Layout Index

No writer is immune to writer's block. No designer is immune to designer's block. This book isn't an "answer book". It's more like an "inspiration book". Leafing through it will rattle your memory banks and get your imagination moving again if your brain is frazzled from thinking too long and too hard about layout. It's an instant brainstorm. It's great.

I'm fussy about books in general, and I'm even fussier about books for my business. This book represents money well spent. It is so small, but don't let that deceive you, it is packed with ideas that springboard you into your own creations. I begin looking through the book when I feel I've hit a wall with ideas... soon I say to myself "hey, that is a neat way to handle things, I wonder if I could adapt that..." and soon enough I have my own design for the client. I have never seen any of my designs turn out like cookie cutters of the book's concepts...but I have had some good inspiration from it! I love the way this book gets me thinking.

This book is a fantastic thing to have on hand. The other reviewers who complain that it is only good for sale flyers and non-pro design are really missing out. The ideas are often unfinished, because they are wonderful jumping off places for when you feel stuck, as we all do from time to time. I find this book, as well as Jim Krause's Color Index, to be quite helpful and inspiring.Enjoy.

Like other reviewers of this book, I am a professional designer. This book is one of the most helpful tools I have ever found. With all due respect, I would like to emphatically disagree with the comments of some other reviewers--I beleive that it is very easy to misunderstand a book like this. The author mentions in the intro (I'm paraphrasing) that this is NOT a book a answers, it's a book of suggestions. A person might think that some of the layouts are unfinished, or plain (not always the case--some layouts are finished and beautiful); I think that this is because a significant effort has been made to avoid presenting layout ideas that leave no room to build. The essentials of good design are never dated. If you are able to look at this book as a treasure chest of ideas, rather than a showcase of someone else's finished work, you will find endless fuel for your own work. As for the size: i LOVE the small format and the plastic cover!! It sits unobrusively on my desk at all times--easy to grab at a moment's notice. This is an amazing book, not like any other in concept, content or form.

I wrote a positive review of J. Krause's first book, the Idea Index, and have to remark on this one as well. Filled with lots and lots of images and very little commentary, these books are a bit hard to explain to non-designers, but they make perfect sense to people in the creative visual arts. I constantly use the first book, Idea Index, to help me get ideas flowing for logos and images. The new book, Layout Index, is packed(!) with full-color idea-starters for all kinds of print and web media. There is hardly a spread in this very fat little book that does not capture and hold my interest for one reason or another; hardly a page that does not offer serious fuel for creativity, no matter what the project. As the author says in his intro, these are NOT answer books, they are "WHAT IF" books. They get your mind cranking on all kinds of possibilities very quickly. I have shelves full of design books, but I keep these two on my desk, within reach at all times. A superb duo!