Customer Reviews

365: Aiga Year in Design 21

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This book is a good example of where art and design go their separate ways. It's a beautiful book, clearly put together by a very creative individual. But it's "designed" very poorly, it doesn't serve it's function. It's hard to read, you can't see the pieces it's supposed to highlight, and the binding breaks very easily because of the chosen materials. Again, they look great, but they don't do their job. Design that's honored by the AIGA should live up to higher standards in my opinion.

Sterling miss 2 stars for the cropping, its true that I can't see what the winners' works look like.
But the cropping itself makes the content more interesting.
Think different, .. its amazing that I enjoy reading this book more than any other AIGA publications. I don't get any inspirations from the works. I do get more how Sterling thinks..

The book itself looks wonderful, with a nice, strong design on all of the pages. The sad part is this design comes at a price, and that price is the content it's trying to display is completely truncated, and ineffectual. As far as inspiration books go, this is definitely one of the worst books I've purchased. You can tell that there are some real gems located within, but the sad part is you only see the top corner, or little snippets. Maybe next time AIGA should focus on letting us see why the winners are in the book, instead of trying to make an artsty statement in and of itself.

How you'd rate this depends on whether you're rating it as an object or on it's content. What was AIGA's purpose here? I thought it was to showcase the award winning work within not just Jennifer Sterling's work. I left this book on the shelf at my local bookstore.
There are plenty of books on the market sold as objects. I don't see the purpose of disrespecting other peoples work to create an object in what is supposed to be a showcase to honour what they have done.
I like Jennifer Sterling design work but if she wants to sample other peoples work she should record a hip hop album next time. And why did AIGA approve this?

The book itself is stunning. Plastic covers with heavy binding, on heavyweight non-glossy paper. Over 400 pages of sampled work and lots of copy to support each piece.

The layout is experimental, and most of the time exquisite.

The work, as found in other reviews, seems less relavant than the layout of the book itself. It is difficult to tell which "version" of the artwork is the original. It is hard to figure out where the editors added their own cropping to a piece of work, or whether it really appeared that way.

Overall, the edition commands respect, but I believe that the work was compromised, and it is difficult to know if i'll refer back to this volume as much as I do other annuals and such for inspiration and knowledge.

I saw this book while visiting a friend in the U.S. It is truely beautiful. I must say I found it typically American that there has been a backlash. A very conservative reaction. I felt I must comment - it would be well received in Europe.

I love this book. It is certainly by far the best AIGA book ever produced. I know because I have them all. Most are mundane. Though I don't like much of the work that won this year, I think the book is a terrific example of great graphic book design.

I've never had such a violent reaction to a book before. They call this a book yet it bears little resemblance to me. They show samples of great design by showing several photos all cropped differently. Not one showing the full page. Then there is the text, sometimes repeated 3 times on a page adding to the visual confusion the rest of the design creates.

I couldn't get through the whole book, I returned my copy.

Very dissapointing book overall. Although creative, it doesn't do what is suppose to do -- communicate. It shows off the the designer's trendy style, but does no justice to all the winning participants. If my work were shown in this book in little distorted details, I would have asked for my money back.

Although the text is insightful and the layout is creative, it does a poor job displaying the work of those who were talented enough to be included in the book. How dissapointing it must be to people who paid entry fees only to have small sections of their award winning work shown. This book layout was all form, no function and self indulgent on the designer's part. Plus the cover curves up.