With 100,000 copies sold, Graphic Design Cookbook is one of the most useful all-purpose resources for designers and anyone who wants to create a dynamic layout for magazines, newsletters, books, posters, and other media. Now released with a fresh new cover, its more than a thousand line drawings illustrate effective design devices, type treatments, spatial solutions, and pictorial presentations, allowing examination and comparison of various options in no time. The Graphic Design Cookbook can be opened to virtually any page for instant access to great ideas. As a catalyst for cooking up endless new design recipes, this classic goes on inspiring one generation of designers to the next.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
No Help At All:
From the title I thought I was getting a great book that would give me the "recipes" to great layouts. What I recieved was a book with designs that looked similar to ones in Word. There was no explanation of how the element could be used in a design scheme. I would not recommend this book. It was a disappointment.
AWSOME!:
I'm a soon-to-be designer who has no academic training whatsoever and one day I had to to a project to finish my english course and I thought: "Ummm I'm making a magazine!" But as you probably know it's easier to think than to do and when I finally sat at my chair and started thinking about how I was gonna do that I completely blocked. And this is the part that Design Cookbook comes and saves me. I know that some people don't like this book because there almost nothing written on it but I think this is... more info
Great for breaking a creative block:
I bought this book with hopes that the design ideas inside would help with a brochure I was creating. My patterns were getting predictable and droll. I found a couple patterns I liked and put them to use. Interestingly enough, they look less-interesting in application than they look in the book. To make matters worse, my employer REALLY didn't like the aspects that I did use from the book and had me remove them. But, again, if you find yourself needing inspiration, this is a good book to look at.
HUGE Disappointment:
This book is filled with nothing more than frivolous and useless fluff (I simply will not refer to them as "ideas"). For example, putting a detective hat atop an "R" and turning its serif into a pipe is downright childish. Seriously, any good designer or anyone with common sense would steer clear of this visually-horrifying garbage. If you are at all serious about design, pick up any/all of the Jim Krause books. This one's going to the next library book sale.
