The Language of Graphic Design Revised and Updated: An illustrated handbook for understanding fundamental design principles

This book makes a big promise and fails to deliver. There isn’t a lot or real insight into the elements and principles of design. It’s more a showcase of the writers student work and teaching projects and some lose allusions to the use of an element or principle in some professional work. The writer fails to discern between elements or principles treating them all as one big tool box. He also includes expression as a principle... or element...who knows. I think this is a big mistake, especially if this book is written as a text for young graphic design students trying to make sense of the theory or more likely best practices they are taught in the typical graphic design classroom these days. Expression, especially self expression runs counter to the goals of Mass Communication. It runs parallel to style. Many of the greats do have a style, but style should become a secondary pursuit after learning the fundamentals of visual language and communication first. Also, this book is just downnright difficult to read. I’m sure there is a grid present, but the layout and hierarchy of text and image on the page seems muddy. There isn’t a lot of contrast between caption and the primary content. It’s easy to lose track of where you are going from paragraph to paragraph. The only thing it seems to do right in my opinion is attempt to apply the elements and principles of 2D design to graphic design, but the smart and devoted student for now is better off looking to older classics like “Design Basics” by Pentak and Lauer, or “The Language of Visual Art” by Jack Frederick Meyers. Even Rosalind Reagan’s “Art Talk” gives a better introduction to the elements and principles of design than this book.