historical context. Next, about fifteen pages establish the anatomy of a character and typeface, and the words that describe it. Successive chapters describe basic visual hierarchy and composition, page formatting and legibility, technology as of 1993, and samples from typographic curricula at colleges around the US. The last and larger half of the book presents case studies in a few pages each, then nearly 100 pages of type specimens. Each specimen appears in enlarged form, making important details easily visible. Next, the specimen appears in several examples of body text, giving the font's real reading experience at several point sizes and spacings.
This book does a fair job with the basics, and educators may find ideas that will help their own classrooms. Experienced typographers, even students taking their second course, will bottom out quickly. Your experience of this book will depend on how you use it. A good instructor could find it a helpful adjunct, but self-taught students won't get the direction they look for.
-- wiredweird
A must have.......2007-01-02
Definitely a must have. If you are going to own only 3 books on design this should be one of them.
Covers the basics of typography in great detail and then goes on to discuss how it has been implemented through history. Great solid content and great examples, like most of Meggs work.
Up to date.......2006-02-07
This is a great text book for graphic designers to have in their library. It provides a lot of visuals and information designers should be familiarized with.
One of the best.......2004-07-05
I have been a graphic designer for over 20 years. I teach typography at the university level. I learned typography the old-fashioned way: by specifying, setting, and manipulating it by hand. From that background I can confidently state that THE best way to truly understand how type works is through understanding the forms of letters, words, and groups of words.
Students trying to understand typography today have a huge disincentive to slow down and truly study how type works and that is, the speed of the computer. It's easy to go right past the fundamentally subtle nature of letterforms and combinations thereof. You can't understand type at the pace that you can pull down a menu and select a typeface while rushing to get to the more exciting steps of design.
This book is one of the very best for SHOWING what type is really about. Comments about the layout of the book and the size of artwork in it should not dissuade students and instructors; this book will show you what type IS and how it works in design.
Wow, what a letdown.......2003-05-29
This is one of the rare books that my art college actually required me to purchase for a Typography class. The design of this book is poor and very dated. Just take a look at the cover. The first chapter offers a timeline which is interesting in concept--it features a brief history of lettering and type, and adds images of other significant events happening at the same time. But the timeline design forces you to jump back and forth from images to text and the grid layout forces the image placement to be so inconsistent that you give up trying to find the corresponding text. The rest of the book provides interesting and useful information for the type neophyte, but again, its WAY too dated to be a required textbook. I'm sorry I bought this book.
Book Description
More often workplace writing and document design takes a backseat in a company's mission/product. This book offers strategies and tools for document design of ALL types. Readers will extend to visual design the approach they assimilate in their writing and editing. It focuses on the kinds of situations and practical documents that employees encounter daily, with a special focus on audience, purpose, and context of the message. Topics include: perception and design; visual analysis; extra-textual design; pictures, and more. Writers and editors who design documents.
Part of the Allyn & Bacon Series in Technical Writing, edited by Sam Dragga, Texas Tech University.
Customer Reviews:
Dreadful.......2007-05-21
This book was required for a graduate course in visual communications. The book is written in a style of chest-puffing academic balderdash that renders it useless and unreadable. Crummy paper and truly ugly illustrations add to the miasma. I usually keep classroom texts but I'm selling back this one. I won't get much money though because it's so poorly bound that it looks much more used than it really was. Poor unlucky student who buys it.
Poor quality.......2005-09-12
The content of this book is not bad, but the actual quality of product is horrendous.
I have had this text for about a week and the pages have already become unbound. Some of the pages look like they were printed on a photocopier running out of ink. The text is fine, but the graphs look terrible. One would think that a book about design would have put more thought into their own design and production run.
My gripe is simply that this book is too much money for the truly piss-poor physical quality. $76 for a book whose binding became unglued in the first week? $76 for a text whose pages look like they were printed on with an empty toner cartridge? This is a sick joke! Designing Visual Language is a piece of junk and Allyn & Bacon should be ashamed of themselves for having no quality control.
Addendum...
I'm wondering why people have not found this review helpful. Is it because they want to buy a book that is poorly made? If so, I invite you to buy the book. Unless Allyn & Bacon make some serious changes, you'll soon think, "Maybe his review WAS helpful after all!" but by that time you'll be out $76.
