I bought this for my little sister who has had more than enough advice thrown at her. McKnight-Trontz skillfull rides that tense line between our real wish to be loved by others and our knowledge of how damaging the pursuit of popularity can be. The book isn't just sharply ironic, it is beautifully produced as a piece of graphic design.

Many have use fonts from House Industries. Their latest fonts are both appealing to consumers and useful to designers. House fonts become cliches within months of being released due to their popularity. The members of House Industries use a combination of craftsmenship, nostalgia and virtuosity in their design, seen here in this book, that is intoxicating. This book is really just a fetish piece, but I bought it anyways. I am sure that anyone involved in the production of this book lost ten years off their natural life because the printing is so fiendishly complex.

Just in time for designers looking for research material on the 80's and a good coffeetable book for serious vinyl collectors. Comprehensive reproductions of album covers that were the vanguard of the new wave style. Also for those, like me, who think MTV misrepresents the 80's. This book is proof that our teenage past was full of innovation and shocking imagery. Proof that there was something before rave culture. Had a blast going over the book with others in their late 30's.

It is inspiring to see that a great photo can be taken with a just a snap camera. Often the images are propped-up by Carson's famous page layouts and by cropping the images into unusual shapes. A tactic that is useful when the quality of the photography is not in your control, like when it is supplied by skateboaders and surfers. Still, it is good example of dynamic design.

A great number of optical illusions are covered, but the book also teaches the reader how to control them. Perfect for artists, illustrators, and designers who want to give the two dimentional plane some levity. The illustrations teach the subtleties of visual phenomena. The lessons are useful for fine typography or for understanding the psychology of seeing. How much we infer about what we see is truly astounding. The book itself is classic Swiss design and a must-have book for college libraries.

For those facing the annoyance of writing HTML on a regular basis, CSS has been full promise but has failed to deliver for years because many browsers will not interpret it consistently. This book gives you those hacks needed to position items on the page with CSS for all browsers. Now you can write just one set of code that will also work for PDAs and 56K dial-ups. The simplified code will make dynamic pages a snap. Say good-bye and good-riddance to spacer.gif and embedded tables.

Bringhurst is individual genius who has synthesized the fragmentary knowledge about typography into a singular vision not seen since Tschichold's Die Neue Typographie. Bringhust's list of glyphs is indispensible; it has helped answer that qustion, "What is that puctuation mark called and how is it to be used?" many times. His method of organizing type faces is historical, which is impractical for a creative business - clients don't care about history. I prefer Catherine Dixon's method of organizing and describing type faces, but that method does not offer the thrill found with Bringhust that you have joined the ancient society of typographers.

This is really one firm's style book and their personal encyclopedia of typographical knowledge. The advice on style is unusual. The guide to accessing hidden glyphs on your keboard is full of errors. The mark-up guide is not in agreement with the standard Chicago method. However, their collection of objects and typographic samples are of great historical interest and the illustrations will illuminate many typographical points.

An excellent primer on designing for print. Mark Gatter's writing style and focus is what sets this book apart; the books is well organized and accessibly written. It covers those questions you so often encounter on the job but never get useful answers to. He starts from the most basic level of knowledge, such as CMYK versus RGB, but does not avoid such complex issues as colour profiles. He speaks to the most recent developments in document formats including InDesign and PDFs for print. Recently, design has become a dangerous business because of the resposibilties loaded on to the shoulders of designers. With this book, you will be able to make peace with your printer and get him to help you with some of that responsibility.