The book as the name suggests is for people with absolutely no design experience. This book gives easy, excellent design help for people who do want to make sure that their products, websites or even postcards look beautiful and also be functional at the same time.
Full of quizzes, exercises and lots of examples accompanied by illustrations. Following Robin Williams’s advice can make sure that you see the difference in your products immediately. In this book she underlines some basic principles and also focuses a lot on typography.
Robin addresses problems faced by both companies and normal people when designing from posters to postcards and also gives solutions to each one of them.
The four basic principles which is common to every design are:
- Contrast : Avoid Elements(type,color,size,line thickness,shape,space,etc.) that are similar. Make the elements very different. Contrast clarifies communication.
- Repetition: Repeat the visual elements of a page.
- Alignment: Each element should have a visual connection with the other element on the page.
- Proximity: Items relating to each other should be grouped close together.When there are several elements they should be one visual unit. This organizes information, reduces clutter and gives a clear structure.
An Example from The Book :
Above we can see an ordinary business card. Our eyes first see the Big and bold letters Mermaid tavern. To know the other information we have to see the corners of the card. Usually, we see the name(Ralph Roister Doister) then the phone number and the addresses next.
This Orientation makes it hard for us to figure out what we need. Robin Williams Argues that we should not put so much pressure on the user. Now look at the same card below.
Now our eyes first travel to the name of the tavern then to the name of the person. This is because though the name has also been made bigger and bolder though not as much as the name of the company. Now look at the same card below:
The above information has been organized into a related group. The name of the person below the company name, and the address made into one single group and the number makes it more informative than the other cards given above and also much neater. The concept used here is proximity given in the book as one of the basic design principles.
Many more practical examples are given in the book. A highly recommended introduction to design for all non-designers.