Designing Visual Language.......2001-07-14
It reads kind of like a text book, but the information is very good. I am trying to learn about graphic design in my free time and this book has helped me to better understand the basics of visual communication. I have also reciently read "The non-designers design book", which I also recommend. This book starts at the beginning and helps you to understand what you must do, and take into account in order to make something visually pleasing. It has helped me in my design efforts. The book was lent to me and now I plan on buying it, it was so good. I might even look into the rest of the books in the series. (The Allyn & Bacon series in Technical Communication) All in all a good book. I give it 4 stars
Book Description
The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook is a step by step guide to every aspect of newspaper design, from basic page layout to complex infographics. The new edition is now in 4-color and introduces a new chapter on web design.
This textbook is for journalism students and professionals alike. It is loaded with examples, advice, design ideas, and exercises that teach students how to manipulate the basic elements of design (photos, headlines, and text); create charts, maps, and diagrams; design attractive photo spreads; add effective, appealing sidebars to complex stories; create lively, engaging feature page designs; work with color; and redesign a newspaper.
Customer Reviews:
The rules of good newspaper design.......2007-07-03
Tim Harrower provides a very practical guide to newspaper design. The art of newspaper design tends to be very subjective, so this book lays down some facts and guidelines to put to rest some of the indecisive elements of design.
For a beginner, this is a book that will give you the confidence and understanding to conquer page layout.
The CD gives the novice an even more practical guide than the book can deliver.
One criticism is that the book is printed on light gloss stock and is spiral bound. I am not sure how it was survive rough treatment.
Brian Hurst
A must have .......2007-06-14
When I accepted my first "real" job in journalism as a page designer for a local weekly I was struck by a horrifying thought, I really knew nothing about newspaper design. I had done it before for my college paper, sure, but this was the big time. I needed a refresher course and I needed it fast... Tim Harrower and this spiral-bound book came to my rescue.
Although it was first published in 1989, this book will be relevant as long as newspapers exist, even in this age of computer design. Harrower explains and shows why certain designs are good and bad and he approaches it in a situational, problem-solving format. For example, he explains what should be done when you have to design a page with no art, when you have butting headlines, or two horizontal photos etc. Harrower says that most page designers stumble into the job and from this point of view he explains what exactly, a good design is. This book will always be on my desk.
(I wish my publications professor used this instead of the worthless $105 monstrosity he made us buy (and that we never used by the way).)
So, after some mild freaking out followed by a lot of reading, I can start my new job with confidence thanks to this book.
Practical and useful for the professional.......2006-07-22
I am an editor these days.
I came on this book quite a few years ago when I was a sub. It was recommended to me by an old hand in the newspaper game.
Without doubt, it is the single best aquisition I have made in terms of newspaper design.
In the places I have worked, I have been regarded extremely highly for my layout skills.
This book, with a little creativity, is the basis of almost everything I do in terms of layout.
If you are serious about the newspaper game, get it, study it and then apply what you learn. It will help our career enormously.
Awesome Textbook.......2006-03-19
This textbook is awesome. I've never seen a better textbook. It lays everything out, and makes it simple to understand. It tells you what to do and what not to do in simple language and clear pictures. It's one of few textbooks worth keeping for future use in your career (provided you're going into the newspaper industry)!
No customer service.......2005-10-26
I ordered the hardbound and got the spiral bound, a product worth $12 less. It was then that I discovered there is no way to express a complaint to Amazon: no phone number, no email address, no human help. All that is available is a maze of pre-written web help, none of which includes "credit my account $12, since I don't want to go through the hassle of sending this book back." What's up, Amazon? Don't you want satisfied customers? I spend literally hundreds here each year. This egregious deficit needs to be fixed immediately. Otherwise, I highly recommend this book.
Product Description
Often rejected out of hand as a typesetting tool, Microsoft Word has greater typographic capabilities than even most long-time users realize. With a little tweaking, Word can produce type that few readers could distinguish from the best of Quark or InDesign. In this book, Aaron Shepard gives a tour of the depths of the program, describing the settings, commands, and manual adjustments you need to create type that no book reviewer will scoff at. Skeptical? This book's own typesetting is the proof!
