Principles of Three-Dimensional Design: Objects, Space and Meaning

The text is a little bit 'stiff'. There are other books that are more easy to read and explain the concepts more easily. It's a pretty good text book though.

With the many approaches now available to artists working three-dimensionally there is, more than ever, a critical need for intelligent and carefully organized texts that can provide theoretical structure for students setting out on their journey to shape their ideas and environment. Stephen Luecking's recently published "Principles of Three-Dimensional Design: Objects, Space and Meaning" does just that by providing the kind of thorough, thoughtful, clearly written, generously illustrated and well organized text that will be of benefit to students now and for many years to come.

My students loved this book! They found that complicated ideas were presented to them in a fully understandabke yet sophisticated way. The size is very managable, and it was easy for them to read any chapter several times to absorb the many layers of understanding. The illustrations were multi-national and did a fine job of representing women as well as men. My only suggestion would be that the second printing be done with higher contrast. It is a relief to have a thorough and complex 3-D text that is also accessable and satisfying for the students to read.

I used this book for a class and I found it very easy to follow and well organized. There were good visual examples from a wide variety of current artists. I liked that it involved a large amount of art theory, but also provided a good practical reference for the kinds of projects we did in class. Overall, I think it gave a very solid introduction to 3-D design.