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Diagrams: Innovative Solutions for Graphic Designers:
Rotovision
Diagrams offers a unique solution to the organisation of information and provides fresh thinking and imaginative solutions, making this an indispensable and inspirational reference book. This book offers a collection of exemplary, creative, and imaginative information design. Shown in its original application and juxtaposed with the reference material used for each piece of work, every design included in the book is analysed. Useful templates are included on the accompanying disc, along with clip-art features, such as arrows, flows, and boxes, so that designers can adopt and adapt them. The font H-AND-S is presented in this book, together with the work of two of our Graphic Design and New Media students.
Information Architects:
Richard Saul Wurman
This book presents the work of 24 individuals or groups of designers, faced with a "Tsunami" of data, whose passion "is to make the complex clear." The designs range from Alexander Tsiaras' computerized photographic medical visualizations and Clement Mok's web sites to David McCaulay's insightful freehand sketches and finished drawings. This book, like it's contents, is about discovery. The "rediscovery" of Richard Curtis' work for USA Today and Don Moyer's work for the Steelcase furniture catalogs are recognized for the style and clarity they brought to those media. This is a book that you can return to often both for it's sheer beauty and because of something new each time is revealed in it's illustrations.
Understanding USA:
Richard Saul Wurman
If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, then Understanding USA is one of the most comprehensive reference books ever written. Every page is packed with clear, simple graphics designed to break down massive amounts of information into easily digestible bits. Nearly any topic that relates to the U.S. in a broad scale is covered here: financial, social, and political statistics are presented in reasonably clear-cut chapters. As each chapter is color-coded in the top right corner, it's easy to flip to the section of interest. General subjects include war, crime, education, environmental issues, and federal income and expenses. Within each of those areas, you can dive into the numbers of pretty specific queries, such as "How many nuclear weapons have been detonated since 1945?" or "How solvent is the social security program?" The format for all these statistics is reminiscent of USA Today's front page- good use of colors, a large variation in the type of chart use, graphics, and an occasional photo of real people. It's easy to understand, and full of interesting-information. Recommended as a basic reference book, or a sourcebook, this is a fine choice.
A Practical Guide to Digital Design:
Pina Lewandowsky
If you use a computer to design, these concepts and techniques will improve the flow and harmony of your work. Examples from the most popular programs, including QuarkXpress, Adobe Photoshop and Macromedia Free-hand, show how to transform an idea or content into a visually pleasing and effective means of communication.
Information Graphics:
Robert L. Harris
This book is a reviewer's delight: a resource that is not only well done but an unexpected treatment of a mainstream topic. Charts, graphs, maps, diagrams, and tables are ubiquitous in society as tools for communicating information visually, but this is the first publication that provides an in-depth treatment of their practical application. Every page has a half-dozen or more illustrations, and the page size of 8.5-by-11 inches makes for good legibility. The reference is highly recommended.
The elements of User Experience:
Jesse James Garrett
If you are looking for a good framework for thinking about design strategy, for your own thinking, for explaining things to clients, or for students, you will find this book very useful.
Designing Interfaces:
Jenifer Tidwell
UI designers over the years have refined the art of interface design, evolving many best practices and reusable ideas. If you learn these, and understand why the best user interfaces work so well, you too can design engaging and usable interfaces with less guesswork and more confidence. Designing Interfaces captures those best practices as design patterns -- solutions to common design problems, tailored to the situation at hand. Each pattern contains practical advice that you can put to use immediately, plus a variety of examples illustrated in full color. You'll get recommendations, design alternatives, and warnings on when not to use them. Each chapter's introduction describes key design concepts that are often misunderstood, such as affordances, visual hierarchy, navigational distance, and the use of color. These give you a deeper understanding of why the patterns work, and how to apply them with more insight.
Small Screens:
Studio 7.5
The book presents the basic areas when designing for small screens. It is well organised by interesting chapters and by the excellent organisation inside each chapter that are divided in 3 sections. The first more theoretical, the second with practical examples and the third has a good overview of the technologies behind. This makes the reading and the browsing later on much easier. Hence, the book covers the design but also gives an overview of the technological issues.
Institute for Information Design:
Information Design Source Book
Information design is a crucial instrument for the solution of communication tasks, involving the application of a wide range of media - print, electronic, and multimedia - as well as architectural elements. This publication presents 70 successful concepts and strategies for the preparation, structuring, and presentation of information, organized according to the content to be conveyed - Corporate Communication, Products and Services, Signage and Directions, Methods and Tools, and Education, Science, and Research. Studio AND is one of them!
The Practical Guide to Information Design:
Ronnie Lipton
The Practical Guide to Information Design provides all the tools, resources, and best practices that designers need to create highly successful print and digital information design projects.
Navigation for the Internet:
Studio 7.5
With this guide, Web designers who want to orient surfers efficiently will be able to achieve their goal. It presents virtual settings that show how navigation can become simpler thanks to users’ predictable behavior, or through interaction and association. All the standards appear, along with suggestions for new ones in the developing media. A “What’s Next” section looks to the next generation: handheld devices.
Flash Web Design:
Hillman Curtis
The book demonstrates the importance of conceptualizing the clients' needs and how to preplan and storyboard the projects. It documents the motivations behind even the smallest design decisions, making this book valuable as a teaching tool and not just a grab bag of hotshot how-tos. Each project takes time, but even beginners can re-create the Flash movies. The steps are clearly explained and illustrated with screen shots. The artwork, however, is not provided. To work along with the deconstructions, readers will have to create similar art, film, and sound files.