Customer Reviews:
Perfect Pages.......2007-09-21
My wife started a publishing company. I am the typesetter. I just finished typesetting her book using MS Word and Aaron's book was indispensible! I knew how to use Word to type letters, etc, but to turn a manuscript into a professional quality book is a different matter. The book helped me tremendously. I even had a question and emailed the author--Aaron responded that same day with an answer. Highly recommend to those starting out in the POD publishing business. I don't think I even need to buy one of those thick MS WORD manuals now. He taught me what I needed to know (along with a fair amount of software savvy of my own). The book assumes a certain level of competence to begin with.
For Microsoft Word Users, Self Publishing Guides .......2007-08-04
Dear John: Letters From a Fan in New York City: An Interactive Book I wished I had purchased this book before I embarked on publishing my own. It would have saved me a lot of money and aggravation along the way. This is the economical way to go, especially if you don't have a graphic intensive book, but it can hangle graphics, too. Practical advice, and you can contact the author an the Yahoo forums.
Susan Kalior.......2007-05-25
Aaron Shepards, "Perfect Pages" is a treasure trove of 'how to's' for using MS Word to typeset and layout your manuscript for publishing. If you feared such a task would be too difficult, you will sigh with relief by following Aaron's simple instructions. Following these steps is like taking stairs to make the dream of being a published writer come true! I also highly recommend Aaron Shepards companion book, "Aiming at Amazon" to further actualize that dream. These books are the way to go.
The perfect gift for a small press or self-publisher.......2007-03-28
I picked this up along with the author's "Aiming At Amazon" since the small press I work with is POD and works with Word and Lightning Source (as does Shepherd) so I figured this would be an excellent educational tool for the basics of layout.
This really is an excellent introduction to the basics laying out a book in Microsoft Word (2003 and older--the 2007 update hasn't appeared yet, but it's on my want list!). Everything from properly sizing pages to tweaking text to make it look nicer is covered. The author's writing style is clear without being loaded with jargon, and he manages to describe visuals without pictures quite effectively.
There are a few things missing that I would have like to have seen covered. For example, he doesn't explain how to deal with the invisible, nonembeddable fonts that can make Lightning Source send your manuscript back to you for reformatting, nor does he explain the various formatting marks that you may have to go through if something doesn't turn out right. Additionally, his main focus seems to be the bare-bones approach to layout, rather than covering the little details that can make POD look just as good, if not better, than traditionally printed books.
However, I have found this to be an absolutely invaluable guide to basic layout. Shepherd is an expert at POD, and this is a definite plus for any POD publisher or self-publisher's bookshelf.
Make Word much better.......2007-02-10
This little book shows you how to use a word processor to produce results that are so much better than what the usual defaults produce. The book is oriented toward Microsoft Word, but I have used the ideas both in Word and OpenOffice to produce documents that look so much better on paper. Get this book and learn how really use a word processor.
Book Description
This completely updated edition of an industry classic shows a new generation of editors and designers how to make their publications sing! Readers will find a treasury of practical tips for helping story and design reinforce each other and create powerful pages that are irresistible to readers. Brimming with hundreds of illustrations, Editing by Design presents proven solutions to such design issues as columns and grids, margins, spacing, captions, covers and color, type, page symmetry, and much more. A must-have resource for designers, writers, and art directors looking to give their work visual flair and a competitive edge!
Customer Reviews:
Excellent guide and reference material........2007-01-10
I use this book to teach my first year graphic design students. It has some excellent and simple illustrations. The layout of the book is very friendly and easy to follow.
Excellent book!! - "Conflicted" should look a little deeper!.......2006-12-02
First of all, if "Conflicted" found the book difficult to follow, so be it. Mileage varies from person to person. And I will agree, the cover is a disappointment.
However, the part you couldn't read was a design element, not intended as text to be read; the **title** is printed in clear letters at the top of the cover. Second, this book is intended for beginners and - since we supposedly learn 90% of everything we *ever* learn by example - it tries to teach as much by example as by assertion. Hence, the informal style and wonderful profusion of examples. White **shows** as well as tells on almost every two-page spread - that's one of the major strengths of the book, in my opinion. Instead of distracting the reader by content-specific illustrations, he chose **very carefully** hand-drawn illustrations - and, by the way, mostly black and white to keep the book affordable. And for all that concrete terminology you couldn't find - try the Glossary that begins on p. 241.
