Leaf Man (Ala Notable Children's Books. Younger Readers (Awards))

Book Description

Fall has come, the wind is gusting, and Leaf Man is on the move. Is he drifting east, over the marsh and ducks and geese? Or is he heading west, above the orchards, prairie meadows, and spotted cows? No one's quite sure, but this much is certain: A Leaf Man's got to go where the wind blows.

With illustrations made from actual fall leaves and die-cut pages on every spread that reveal gorgeous landscape vistas, here is a playful, whimsical, and evocative book that celebrates the natural world and the rich imaginative life of children.

Includes an author's note and leaf-identifying labels.

Customer Reviews:

Simple text enhanced with a big dose of creativity!.......2007-07-06

My husband bought this for our two-year old, and we love reading it together with her. The text is simple, as it traces the journey of Leaf Man...the leaves used are magnificent in their colors...some bold, some subdued, but all unique and beautiful. I have since done some basic art projects with my daughter using this book as inspiration. We collect leaves wherever we go and hope to create a little book of our own!

Beautiful.......2007-06-11

My two little readers absolutely delight in this book. They love the language; they enjoy following the leaf man on his autumn journey; and they very much love to read it aloud to any adult who will sit with them for 10 minutes.

Beautiful.......2007-05-24

One of Lois Ehlert's best. I bought it for my mother-in-law who is a gardener and general nature-lover. But I use it to teach about leaves and using your imagination in my preschool art classes. The children all think it's so much fun. They always finish reading with so many more ideas of their own to get started on.

For leaf lovers!.......2006-11-07

My five year old and I really enjoy this book. My son enjoys looking for the pictures the leaves make and I enjoy the fact that the author collected these beautiful leaves, made images out of them and wrote a story around them! Colorful, imaginative, fun to read.

Creative look at Autumn.......2006-10-18

This is a WONDERFUL book! We read it to our class of 3-year-old preschoolers, and they were absolutely captivated. They were so quiet and engaged that they forgot to ask when we were leaving to go on our field trip.
As an added plus, we had one little girl who liked it so much that she had her mom go to the library to check it out to read at home. The child then sat down to re-create the pictures on each page using leaves she picked up in her yard. You know it is a good book if it encourages that degree of creativity and industry in a 3-year-old!

Inspired: The Ideas That Shape & Create My Design

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Inspired: The Ideas That Shape & Create My Design

Inspired: The Ideas That Shape & Create My Design
Jamie Durie
Manufacturer: Collins Design
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Gardening & Horticulture | Home & Garden | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0061351318

Book Description

Inspired traces the inspirations and influences behind Jamie Durie's award-winning garden and landscape designs.

A personal and pictorial narrative, it features a collection of Jamie's latest garden designs. From his work throughout Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and America, to art and nature, it reveals how ideas can be found in the simplest of places, and how Jamie translates these ideas into remarkable spaces for outdoor living.

Abundant with stunning gardens, Jamie's personal photography, inspiring imagery and essential information on plants and materials throughout, Inspired also includes cameo profiles of international architects, designers, artists and sculptors who have been influential to Jamie's designs.

The long-awaited follow-up to best selling titles Patio and The Outdoor Room, Inspired is a stunning addition to the Jamie Durie design collection.

Customer Reviews:

Inspired: The Ideas That Shape & Create My Design.......2007-09-14

This book was very inspiring. Perfect for giving me ideas on what I like to change in my environment.

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The New Shape of Suburbia

Manufacturer: Urban Land Institute
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0874208971

Book Description

Capitalize on the lucrative market for suburban residential development. This new book describes how consumer demands are changing, strategies for overcoming NIMBYism, and the latest trends related to open space, infill and mixed housing development, increasing density, transportation, and street design. Seasoned developers provide insight into what works--and the traps to avoid--in developing single- and multifamily properties ranging in size from 22 units to large planned communities, both conventional and new urbanist, in price ranges from affordable to luxury. Eleven case studies of projects in the United States and abroad illustrate how others are incorporating these trends into innovative and financially successful developments.

Architecture Shapes (Preservation Press)

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My twins Love this book
My twins LOVE this book!

