The Severed Cortex

The Elements of Graphic Design by Alex W. White

This is a real graphic design primer. It's the sort of thing you would expect to be required to buy at the college bookstore for your Graphic Design 101 class freshmen year. Which means it's about the right book for me to start with. No, I'm not switching careers to become a graphic designer. I will never be outstanding at it. I will be above average with it mainly because of reading this book. More importantly I'll be able to apply it to my work life and hopefully that pays dividends.
White's book teaches you the basics through four steps: understanding space, unity, page architecture, and type. ... as in writer or cast or o'graphical error. Once I got into the first couple of pages, all the old first year architecture lessons started coming back to me. The space chapter reminded me of the incessant figure/ground exercises they drilled in our head so it's possible my sole year of architecture school prepared me somewhat for reading this book. Until the type chapter starts. To tell the truth, I don't comprehend type at all. I understand what is serif and what is sans serif, but much past that it starts to get fuzzy for me. As it turns out, White is really a 'type' guy and the chapter in the book about the subject is clearly written pretty highbrow or collegiate or I guess the term these days is elitist. In actuality the book is completely written that way, but because he's a type junkie he goes a little too far for the novice like me.
The book is fantastic though. The consistent layout, the well picked examples that are presented as you read, even the quality of the high gloss paper the (relatively) cheap paperback is printed on make for a book that is not only nice to look at, but is also very useful as a primer and a reference. I've used it as a primer and I know I will be referring back to it.

The Non-Designer's Design Book Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice by Robin Williams

This book is basically a rehash the book above, except way more geared for someone who doesn't care so much about all the nuances. I'll argue that knowing the nuances puts you ahead of everyone else, so if you're looking for that, read the White book first. I'm certainly glad I did. But that's not to sell this book short because it definitely serves the exact purpose of what it was designed to do. And that, of course, is teaching a novice how to create better looking designs easily. The White book took me forever to go through because the examples were so good that you could study them for several minutes, which made the principles sink in my brain. This book I whizzed through because it was written much simpler. Not stupid retard simpler, just a style that is much easier for a novice to understand. It's probably why it's the award winning best-selling book about design, or so it proclaims. The Williams book explained the same principles as White does, but in much plainer English than White could probably bear to imagine. And I will admit I got a better understanding on type once I read this book, but I don't credit it as much to Williams writing. I credit it more to being the second time hashing the subject for me. I still don't get it though.
Obviously I don't know this, but I suspect if I read the Williams book first, I would have completely disregarded it as junk. You know, because I'm elitist like that. Hey, I know I'm an ass and some of you know that too. Enough about me and my awesomeness though. The book is truly very good at giving you a layman's version of the basic principles and if you are looking to learn some tips quickly, it is perfect. I should leave it at that.

So, after reading these books I can spot really bad design very easily. It's all around us. Everywhere. Which makes me think I could actually make some money as a graphic designer because somebody's obviously doing it and doing a pretty shitty job of it. Except those bad examples include the styling on the blog site. I realize all the mistakes I've made and at some point I'll get some motivation to change it. It's going to totally rock. I have put the principles to use at work though. I recently had to present a pricing sheet on some software. Before you beat me up on the colors, I'd like to say that the colors are key in the navigation of this really cool software. Check out the demos. So, as a good designer, I tried to simulate those colors. However, when you convert to a PDF, the colors turn out a little wacky. The design in Adobe CS3 looks better. Seriously. It does.