As I said, your mileage may vary. But to me, this book presents the basic concepts of page and type design for the beginner in a way that really worked for me. 30 years later, I still value it!
Thank you, Mr White........2006-05-13
I have probably never learned more about any subject than I have with this book. Being the eternal student, I can be critical if a book doesn't teach me anything new, or pads itself out with extraneous rot. This book does neither of these things. It is concise, incredibly comprehensive, clear, honest and delivers much much MUCH. How I would love to get inside this man's brain and/or have him partner my business! The attention to detail and range of example is exhilarating. An exemplary work that could very well have delivered the bones of my entrepreneurial idea, or at the very least, given me the vim and knowledge to execute it. Thank you, Mr White.
Conflicted.......2005-09-21
The Good:
The book contains an abundance of illustrations which can be very helpful. The author uses the text of the book itself as bad examples of design.
The Bad:
As a newbie to publication design, I approached this book as a student. I probably would have never even opened the cover of it if it weren't required for a class. The design of the cover (and most of the book) is horrible. I can't read the title and it does nothing to attract me visually. The illustrations are so sloppy they are unprofessional. Although sketches in real life should be messy, the sketches in the book should at least be interpretable. The author never uses any concrete terminology, so it is difficult categorize information as you absorb it.
An Especially Useful Feature . . ........2005-08-11
Rather than reiterating what other reviewers have already done a great job of covering, I'll simply put my proverbial 2 cents worth in for my favorite feature of the book.
Anyone who has taken design classes or read many design books has seen that the authors almost always instruct the reader to sketch out "roughs" of ideas on paper while doing the initial brainstorming on a design. This is the only book I've run into with any quantity of such sketches included.
It's always a pleasure to see an author put their money, or in this case their page space, where their mouth is.
Nicely Done.
Book Description
Fundamentally, computers just deal with numbers. They store letters and other characters by assigning a number for each one. There are hundreds of different encoding systems for mapping characters to numbers, but Unicode promises a single mapping. Unicode enables a single software product or website to be targeted across multiple platforms, languages and countries without re-engineering. It's no wonder that industry giants like Apple, Hewlett-Packard, IBM andMicrosoft have all adopted Unicode.
Containing everything you need to understand Unicode, this comprehensive reference from O'Reilly takes you on a detailed guide through the complex character world. For starters, it explains how to identify and classify characters - whether they're common, uncommon, or exotic. It then shows you how to type them, utilize their properties, and process character data in a robust manner.
The book is broken up into three distinct parts. The first few chapters provide you with a tutorial presentation of Unicode and character data. It gives you a firm grasp of the terminology you need to reference various components, including character sets, fonts and encodings, glyphs and character repertoires.
The middle section offers more detailed information about using Unicode and other character codes. It explains the principles and methods of defining character codes, describes some of the widely used codes, and presents code conversion techniques. It also discusses properties of characters, collation and sorting, line breaking rules and Unicode encodings. The final four chapters cover more advanced material, such as programming to support Unicode.
You simply can't afford to be without the nuggets of valuable information detailed in Unicode Explained.
Customer Reviews:
Very Comprehensive and Practical.......2007-10-07
I had to deal with Unicode in greater detail for two reasons. I am working on some old ASCII and ANSI text converter for the web to be able to show them in text format in a browser, rather than converting them to an image as existing tools do. The second reason is XML and the normalization of the content distributed via XML and processed or used by XSLT or DHTML apps.
I realized that the whole subject is a lot more complicated than I initially thought and the number of questions that needed an answer to move forward with what I was doing increased significantly. I was finding stuff on the web, a little bit here and a little bit there and had it one day, because progress was slow.
I stumbled one day across this book via a Google search, which returned passages from it from its Google Book search results. I found a very good answer to one of my questions and answers to some other questions that were lying around unanswered from before. I checked the index of the book to see what subjects it covers and realized that it pretty much covers all of them. So I went ahead to Amazon and bought it right there and then.
