- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
| |||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £3.20
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Making and Breaking the Grid: A Layout Design Workshop for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £3.20, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
For designers working in every medium, layout is arguable the most basic and most important element. Effective layout is essential to communication and enables the end user to not only be drawn in with an innovative design but to digest information easily. Making and Breaking the Grid is a comprehensive layout design workshop that assumes that to effectively break the rules of grid-based design one must first understand those rules and see them applied to real-world projects. Text reveals top designers' work in process and rationale. Projects with similar characteristics are linked through a simple notational system that encourages exploration and comparison of structure ideas. Also included are historical overviews that summarise the development of layout concepts, both grid-based and non-grid based, in modern design practice.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 25 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
What a strange publication. Divided into two sections the first explaining grid formatting with actual printed material and the second revealing how to design print without a grid.
There seems a contradiction here because the grid, used intelligently, will allow a whole range of graphic options to be presented with clarity. Some of the print examples reproduced in the first section do show this with perhaps the most useful item a grid thumbnail for each piece, unfortunately I thought it was rather too small on each spread despite being the key to explaining each format. From past experience, designing magazines, I would start work on a grid by concentrating on the text type size because it is the least flexible of all the elements on the page. This point really wasn't made enough of in the book's chapter: Grid Basics.
The reproductions show a reasonable range of design solutions, essentially print though there is an example of corporate signage. Missing are magazines (consumer or trade) timetables and the like. Without a grid this type of printed matter really wouldn't exist.
The book's contradiction, to my mind, start with the second section: 'Grid Deconstructions and Non-Grid-Based Design Projects'. The forty items shown seem to have a couple of common threads: their design is essentially arbitrary which makes them look very messy and frequently their typography (display and text) is used as a design element which makes the words unreadable. Their design is the opposite of grid stimulated creativity, in other words visual chaos.
Some of the examples are quite amazing. On page 180-181 twelve pages of a calendar are shown, totally useless as its impossible to see the days and dates. Pages 188-189 show eight spreads from a design school journal showing irregular shaped blocks of text creating a sort of collage. I doubt anyone made the effort to read any of it. What is interesting about this second section material is that so much of it comes from educational establishments. In the real world all this designer whimsy would be rejected by the client on sight of the first dummy
'Making and Breaking the Grid' is well printed with 175dpi and the layout is adequate and for a book about grids you would have thought its own grid would have been included but it is strangely missing. Overall I felt that because the contents present two opposite design ideals the book's editorial concept is rather flawed.
From my experience there is only one book that really explains it all: Muller-Brockmann's 'Grid Systems in Graphic Design' published in Switzerland and full of good solid, practical, hands-on information. This book's only purpose is creative clarity.
There seems a contradiction here because the grid, used intelligently, will allow a whole range of graphic options to be presented with clarity. Some of the print examples reproduced in the first section do show this with perhaps the most useful item a grid thumbnail for each piece, unfortunately I thought it was rather too small on each spread despite being the key to explaining each format. From past experience, designing magazines, I would start work on a grid by concentrating on the text type size because it is the least flexible of all the elements on the page. This point really wasn't made enough of in the book's chapter: Grid Basics.
The reproductions show a reasonable range of design solutions, essentially print though there is an example of corporate signage. Missing are magazines (consumer or trade) timetables and the like. Without a grid this type of printed matter really wouldn't exist.
The book's contradiction, to my mind, start with the second section: 'Grid Deconstructions and Non-Grid-Based Design Projects'. The forty items shown seem to have a couple of common threads: their design is essentially arbitrary which makes them look very messy and frequently their typography (display and text) is used as a design element which makes the words unreadable. Their design is the opposite of grid stimulated creativity, in other words visual chaos.
Some of the examples are quite amazing. On page 180-181 twelve pages of a calendar are shown, totally useless as its impossible to see the days and dates. Pages 188-189 show eight spreads from a design school journal showing irregular shaped blocks of text creating a sort of collage. I doubt anyone made the effort to read any of it. What is interesting about this second section material is that so much of it comes from educational establishments. In the real world all this designer whimsy would be rejected by the client on sight of the first dummy
'Making and Breaking the Grid' is well printed with 175dpi and the layout is adequate and for a book about grids you would have thought its own grid would have been included but it is strangely missing. Overall I felt that because the contents present two opposite design ideals the book's editorial concept is rather flawed.
From my experience there is only one book that really explains it all: Muller-Brockmann's 'Grid Systems in Graphic Design' published in Switzerland and full of good solid, practical, hands-on information. This book's only purpose is creative clarity.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Making and Breaking the Grid, by Timothy Samara, is an analysis of the construction and deconstruction of grid-based designs. Featuring a comprehensive showcase of works in different media and across several decades.
The Book
The book is basically divided into 2 parts. The first one about the creation of the grid-based designs and its usage. The second one explains the deconstruction of the grid, a different approach on design in which the grid doesn't have to obey any rules.
In the first few pages the reader will be immersed into the historical facts surrounding the development of the grid-based design. There is a lot of information here - about 150 years of art & design evolution in only 7 pages - maybe a timeline would be interesting. But then again, this is not a history book.
The next chapter the author slows down the pace and starts a workshop about grid design. The content here is precise, clear enough for beginners and a good read for advanced designers. Concepts and styles are illustrated in a simple yet effective way and the examples are spot on.
Then the showcase begins. Pages and pages of great artwork from different decades and styles. Each of them with its own grid style - column, modular grid, etc. Description and comments explain how it was used and the effect generated by it.
Conclusion
As an introduction to grid-design, Making and Breaking the Grid does its job. It will give the initial hints and ideas of layout structure in a few pages but doesn't go very deep. The highlight of the book, without any doubt, is the showcase of designs. Big illustrations and photographs with detailed information. Definitely a must-have on any designer library.
The Book
The book is basically divided into 2 parts. The first one about the creation of the grid-based designs and its usage. The second one explains the deconstruction of the grid, a different approach on design in which the grid doesn't have to obey any rules.
In the first few pages the reader will be immersed into the historical facts surrounding the development of the grid-based design. There is a lot of information here - about 150 years of art & design evolution in only 7 pages - maybe a timeline would be interesting. But then again, this is not a history book.
The next chapter the author slows down the pace and starts a workshop about grid design. The content here is precise, clear enough for beginners and a good read for advanced designers. Concepts and styles are illustrated in a simple yet effective way and the examples are spot on.
Then the showcase begins. Pages and pages of great artwork from different decades and styles. Each of them with its own grid style - column, modular grid, etc. Description and comments explain how it was used and the effect generated by it.
Conclusion
As an introduction to grid-design, Making and Breaking the Grid does its job. It will give the initial hints and ideas of layout structure in a few pages but doesn't go very deep. The highlight of the book, without any doubt, is the showcase of designs. Big illustrations and photographs with detailed information. Definitely a must-have on any designer library.
0 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
good book, great with helping understand the grid, though got dropped in the snow by the post man so got wet and pages stuck together.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
