Product Description

So you have a great concept and all the fancy digital tools you could possibly require¿what¿s stopping you from creating beautiful pages? Namely the training to pull all of these elements together into a cohesive design that effectively communicates your message. Not to worry: This book is the one place you can turn to find quick, non-intimidating, excellent design help.

In The Non-Designer¿s Design Book, 2nd Edition, best-selling author Robin Williams turns her attention to the basic principles of good design and typography. All you have to do is follow her clearly explained concepts, and you¿ll begin producing more sophisticated, professional, and interesting pages immediately. Humor-infused, jargon-free prose interspersed with design exercises, quizzes, illustrations, and dozens of examples make learning a snap¿which is just what audiences have come to expect from this best-selling author.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #207358 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Subtitled Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice, this book is for anyone who has to design a newsletter, job ad, flyer, business card, memo, report or whatever, but has no idea what separates good design from bad. Except, of course, that the first looks clear, professional, sophisticated and right, and the second is an ugly, unreadable mess.

Robin Williams has an easily readable style and manages to communicate sometimes complex and sophisticated concepts simply and directly. She rightly assumes that, though most people can recognise bad design when they see it, they don't know why it's bad and are therefore powerless to fix the same problems in their own work.

The bulk of the book is given over to explaining how, by sticking to four basic design principles--contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity--you can eliminate design gremlins from your work. In searching for a memorable and appropriate acronym for this principled approach, Williams admits she was only semi-successful.

The second half of the book deals with how to use type. Once again the approach is to explain simply, directly and with illustrated examples how the relationship between typefaces is defined.

As a college teacher, Williams can't resist the temptation to dot little quizzes, tests and mini-projects throughout the text. These are mostly good fun and reinforce what you've read, though even if you decide to ignore them they won't spoil your enjoyment of the book.

The Non-Designer's Design Book is the kind of book you could read in your lunch break. Its attitude is more "sketch in the margin with a pencil", than "complete the projects on the CD". It would be an ideal primer for anyone starting a design course, as well as those who want to improve the look of their memos. --Ken McMahon

From the Back Cover

So you have a great concept and all the fancy digital tools you could possibly require¿what¿s stopping you from creating beautiful pages? Namely the training to pull all of these elements together into a cohesive design that effectively communicates your message. Not to worry: This book is the one place you can turn to find quick, non-intimidating, excellent design help.

In The Non-Designer¿s Design Book, 2nd Edition, best-selling author Robin Williams turns her attention to the basic principles of good design and typography. All you have to do is follow her clearly explained concepts, and you¿ll begin producing more sophisticated, professional, and interesting pages immediately. Humor-infused, jargon-free prose interspersed with design exercises, quizzes, illustrations, and dozens of examples make learning a snap¿which is just what audiences have come to expect from this best-selling author.

About the Author

Robin Williams is the author of more than 20 best-selling and award-winning books, including The Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, The Non-Designer's Design Book, The Non-Designer's Type Book, and Robin Williams Design Workshop, and Web Design Workshop. Through her writing, teaching, and seminars, Robin has influenced a generation of computer users in the areas of design, typography, desktop publishing, the Mac, and the World Wide Web.

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Customer Reviews

Excellent - used everything here for my ppt presentations
I bought this book based on the stellar "Presentation Zen" by Garr Reynolds. (A must-read if you do presentations of any type).

What I was seeking to glean from this book was how to improve the look of my PowerPoint presentations. Though Robin doesn't cover this specifically, everything she writes about can be applied to the design of the slides.

The book is aimed at 'non-professional' designers. By this I mean those of us who design things in our work, but aren't trained to do so, e.g. flyers, event alerts, newsletters, reports, business cards, studies, articles, etc.

I found it funny how often she tells us not to be "wimps" in our design choices. I mean she REALLY tells us a lot. But her point is we need to be bold, not "wimps", in our design choices ... but only once we know the basics.

All in all an excellent read. Good examples, good overview at the end of each section, and good pop quizzes to make sure we were paying attention :-)

Not quite as awesome as you'd be led to believe.
I like the concept of this book - a design book that's written for those who aren't essentially designers, but need to use design in everyday life. Based on the idea that you've never studied design before, Williams covers the essential topics and points out the biggest mistakes that beginners make with clear examples, and plenty of "before and after" shots so you not only see why something looks terrible, you also see how simply it can be fixed. It's a short book and it's not difficult to understand. However, I just can't bring myself to give it anything higher than 3 stars because Williams' writing style verges on patronising, and I found it almost TOO basic in places - once you've read it, you'll pretty much never need to refer to it again. If you're a design student, then don't even bother with this. If you're someone who uses design on a casual or non-professional level then you'll benefit from borrowing this book from your local library and reading it cover to cover, but I wouldn't spend any money on it.

The best...
This is probably the best book in design and typographic principles for a novice that I have read. It has lots of examples and ideas how to use type and design, and not to forget it has a list of the fonts used in the examples which I think is very helpfull.

If you have none or little experience in design or typography this is the book to get.