I am glad to this day that I found it and can recommend it to anybody who has only little or no knowledge of Unicode and struggles with getting a grip on all those standards for data encoding, which make it hard to keep the data within XML and text files intact across platforms and prevent your XML based application or tool from breaking because of illegal data in your content.
Excellent explanation, but Windows-centric examples.......2007-02-02
This book is excellent. The author's writing style is easy to read and he pretty much explains everything about Unicode. It's perfect if you're working with multi-lingual Web sites or email, or just if you want to start using Unicode for all of your Web site development (something everyone should do).
The only thing disappointing about this book is that all of his examples and screen shots are for and from Windows. A reader could come away with the feeling that Mac OS X and Linux don't have as much support for Unicode as Windows which, of course, is not the case at all. The least he could have done is to mention and give screenshots of Linux's "Character Map" app and Mac OS X's built-in "Character Palette", both of which are pretty much just like the Windows "Character Map" app.
I'm surprised O'Reilly allowed a book about such a platform-neutral subject to be so Windows-centric. Hopefully they can hire someone to add Linux and Mac OS X examples into the second edition.
VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!.......2006-11-27
Are you an IT professional who needs to understand Unicode and work with it? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Jukka Korpela, has done an outstanding job of writing a book that explores Unicode processing generally, but does not go into great detail on all parts of the Unicode character space.
Korpela, begins by providing a self-contained tutorial presentation of Unicode and character data. Then, the author gives detailed information about using Unicode and other character codes. Finally, he discusses relatively independent topics to be read according to each reader's specific needs.
This most excellent book guides you through the Unicode and character world. More importantly, it explains how to identify and classify characters.
A great reference for all that is Unicode (and it's more than you think)..........2006-09-11
If you're like me, you probably think of Unicode as "expanded ASCII" and that's about it. But there is infinitely more to the subject than I thought, and Unicode Explained by Jukka K. Korpela is an exhaustive reference to all that is Unicode. And in this increasingly global computing environment, you will need to know this information...
Contents:
Part 1 - Working with Characters: Characters as Data; Writing Characters; Character Sets and Encoding
Part 2 - A Systematic Look at Unicode: The Structure of Unicode; Properties of Characters; Unicode Encodings
Part 3 - Advanced Unicode Topics: Characters and Languages; Character Usage; The Character Level and Above; Characters in Internet Protocols; Characters in Programming
Appendix - Tables for Writing Characters; Index
In concept, Unicode is real simple. An expanded character set using 16 bit encoding, and you can accommodate far more languages and symbols than straight ASCII. But the implementation is far more complex than that. Korpela starts with the basics of characters... what they are, what they mean, and the nuances involved. From there, you learn about how applications have to interpret the different encoding standards and handle things like case, sort orders, line breaks, etc. When I saw the size of the book (600+ pages), I wondered if the material was just a lot of reference tables that could be found online. Gladly, it's not... This is an exploration of everything that is Unicode, and you'd have to wade through a lot of web pages to even begin to glean the level and value of information that you'll find here.
If you have anything to do with programming or designing global software, this book purchase is a no-brainer. And even if you're not doing anything in that area right now, this is one of those reference titles that is worth having on your bookshelf and available for the first time you *do* need it. It won't take long to pay for itself...
Focus Surprisingly Practical.......2006-07-16
¶ I had another Unicode book on my desk for a long time. Hardbound, thick, impressive. Never found a way to derive useful information from it however. This book is different.
¶ I had high expectations for this book because the author, Jukka Korpela, is one of those erudite and patient people who work hard to raise the signal to noise ratio in Internet newsgroups and other forums. I certainly have quite a few posts from "Yucca" in my working archive of Web tips.
¶ Working with Web pages and applications, one can run into practical problems with text display. For Americans especially, often using default software configurations, some of the problems of displaying content in other languages can seem intractable. They are not of course -- but a bit of help from workers in the rest of the world can be a real lift. After all, they deal with these issues in a practical way more often.
¶ I had a nasty run-in (also known as "learning experience") with browser display issues when my "CSS Cheatsheet" rose in popularity in Google and other search engines. I decided to create a page quoting comments from linking sites in their native languages. Everything was fine until I got to Russian. I felt as if I were up against a conspiracy of browsers, tools, operating systems and even particular custom configurations!