Architecture Shapes (Preservation Press)
Michael J. Crosbie , and Steve Rosenthal
Manufacturer: John Wiley & Sons
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Board book

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ASIN: 0471143669

Customer Reviews:

My twins Love this book.......2002-04-30

The book shows basic shapes through line drawings and on the facing page different architectural elements of that shape, mainly photos of windows. My twins are 13 months old and they choose this book as one of their favorites. The photographs are crisp and reality based (no cartoons), the typeface is large and clear, and the shapes are bold and basic. The twins like it read to them as well as flipping the pages themselves. We may soon need another copy as it is getting a lot of use. I would recommend this book to any small child, beginning reader, or even a little older.

My twins LOVE this book!.......2000-03-26

The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World

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Reveals Monolithic Minds
It makes you look at buildings differently
A good read without untranslatable archibabble
Edification
A joy!

The Edifice Complex: How the Rich and Powerful Shape the World
Deyan Sudjic
Manufacturer: Penguin Press HC, The
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Criticism | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

ASIN: 1594200688

Book Description

From one of the world's premier architecture critics, a groundbreaking dissection of how the colossal egos of the powerful and wealthy determine what actually gets built--of the real reasons why we build.

Architecture critics most often write about buildings as a form of art, promulgating an "auteur theory" of architecture that focuses on the dazzling brilliance of the big names, such as Rem Koolhaas and Frank Gehry, and underplaying the role of the wealthy and powerful in forcing the architects' hands. Deyan Sudjic puts forth a boldly contrarian view. Architecture must be understood as an expression of power and as a weapon, or form of propaganda, that is used in ways both subtle and grandiose as a means of achieving and maintaining power--of carving a legacy out of glass, steel, and stone.

While most architecture books focus on a certain building or a specific architect, The Edifice Complex takes a wide-angle look at a fascinating range of buildings and large-scale building schemes--both the impressively effective and the disastrously ill conceived. In a lively and wonderfully accessible narrative style, Sudjic takes readers behind the scenes of the stories of the great political manipulators of architecture in the twentieth century, from the great dictators of fascism--Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin--and their megalomaniacal plans for rebuilding Berlin, Rome, and Moscow, to power-broker businessmen such as Nelson Rockefeller; and from the "theme park" propaganda of the presidential libraries to the vainglorious symbolism of Saddam Hussein's Mother of All Battles Mosque. While some leaders have used architecture as a means of consolidating control over a nation, others have employed architecture to shape a new national identity, as Ataturk did to a large degree of success in Turkey and the shahs attempted and failed to do in Iran.

But what of the architects? Sudjic also examines the role they play in lending their talents to these efforts, from those who have all too willingly aided and abetted, such as Albert Speer, to those who have courted the powerful while remaining true to their art, such as Mies van der Rohe.

The Edifice Complex offers a brilliant reinterpretation of the role of buildings in our lives and of the age-old question why we build.

Customer Reviews:

Reveals Monolithic Minds.......2006-06-12

The individual sentences of this book are written in a literate, engaging style. The author is a master of the telling figure of speech. For example, he compares some architects' broad, over-the-top creations to books published in large-print. However, the paragraphs often follow a somewhat difficult zigzag course. Reading along them is like trying to get a zipper back on track. Sudjic refers now to an architect - now to his predecessor - now to his replacement.

Nevertheless, this book is worth the concentration it takes to read it through. When you finish, you will have a better insight into the minds of many dictators and tyrants than a whole host of psychology books can offer. After all the analyses of Hitler's motives that have been put forth, after all the anguished Holocaust questionings of "Why?" - this book gives one of the most revealing looks into what might impel such savage destruction. You will see the drive these men have to clear away diverse individuality and to replace it with monolithic constructions designed to memorialize them for the ages. It's Ozymandias all over again and again.

There are also good chapters on less weighty building projects - such as the various Presidential libraries. And for mystery fans, you will even find a good true-life murder story here.

I just wish the publishers of this book had gone to the extra expense of including pictures. It would have been valuable to see the buildings that Sudjic refers to as he describes them.

