Design Language

I have purchased many copies of this book to give to students over the years. I found it to be useful, inspiring, and a great read. The layout has a great gestalt. I think it is a sexy little book about design terms. The quotes in it are timely, and thought provoking. The terms are well defined and cross referenced. Professor McCreight has a wonderfully small package packed with useful stuff.

This book aids in the ability to write about design aesthetics. I am a studio jeweler and felt I needed to enhance the ability to defend my work. This book was a great assistance in my writing.

While this book would not be comprehensive enough for an introductory course text, it would be an invaluable supplemental resource for both professors and advanced students. Layout, vocabulary and quotes are acute and inspirational. The only criticism would be to drop the 'Jewelry Crafts' from the title. This little book should be read by anyone interested in design.

I teach at a graduate school that is structured around the concept of writing and design, type and image, and I found this book very useful for in class and homework assignments. Each student had their own copy and I asked each of them to pick a word from the book as well as one of the corresponding definitions, and describe it typographically - using type as image to convey the meaning. It proved to be a great exercise to teach students the basic principles of scale, contrast, unity, perspective, etc. and actually have them retain it! Even the weaker students suprised me and themselves with how effective thier solutions were. It motivated most of the students to use the principles in their more complex design projects. Plus it's small, it's durable and it's beggs to be written in - making your own notations along the way. I'm pleased visual examples were omitted by the author. It allows the reader to make his/her own interpretations of the word. The definition is there to keep us in check.

I really liked the simplicity of the book but I wish that it showed some visual references to explain the ideas more clearly. I am an educator as well and I have found students like to see examples especially when they are trying to learn to be visual thinkers. The author did not define logo in his book. Why not? The colors chosen for this book are too close in value and when printed next to each other made it very difficult on the eyes. It is so bad in some areas (example: see Unity) that it seemed as though the printer purposely did not trap the colors (orange type in a grey field) because the reader could not of read the type. The typeface that was chosen for the main text was very difficult to read - Design Language missed the mark on legibility in some parts of the book. In fact, the author did not even define legibility within the book - it may of helped the designer who laid out the book.