¶ If you are like me and your focus is practical, I recommend:
The first two chapters in Part 1: Characters as Data; Writing Characters
All the advanced topics in Part 3: these 5 chapters covered character issues involved with programming and developing in the Internet environment.
¶ Overall, this book is well-organized and quite readable, with lots of relevant illustrations. Important material is repeated and summarized for greater clarity. The author also used lots of examples from Windows programs that are familiar to many of us. This is a real plus.
Book Description
CSS-based design doesn 't need to be boring. The Art & Science of CSS brings together a talented collection of designers who will show you how to take the building blocks of your web site's design (such as headings, navigation, forms, and more) and bring them to life with fully standards-compliant CSS. This full color book helps you to design web sites that not only work well across all browsers, are easy to maintain, and are highly accessible, but are also visually stunning.
Create truly attention-grabbing headings.
Discover multiple ways to present images effectively.
Use background images to give your site zest.
Build usable and attractive navigation.
Design forms that are stylish and functional.
Learn how to break away from the square box clich ©.
Create funky tables.
And lots more
Customer Reviews:
Very Disjointed Book, Needs an Editor.......2007-10-14
This is not a comprehensive A-Z book on CSS, it is a compilation of seven essay / tutorials by five different authors on specific topics (headings, images, backgrounds, navigation, forms, rounded corners, and tables). This book is much like 7 blind folks describing an elephant and whole swatches of the elephant are left uncovered and undescribed.
It seems to be a trend amongst the tech publishers to put out books with multiple authors, yet very few of them provide any cohesive editing and authorial narrative between sections, of which The Art & Science of CSS is an offender.
Publishers and Editors, please either take a cue from short story and essay compilations and give each author an introduction at the beginning of each chapter, tell my why I should care and what this person can educate me on. If that is not the approach you want take, then have one main author or editor who crafts all the chapters into a cohesive whole with good transitions and point of view.
Sitepoint - Hire an editor who can edit. Pick one main author. Introduce the guest authors at each point where the authorship transitions. Give the reader a cohesive POV.
Amazon leads one to believe that Jonathan Snook is the main author, he is not, but has a few bits on javascript & css in several chapters. I would have liked this book a great deal more if it actually was the Art & Science of CSS with a strong voice all the way through, rather than just a few drill downs into a few topics. Cameron Adams or Jina Bolton both had great written tones & POV, why not have one of them "lead" the reader through the content?
very complicated hard to understand.......2007-10-10
I found the book hard too understand would not recomend I know html but cannot learn css from this book.
Applied CSS: Review of "The Art & Science of CSS".......2007-09-20
Good book, and right to the point. It shows you how to use CSS to create a website that will standout by using simple and clean looking designs. You can get started right away.
Chapters include how to make rounded corners on tables and navigation tabs; the combining of images and text for visually appealing web pages, as well as styling of forms, headings, lists, and page backgrounds.
The book is laid out nicely with the sample code very easy to read and follow. Excellent format. If you want a practical guide for using CSS that zeros in and focuses on the basic parts of a web page (forms, headings, text, navigation, tables, and images), this is a good one. It shows you clearly just what you need to do.
If you want a deeper explanation on CSS elements, I would recommend "Cascading Style Sheets: A Definitive Guide".
Lots of detail and applied website information perfect for practicing designers........2007-09-08
Standards-based design might seem dull but CSS-based design needn't be - and THE ART & SCIENCE OF CSS gathers together designers who show how to take a typical web site design and add CSS to jazz up results. Any college-level computer library catering to programmers and web designers will find this packed with ideas on how to design forms which are attractive and functional alike. From creating eye-catching tables and designing forms to vertical navigation basics, THE ART & SCIENCE OF CSS has lots of detail and applied website information perfect for practicing designers.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
Exceptional CSS Case Study Book.......2007-09-05
'The Art and Science of CSS' by Jonathan Snook is another gem in the sitepoint series of books. If you are a web developer, you owe it to yourself to pick up the entire LINE of sitepoint books. Ever since this publishing series came out years ago, I have been one of the main fans of these books. With spot-on design, wonderful writing, great chapter flow, and the right length for the topic at hand, I have yet to find a sitepoint book that I haven't liked, and most I LOVE the moment I start reading them. They aren't just reference manuals, they are books that are meant to be enjoyed, and if you use CSS on a daily basis, you will find this book extremely useful.