Wordless Diagrams:
Nigel Holmes
Illustrator and graphic designer Nigel Holmes depicts the things we do every day like you've never seen them before. Pruning a rose or building a sandcastle might seem like common activities, but when you see them visualized on paper in wordless, step-by-step diagrams, you'll discover them anew. From how to tie a knot in a cherry stem with your tongue to how to make a grilled cheese sandwich, from how to carve a turkey to how to change a diaper, Nigel Holmes's striking diagrams will entertain and educate. Wordless Diagrams will win you over without saying a word.
Design by Numbers:
John Maeda
Maeda composed Design By Numbers using a computational process he developed specifically for the book. He introduces a programming language and development environment, available on the Web, which can be freely downloaded or run directly within any JAVA-enabled Web browser. Appropriately, the new language is called DBN (for "design by numbers"). Designed for "visual" people -- artists, designers, anyone who likes to pick up a pencil and doodle -- Design by Numbers has very few commands and consists of elements resembling those of many other languages, such as LISP, LOGO, C/JAVA, and BASIC.
Envisioning Information:
Edward Tufte
Tufte presents a collection of some of the best examples of information design ever invented, and some of the worst examples. And then he goes into the underlying principles that make the great ones sing out. This book will be really helpful to any web page designer, UI designers, statisticians, cartographers, scientists, or anyone concerned with presenting dense information in a clear way.
Handbook:
Jean-Benoît Lévy
Used as pictograms and icons, modern hand images function as a universal visual means of communication. Jean-Bénoît Levy is obsessed with hands. Not only has he collected, over the years, hundreds of examples backing up his notion of a worldwide system of hand-signs, as a designer and typographer he has also created his own hand alphabet called H-and-S. The panoply of hands presented in this publication includes charming curiosities and lay-persons creations as well as concepts by professional communicators confirming that hand signs constitute a global, inter-cultural metalanguage. As a handbook or manual this publication advances our vision and invites us to observe our own surroundings with a new curiosity and sense of awareness.
Grid Systems in Graphic Design:
Josef Muller-Brockmann
From a professional for professionals, here is the definitive word on using grid systems in graphic design. Though Muller-Brockman first presented hi interpretation of grid in 1961, this text is still useful today for anyone working in the latest computer-assisted design. With examples on how to work correctly at a conceptual level and exact instructions for using all of the systems (8 to 32 fields), this guidebook provides a crystal-clear framework for problem-solving. Dimension: 81/2 x 113/4 inches, English & German Text, 357 b&w examples and illustrations.
Grid for the Dynamic Image:
Tobias Gremmler / Tanja Diezmann
Thanks to new grid systems, computer-based design has unprecedented depth and actual movement. Here is a comprehensive exploration of the moving image and the grid systems that support it, with invaluable discussions of space, volume, and motion. The accompanying multiplatform CD-ROM covers more complex applications—including ones to synchronize speech, sound, and movement.
You are Here:
Katharine Harmon
A celebration of finding one's place in the universe...an eclectic, thought-provoking meditation.
Mapping Websites:
Paul Kahn
Now multimedia professionals, teachers, students, and avid hobbyists can easily access vital, hard-to-find information and advice they seek by consulting this supportive sourcebook. In its broadest sense, this manual is about visualizing collections of electronic information through graphics. Website mapping begins with the planning process, then moves to the understanding and navigation of visitors, and finally to the management of the site by the producer-all of which this comprehensive guide covers lucidly.
Digtal Colours:
Studio 7.5
The newest entry in the highly regarded E-Design series shows designers how to implement color in a sophisticated way across a range of digital media. Using a primarily visual approach, this guide takes a detailed look at the technical foundations underlying digital and the specifics of color on screen. Open a “color toolbox” to see how each shade works in real-life applications; find out how to improve comfort and readability; discover screen options that would have been impossible on paper; and even learn the meanings different cultures attach to color.
www.color:
Roger Pring
Consulting this useful directory will make life infinitely easier for anyone who wants to get the best results from using color along the information superhighway. While computer technology has improved color fidelity between original and reproduction, designers must be aware of new obstacles it has presented-not the least of which is that chosen colors may not carry through as displayed on the screen. This manual offers expert advice on optimizing image palettes by manipulating "safe" colors to gain control over the end result-no matter what operating system displays it. Extensive examples show the best color work on the Web today, with tips for both what and what not to do to achieve such fine results.
Anticipation:
Mihai Nadin
In tennis, the return of a serve is successful only through anticipatory mechanisms on the part of the defensive player. When playing the stock market, anticipation of supply and demand, price variations, and other factors is crucial, the very driving engine of most exchanges. Anticipation: it occurs in all spheres of life. Not least of all is the realm of creativity, the fields of art and design.
Experience Design:
Nathan Shedroff
With Experience Design, Nathan Shedroff has designed and written a book for those in the digital and related design professions, especially those creating online and interactive media who are looking for core inspiration and meaning in their work. This is a book directly at the intersection of today's design disciplines - interaction design, information design, visual design, and more.
Making Meaning:
Nathan Shedroff, Steve Diller
A visionary, eye-opening book that tackles the critical emerging question: When everything is possible, what is necessary? Authored by top leaders in the field, it is a must-read for anyone looking towards the future, for it brilliantly illustrates one of the promising keys to business success.