My only other criticism is that when all is said and done, Sudjic still seems to subscribe to the idea of architecture as a great man's sculpting projected large upon the landscape. He seems to approve of Brasilia, for example - with all its incommodious vastness of space and structure. Sudjic would do well to incorporate the ideas of urbanologist Jane Jacobs into his analyses. But you can compare the philosophies yourself. After reading this book, get a copy of Jacobs' "Death and Life of Great American Cities" for a more complete understanding of how form really must be made to follow function.

It makes you look at buildings differently.......2006-03-22

Mr. Sudjic is an architecture critic. In this book he talks about the buildings that the wealthy and the powerful have put up to honor themselves. He writes mostly of well known things: the designs Albert Speer did for Hitler, Saddam Hussein's Mother of All Battles Mosque (to celebrate Iraq's victory in the First Gulf war - Yes, that's right, victory), the designs of the Presidental libraries in the US, Donald Trump's various constructions.

Beyond understanding more about these buildings, it makes you take a different view of what's going on around you. For instance their is a new sub-division of McMansions being built in the town where I live. They are ugly, stupid, tacky buildings, no originality at all. They are not identical, in fact all are different; but they all look just alike.

And you think of Bill Gates $30 million house in Seattle. And the tower at Stanford University sometimes called 'Hoover's Last Erection.'

A good read without untranslatable archibabble.......2006-03-08

This is a very readable book that moves quickly to new projects and players without getting dull. The only drawback is a lack of illustrations but the writer is so good at description that it allows you to easily understand the experience of each building project.

Most of the major works are already well known and written about extensively elsewhere But compiling them here with the authors perceptive analysis makes for good reading. I suggest searching the internet for pictures of the more interesting projects.

I was also impressed by the scope of the book. Rather than limiting himself to one geographic area or the best known examples of architecture used for control or ego enhancement, Sudjic includes worldwide examples with relevent background information.

Sudjic also attempts to make sense of the motivation of the architects involved. Can an architect produce architecture without being drawn in to the politics. Are the architects of despots fellow conspirators, enablers or simply earning a living. Does the ego of the architect, in many cases of questionable talent, make them easy prey for those seeking to build an architecture of oppression. In each example Sudjic makes use of the information available to try to clearify this as well as the motivation of the rich and powerful who commission such architecture.

Ultimately this is a book that will appeal not only to those knowledgable in architecture who are familiar with the cast-of-characters but also those who just want a very interesting book.

Edification.......2006-03-05

Learned from it and loved it. Highly recomend the book; you'll never look at buildings the same.

A joy!.......2005-12-14

This book is not only informative but highly entertaining at the same time. One would consider this a high quality journalistic piece rather than cerebral thesis. As the title said appropriately, Deyan discussed the significance of architecture in humanity. Some architects and urban planners would design buildings and city plan to facilitate civilisationn whilst some would twist these disciplines to endorse their idealogies, expressing their yearning for immortality. Naturally, a few meglomaniacs such as Chairman Mao, Stalin, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Miterrand, Mussolini and many others are featured in length. There were also discussions about the "superarchitects", of why they become so, of why they have become their own worst enemies, of why some have let egos get the better of them (namely David Childs from SOM versus Daniel Libeskind regarding the construction of Freedom Tower on Ground Zero). I truly say that after reading the book, I'm more informed of the architecture around me. Suffice to say that it's ideal to read the book now where the featured projects are still fresh and up-to-date. In another five years or beyond, it might become less convincing to the younger generation despite that the essence of architecture shall remain the same. As one should know, architecture takes a long time to evolve. If you refer to Palladio design, it's still a fresh as it was concocted few hundred years ago. A book written with conviction and passion by an enthusiastic but knowledgeable author who shares with eager and enthusiastic reader like myself. Highly recommended and look forward to a sequel if there's such a thing. The only improvement I can comment is probably including pictures of those mentioned buildings as reference. In doing so, the book become more interactive and even more effective. What a joy!