This book is broken up into 7 chapters at 200+ pages:
1. Headings
2. Images
3. Backgrounds
4. Navigation
5. Forms
6. Rounded Corners
7. Navigation
That's it. This may seem like not enough content, but if that is what you believe, you are simply ignorant, and like Socrates believed, I also do not think that is a crime.
From images that pop out and make you say 'ahhh' to slick navigation with great backgrounds to forms which really have great curb appeal and make the user want to USE the form in question (an important topic that isn't addressed nearly enough) to creating pretty round corners to tables that jump out at you, this book is G-R-E-A-T.
Fun to read, fun to use, and fun to learn from, another gem from the masters at sitepoint.
***** HIGHEST POSSIBLE RECOMMENDATION
Average customer rating:
- VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
- Excellent guide to what works and what doesn't...
- Essential Resource For Print Design
- Covers the latest potentials of desktop design.
- Practical advice for print and web
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Looking Good in Print
Roger Parker
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Roger C. Parker's One Minute Designer
ASIN: 193309706X |
Amazon.com
This book is an excellent choice for anyone aspiring to become a successful desktop-publishing professional. In fact, it's the guide, long respected in the desktop-publishing community, and this fourth edition has more examples of good and bad designs than ever.
Parker and Berry first discuss essential design concepts such as relevance, proportion, consistency, contrast, restraint, and attention to detail. Next the authors teach you about basic tools for organizing layouts: grids, columns, gutters, headlines, kickers, captions, bullet lists, and pull quotes, to name a few. They delve into the intricacies of typography and font families, highlighting such concepts as type size, alignment, and leading and kerning. Next you learn about the use of white space and about rulers and accents such as borders, boxes, drop shadows, and bleeds. The authors discuss illustrations, clip art, backgrounds, charts, diagrams, tables, and maps and advise you on positioning those elements on a page. There's also a lot of information on selecting, resizing, and placing photographs. A full-color chapter illustrates how to choose color and use spot color, full color, and duotones.
At this point the authors move from theory to hands-on projects--you apply the design concepts that they have already put forth. You learn about the appropriate design, graphic, and text elements for newsletters, ads, catalogs, and other business correspondence. Each chapter in this section offers plenty of illustrations and ends with a checklist of reminders that you can refer to as you design.
Especially useful are chapter 12, which features common design mistakes along with illustrations and explanations of what's wrong, and chapter 13, which highlights redesigns of poorly produced publications. The latter is a before-and-after glimpse of designs of almost all types of publications, from newsletter to survey. These two chapters drive home succinctly and with great visual impact every point of design that the authors have previously discussed. Finally, the appendix offers extra tips on printing in color, and choosing image databases, paper, and service bureaus.
The authors don't refer to the Windows or Macintosh operating systems or to any software programs. The understanding is that you will learn how to use your software tools elsewhere and consult the book for elements of design. That's a reasonable goal, as the authors maintain a clear, concise tone and offer many tips that are tangential but still relevant to the subject matter. For example, the chapter on type has a short sidebar on the difference between kerning and tracking and a longer sidebar on font substitution. All in all, this book functions well as both a how-to manual for beginning designers and as a design reference for more advanced designers. --Kathleen Caster
Book Description
Looking Good in Print, Sixth Edition, is the bestselling designer's guide for creating print documents using the newest desktop publishing technologies. It provides expert advice and invaluable techniques for the desktop publisher. This updated edition features special sections on working with large documents, distribution documents, and developing documents that can easily be updated and modified as well as techniques for using fonts and a variety of type styles, placement of photos and illustrations to maximize impact, organization and working with large files, how to avoid design pitfalls, and creating printable documents and forms for use on the Web. The new edition features step by step instructions and examples for creating everything from newsletters, product sheets, catalogs, advertisements and forms to newspapers, tabloids and documents used on the Web.
