14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautiful and excellent for a diverse audience, Jan 28 2010
By I Teach Typing - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand (Hardcover)
This is one of the best books around on applying (perceptual/cognitive/research) psychological principals to graphics and visualizations. This book really stands out for three reasons, it's concise (but not overly brief) discussion of relevant psychology (memory/cognition/perception) plus the incredible examples for graphic designers and the set of references. The closest competitors are books by Few Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis (which covers similar psych issues but is horribly wordy) or Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data (which reads well but focuses more on clean scientific graphs) or the famous books by Tufte . Relative to other books, this one has a great deal more information on how to integrate art with information. After the book you will see graphics and think about how a designer could have done a better job in guiding the reader's eye to the intended information in a poster or how to design a better handout showing a process like how part of the body works or how to put together a complicated device. The graphics in the book REALLY stand out and support the authors writing. As a researcher I hate to see people state "facts" or "hypotheses" about how people think without providing supporting evidence. This book has a very respectable set of references. So, rather than pontificating about the "right" way to do graphics there are references to relevant (experimental psych) articles.
Basically, this book is the complete package. It could be a great coffee table book or on a shelf in a scientific library.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A visual feast filled with substance, July 23 2009
By Bookworm - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand (Hardcover)
This book provides a wide-ranging and practical understanding of how humans interpret visual information, then describes principles for applying that knowledge to the creation of compelling, memorable and informative graphics. So often, graphic designers are trained to think in terms of visual elegance, but not in terms of how people perceive graphical information. This book fills in the knowledge gap for graphic designers as well as instructional designers and other professionals wondering how to best transmit complex information in a graphical format.
The collection of hundreds of contemporary graphic and information designs from around the world is stunning, and could have made a coffee table book or inspiration book on their own. The substantive text leads the reader on a journey to better understand the human mind and learn how to create more profound and valuable graphics. Expect this book to become a classic in design circles.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
From Newsweek's former graphics editor, May 10 2010
By K. Gude "KGude" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Creating Graphics that People Understand (Hardcover)
This beautifully designed and printed how-to book contains hundreds of images that are organized into chapters that explain a variety of key principles of visualization, from how to manipulate a viewer's eye to simplifying data and images. Most of the graphics in the book are spectacular while others aren't as effective at visualizing their content, but each one teaches a lesson and was chosen for that purpose. As the former director of information graphics at Newsweek and now a university instructor who teaches students how to visualize information, this book is as useful for professionals as it is for people who are new to the field of visualization, even though they may not have the skills to create many of the graphics shown. The fundamental principals of visualization outlined here apply to all ranges of imagery, from the fancy 3D model to an a simple idea scribbled on a napkin.