The Community Planning Handbook: How People Can Shape Their Cities, Towns and Villages in Any Part of the World

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An excellent resource for conducting citizen consultation & engagement into neighbourhood development.
easy to follow

The Community Planning Handbook: How People Can Shape Their Cities, Towns and Villages in Any Part of the World
Nick Wates
Manufacturer: Earthscan Publications Ltd.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1853836540

Book Description

An accessible how-to-do-it style, with tips, checklists and sample documents help readers to get started quickly, learn from others' experience and select the approach best suited to their situation. The glossary, bibliography and contact details allow them to find further resources and information. This handbook is essential for all those involved in shaping their local environment - planners, architects, community workers, local authorities and residents - and a useful reference for students.
Published in association with The Urban Design Group, The Prince of Wales' Foundation for Architecture, South Bank University and the UK Department for International Development

Customer Reviews:

An excellent resource for conducting citizen consultation & engagement into neighbourhood development........2007-04-28

This book is the A-Z of community lead local planning. It includes 200 pages of concise and clearly explained principles, methods, example scenarios, forms, check lists, a glossary, contacts and other incredibly useful how-to resources. This manual is very useful for urban planning consultants, progressive municipal authorities and communities leaders that want to ensure the voice of the people who will be affected by local construction are part of the decision making process. Nick Wates writes from a perspective of real world experience with lots of practical tips for situations that vary from ideal community owned projects to last minute public consultation in a traditional city planing process.

"The Community Planning Handbook" is designed to be easily searched for ideas and practical direction in planning and organizing events, managing processes and establishing organizations to involve and empower citizens to give informed direction to the designs and implementation of changes to the architecture in their communities. The text is written from a UK perspective although there is considerable effort made to include photos and context from other nations, especially from rural villages in places like China, India, Fiji, Kenya and the Philippines. Jeremy Brook's graphical design is very user friendly with hundreds of illustrative photos, diagrams, time lines and information boxes.

Although "The Community Planning Handbook" is written within a limited scope of physical planning and design for villages, towns and cities, many of the principles, methods and suggestions are still applicable to other situations of participatory planning, such as public policy and organizational change. If you want to help manage organization and community efforts that are bottom-up, buy this book and keep it on your desk.

easy to follow.......2001-04-20

This book offers lots of general principles, methods and scenarios to help people who are interested in community planning as soon as possible to get involved. It also makes links between those principles, methods and scenarios with each other in order to make them more useful and easy to apply. The last part-appendices can combine all those above mention to a practice situation. This is a very useful handbook, in my personal opinion.

Designs for Coloring: Prisms (Designs for Coloring)

Average customer rating:

Good Coloring Book
terrific
this coloring book... i would say is a "no"...
Deja Vu anyone? Many too simplistic...

Designs for Coloring: Prisms (Designs for Coloring)

Manufacturer: Grosset & Dunlap
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Architecture | Professional & Technical | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 0448422514

Book Description

Grab your markers, limber up your fingers, and get ready to color! This one new addition to Ruth Heller's bestselling series-featuring 31 intricate designs packed into each book-will keep amateur artists of all ages entertained for hours! The designs are printed on extra-heavy paper and are suitable for framing.

This book is packed full with intricate designs to challenge and delight your mind. Prisms contains sophisticated designs in which to create your own kaleidoscope of dazzling effects. Each highly detailed design makes them come alive!

Customer Reviews:

Good Coloring Book.......2007-08-08

This book has many pages of good images. Ruth Heller is my favorite coloring book auther (artist?), so pretty much anything she does, I want. Prisms is not one of my favorites, but I think that may just be personal preference. For the adult colorer (and for kids too), it's hard to go wrong with Ruth Heller.

terrific.......2007-01-09

My niece came to visit me over Thanksgiving and she had two coloring books that belonged to her mother (about 30 years ago!). They were designs by Ruth Heller. My daughter loved them and so did my nephew and son. I immediately got online and found more and ordered them for all four and they love them.

this coloring book... i would say is a "no"..........2006-11-28

Yes, all the designs look like copies. To be more specific, take the design you see on the cover or an excerpt from the inside, and the shape, the outermost outline, is the same for every picture. Except maybe sometimes the 4 mini hexagons are triangles. Besides that, every picture is the same thing, with different triangles on the inside.

