scrapbook

Keeping it simple

The Non-Designer's Design Book
2nd ed., by Robin Williams.

If Robin Williams's invaluable work had been available in the mid-1980s and included with every copy of PageMaker sold, we would have been spared thousands of desktop-published "ransom note" business cards, newsletters and magazines.

I should know - I was guilty of producing about half of them.

When I founded Desktop Publishing magazine in 1986, using one of the first Apple Macintosh desktop publishing systems sold in Australia, I committed every one of the sins, and then some, that Williams mentions in her wonderful and funny book.

It is 10 years since Williams published the first edition of what should be the bible for anyone entrusted with the job of producing a newsletter. This second edition is 50 pages longer, includes more examples and increases the number of typefaces used from 103 in the first edition to more than 200.

Almost the best thing about the book is the real-life examples of truly awful business cards, newsletters, baby shower invitations and so on. You could almost study the before and after pages alone and learn a huge amount without reading Williams's excellent text.

The next best thing are the quizzes scattered throughout the chapters, testing your comprehension of Williams's advice. The trick is to resist the temptation to skip to the final pages for the answers.

Williams does not pretend that this book is a substitute for genuine and creative layout ability. A word processing program is not going to make you into Patrick White, nor is this book going to turn you into the next big thing in the layout world.

Williams's premise is that if you can name the problem, you can find the solution. The four basic principles of design are, she says: contrast, repetition, alignment and proximity.

Taking the first letter of each principle gives you an unforgettable and appropriate acronym that describes much of the material published by those who should read and use this book.

I wish Williams's book on web design was included with every copy of DreamWeaver.

The Non-Designer's Design Book, 2nd ed., Design and Typographic Principles for the Visual Novice, by Robin Williams, Peachpit Press 2004, RRP $41.95, ISBN 0-321-19385-7.

Posted by thinkum at April 23, 2004 06:41 PM