Visual Design (Creative Core)

An excellent book for all those self-taught artists. A great way to learn about basics. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

Great book, beautiful and useful examples and explanations of effective visual design ;)

Another winner from Jim! Buy all of his books with confidence, they are allways gems!

great book, really good read. i expected no less, but it is extremely well presented!there are 95 topics each on their own spread. each spread has a single page of description and explanation, along with an accompanyimg picture.its not got quite as much of a "how to" feel as i thought it would, and certain topics are descrived in a single page that need a lot more than that. but, hemce the 4/5 star. that being said, he does explain that at that thats an issue sometimes in the beginning of the book too.overall a seriously good book if youre looking to get into graphic design or improve your presentation.

very helpful

As a painter, I was looking for a book on design fundamentals. This text is geared toward logo and web design. The sellers have a strict, short return timeline without paying for return postage. I kept it for my library and can learn something anyway.

As described, prompt shipping. Thanks!

This is what Jim Krause does: he calms you down. Learning design can be very exciting and for the novice, and frightening at the same time. When you are facing a new career with new rules-hard and soft-and are thinking about how you can stand out amongst the competition, you may fall into a frenzy of worry, elation, defeat and victory and not know where to start or where to go.Jim Krause's latest book continues to help designers with the same wise counsel that gave us hope as we read his earlier works (I like The Logo Brainstorm Book a lot, too). Here are 95 spreads that help you grow from a raw beginner to an informed practitioner. These aren't exercises, they are concise thematic essays that counsel you and give you direction. He gets to ALL the concerns a student of design needs to address, from basics like seeing and using boundaries to color and type and practicalities like print production and even how to "expand and evolve" your designer awareness.In Visual Design he offers this kind of soothing advice:"The ability to produce quality graphics of this kind is expected of most professional designers. If you do not yet consider yourself talented in this area, practice. On your own and for fun. That way, when you're asked to come up with graphic simplification in a potentially stressful on the job situation, you'll be able to work with a good measure of confidence and with a few tricks already up your sleeve." (p.68)But he can prod you, too, in a gentlemanly way: "As a designer, be prepared to...throw away much-or pretty much everything you think you know about color and to cultivate instead the ability to see colors for what they are within different contexts. And not only that, open up your brain to the possibilities of using color in unorthodox and innovative ways to convey ideas and emotions to the viewers..." (p.118)Teaching design insight and the courage to be bold is not easy. The tendency for teachers and writers to scold after false steps, or be mechanistic about creativity is ever-present. It takes a concerned and wise instructor to help you along without bruising your tender areas. Jim knows how to do this better than anyone I know. Experience will still leave you bruised, but with help from Jim you'll be back at it in no time.I taught graphic design at the college level for many years and I studied and trained with exceptional teachers in the field. I can recommend Jim Krause's book as a friendly, useful, practical and complete course for beginners, whether they are in a classroom or not (teachers might consider adopting Jim's easy-going style).Jim Krause uses Helvetica (various weights) and dingbats throughout the book, and explains his reasoning inside. Because I'm not much of a fan of the old warhorse of typefaces I must fall back on the kind of generosity he displays toward our multitude of typographic choices: "Typefaces are like voices. Like inflection. Like tone. Like volume. Like presence. Like implication." The implication of Jim's book is practical, efficient and substantial. It works. When in doubt, use it.

I do not work with Design, but I love drawing and Art in general, and I wanted to understand better some design concepts that influence perception and therefore may help create better works of Art. The contents are not only interesting but also very well structured, with clear language for anyone to understand.

It is a wonderful summary of the most important rules (can be broken) in visual design. I am especially grateful for the book to liberate me of adhering religiously to Web-colors.

Bought it but immediately returned it. Lavishly produced but not at all practical in my eyes.Thought it would be a concise and practical reference but I hated the design of the book so much it went straight back.

A great book in print that uses its layout to explain design concepts. This information was lost when converted to Kindle. Buy the print version if you want a copy.