Overall, the quality and the designs aren't bad at all, the only bad thing is that they are SO REPETETIVE!

Deja Vu anyone? Many too simplistic..........2002-10-22

I know there are only so many things that can be done with a prism, but still...there are other designs that could be combined with prisms to add more interest, challenge and fun. Each page looked like a copy of the one before it, with maybe a new angle or a bigger set of triangles. In the back of the book, there are 3 of 4 very advanced designs that I wish had been made into a whole book of like designs. If you're just starting out and don't mind repeating the same "look", then you may like it. I gave my brand new one to a friend instead. I recommend Power Mandala's instead, for variety, complexity and challenging fun.

The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem

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The Shape of the Holy: Early Islamic Jerusalem
Oleg Grabar
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0691036535

Book Description

From the time of Herod through the Crusades, Jerusalem had officially "changed its religion" several times, with Jews, Christians, and Muslims inscribing the story of their faiths on the urban landscape. In this handsomely illustrated book, noted Islamist Oleg Grabar offers a rare account of the great role played by early Islam in defining the "look" of Jerusalem that remained largely intact until the twentieth century. From about 640 to 1100, Muslims transformed Christian Jerusalem, mainly the area now known as the Haram al-Sharif, both physically and ideologically to embody their new faith. Grabar examines this process, showing how it led to great architectural achievements, including The Dome of the Rock, still perhaps the most vivid image to impress any visitor to Jerusalem. Offering a major photographic record of The Dome's mosaics in color together with its interiors, this book shows in rich detail how Islam articulated itself architecturally, touching on historical and legendary memories and on themes of both religious harmony and Islamic triumph.

Dominating Jerusalem's landscape today, The Dome of the Rock was commissioned by Abd Al-Malik in 691, and still houses the Rock from which the Prophet Mohammed is believed to have ascended into heaven. Grabar argues that its construction altered the visual equilibrium of Jerusalem by equating its eastern hill, Mt. Moriah, a key landmark in Islam, with its western ones, Golgotha and Mt. Zion, highlighted by Christian monuments. A close look at The Dome's construction and decoration leads to a new explanation of the building as a Late Antique monument of art that could be adapted to several different and at times simultaneous interpretations. Grabar also offers a unique portrait of Jerusalem in the eleventh century under the Fatimid dynasty in Cairo, when the city was at its peak as a peaceful, cosmopolitan center. Through an innovative computer modeling program, Grabar presents fascinating reconstructions of the Haram al-Sharif, taking us down streets and past buildings, of which only remnants exist today.

Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory

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A Perceptive New Take on Presidential Power.

Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory
Benjamin Hufbauer
Manufacturer: University Press of Kansas
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Popular Culture | Social Sciences | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

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Historians in Public: The Practice of American History, 1890-1970

ASIN: 0700614222

Book Description

When Bill Clinton, flanked by Presidents Bush past and present, stood in the rain in Little Rock to open his presidential library, the moment seemed to transcend the partisan fray. The imposing structure itself was carefully crafted to play up Clinton's accomplishments and legacy, while downplaying the impeachment affair that shadowed his second term. That focus-on the higher purposes, meanings, and accomplishments of a particular presidency-also deeply reflected the spirit of most other presidential libraries and memorials.

Expanding on this essential theme, Benjamin Hufbauer explores the visual and material cultures of presidential commemoration--memorials and monuments, libraries and archives--and the problematic ways in which presidents themselves have largely taken over their own commemoration. Describing how presidential commemoration has evolved over the past century, Hufbauer reviews the making and meaning of the Lincoln Memorial, the development of Franklin Roosevelt's archives into the first federal presidential library and museum, and the imperial implications of LBJ's truly monumental library in Austin. He contrasts the recent $20 million reinvention of the Truman Library, designed to boldly tackle controversial issues related to racism, McCarthyism, and nuclear anxiety, with the Nixon Library's and Reagan Library's efforts to minimize fallout from the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals. He also provides the first detailed study of the meaning and influence of the Smithsonian's popular First Ladies exhibit.