Customer Reviews:
VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!.......2006-09-05
Are you discovering the challenges of desktop publishing? If you are, then this book is for you! Author Roger C Parker, has done an outstanding job of writing the sixth edition of a book that has been in print for 16 years, which is for those who want to make the most of their publishing investment.
Parker, begins by exploring the organizational tools you'll use in creating your published projects. Then, the author discusses in some detail the rules you must follow when selecting and arranging type. Next, the author explores the graphic page elements that are used in conjunction with type, to highlight and enhance the printed word. The author then shows you how to choose graphic elements and position them on the page for maximum effect. He continues by focusing on the techniques of designing a range of documents from newsletters to business communications to coupons. Then, the author discusses planning and design techniques that are important for any larger project. He then lists and illustrates the most common errors that sabotage otherwise effective designs. Finally, the author takes a look at some sample documents that are riddled with errors, while others are teetering on the brink of success; and, shows you how they can be improved, through the application of basic design concepts and a smattering of common sense.
This most excellent book has grown over the years to become the "Bible" for many students and publishers. More importantly, the best part of this book is that it will encourage you to learn while practicing your craft.
Excellent guide to what works and what doesn't..........2006-06-13
If you do anything with print or web media (aka desktop publishing), you probably know how easy it is to make mistakes and produce amateurish results. Looking Good in Print (6th Edition) by Roger C. Parker gives you the background and practical advice you need to start, well... looking good in print.
Contents:
Part 1 - Elements Of Design: Getting Started; Tools of Organization; The Architecture of Type; Building Blocks of Graphic Design; The Art of Illustration; Working with Photographs
Part 2 - Putting Your Knowledge To Work: Publications; Advertisements; Sales Material; Business Communication; Response Devices - Forms, Surveys, and Coupons; Designing Large Documents and Publications; Common Pitfalls; Redesign; Designing Documents for Web Distribution
Appendix; Prepress Tips and Techniques
Index
Any book that makes it past the 2nd edition is one I usually figure has stood the test of time, and must have something to offer. This book definitely fulfills that. It starts off with the basics of fonts, lines, alignment, and all those things that you probably just take for granted. There's a real science behind it, and Parker does a good job of clearly explaining it. But rather than just dealing in generalities and theory, he applies the knowledge to real areas of writing. Part 2 is valuable both for the explanation of how things should be done, as well as visual examples of how things go wrong. Unless you can see "what's not right", it's often hard to know why something would be considered a good practice. There's an abundance of example layouts and samples to illustrate his points, and you'd be hard pressed to find this much quality information in a single source anywhere else.
This will be a book I'll keep close at hand when I do my writing assignments. I'm normally more focused on content rather than form, but knowing what an editor might do to your work (both good *and* bad) can help you make sure that you come out looking polished, and that your content doesn't get lost in the layout.
Essential Resource For Print Design.......2006-05-09
'Looking Good in Print' by Roger Parker is an absolute must have for anyone working with print media and how it travels from the production house to the reader/end-user. Now in its 6th Edition, this guide provides essential advice, tips, and tricks from someone in the know who has been working with said topic for over a decade and a half.
Discussion in this book revolves around layouts, design, working with images, text, and how to output content itself in the wisest and slickest way possible.
For anyone that works with the design of laying out information in Print form (live or online), this book is an absolute best buy!!
***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Covers the latest potentials of desktop design........2006-04-14
The sixth updated edition of Roger C. Parker's LOOKING GOOD IN PRINT tops fifteen years in print with another edition addressing the latest potentials of desktop design. From creating professional-quality letterhead and business cards to learning how to print Internet documents, advice for desktop publishers assume no special program or experience but survey different design pitfalls, how to work with large documents, and how to create designs which 'wow'. Design tips apply to either PC or MAC users alike and are packed with techniques and tips that avoid the common pitfalls.
Practical advice for print and web.......2006-01-26
I like this book because it not only covers the technical side of print and web work, but it also covers style and to some degree content. I like how the author encourages the reader to reel the design elements in. All to often the lure of the design pallette becomes too tempting and the design overshadows the content. This book will have your design complementing the content, which is how it should be.
Books:
- Graphic Guide to Frame Construction: Details for Builders and Designers (For Pros by Pros)
- Hiroshige: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
- History: Fiction or Science? (Chronology, No. 1)
Books Index
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