Hufbauer sees these various commemorative sites as playing a key role in the construction of our collective political and cultural self-images and as another sign of our preoccupation with celebrity culture. Ultimately, he contends, these presidential temples reflect not only our civil religion but also the extraordinary expansion of executive authority--and presidential self-commemoration--since FDR.

While presidential libraries and memorials have also become media-driven attractions that often contribute significantly to the economies of their home cities, Hufbauer shows that their primary function remains the transformation of presidential history into presidential myth for the general public.

This book is part of the CultureAmerica series.

Customer Reviews:

A Perceptive New Take on Presidential Power........2006-01-19

Remember those true presidential giants? FDR, Harry Truman, and LBJ--and larger-than-life Bill Clinton. Did you know that FDR was his own architect for his presidential library at Hyde Park? Jefferson wasn't the only architect-president. But most fun of all is to get another look in the imperial-yet-downhome machinations of Lyndon Johnson as he strove create a library that rivaled the Egyptian tombs. OK, so it looks like a scholarly book--and it is, but there is a lot of good reading here. Hufbauer is too polite to employ his scholarship to point out what intellectual pygmies some of our leaders are, and now more than ever, it is important to understand the significance of memory in national life.

The Nature of Design: How the Principles of Design Shape Our World--From Graphics and Architecture to Interiors and Products

Average customer rating:

Excellent Book on Fundamentals of Design
attractive presentation of basics
Lots of visuals

The Nature of Design: How the Principles of Design Shape Our World--From Graphics and Architecture to Interiors and Products
Peg Faimon , and John Weigand
Manufacturer: F & W Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 1581804784

Book Description

Finally, here's a design basics book that works the same way a designer's brain does-visually. This innovative guide sets itself apart from all those text-heavy, introductory titles on the market by showing creatives how to find inspiration in their everyday surroundings.

Readers will learn all the rules of design with a look at how everything from graphics and architecture to fashion and product design shape the world. These are the fundamentals that help designers develop an eye for composing groundbreaking projects.

Whether they're fresh out of school or running their own firm, designers will come away from this sophisticated-yet accessible-title with a renewed excitement for their work. Every page is packed with a powerful reminder: Design is all around us in the natural world and the urban landscape.

Customer Reviews:

Excellent Book on Fundamentals of Design.......2006-11-20

This book is a great introduction to the fundamentals of design. It is light on text but gives a sufficient explanation of each principle to get you started. The visuals are great and varied, examples are taken from nature, architecture, industrial design, cooking (yes, you read that correctly) and of course graphic design. You know a book addresses fundamentals when it's principles can be applied to such a wide range of concretes! I like that the authors explicitly included such diverse examples, the diverse graphics greatly enhance the explanations and help the reader gain a firmer grasp of the *principle* and not just a particular application of the principle.

My one complaint is that important aspects of design are omitted. For example, the topic of color is not covered, not even in essentials. It is implicit in some chapters but you have to infer how a design principle such as unity would apply to the selection of a color palette. A minor complaint is that there is too little content on each topic, the explanations could be "fleshed out" a little more.

The book itself is beautifully designed and easy to read. I think I read it in a 2 days. It provides a good introduction to design for the newcomer and a good refresher course on the basics for the experienced designer.

attractive presentation of basics.......2005-03-04

I'm not a designer. But recently having read Chip Kidd's "The Cheese Monkeys," about graphic design students, I developed a layman's interest and came across The Nature of Design. It does an excellent job of presenting the key elements and principles of design (graphic, industrial, landscape, etc.)in a format that's easy to read, well illustrated, and takes its examples from a variety of design fields. For the general reader or a novice (or would be) design student, this is a great place to start. Highly recommended!

Lots of visuals.......2005-01-26

I'm a beginner in the design world, and I really liked this book. The authors overview the fundamentals of design, but there is very little text. Instead, the content is comprised mostly of visuals which illustrate the concepts the authors are presenting. Some of the visuals have accompanying text which explains why they were included, others don't. I think the best way to benefit from this book it to work through it, really examining the variety of pictures.

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