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The Art of Looking Sideways: 0000 Hardcover – 17 July 2001

by Alan Fletcher (Author)

4.6 275 ratings

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The Art of Looking Sideways is a primer in visual intelligence, an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain and the imagination. It is an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, curious facts and useless information, oddities, serious science, jokes and memories, all concerned with the interplay between the verbal and the visual, and the limitless resources of the human mind. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters, all this material is presented in a wonderfully inventive series of pages that are themselves masterly demonstrations of the expressive use of type, space, colour and imagery.

This book does not set out to teach lessons, but it is full of wisdom and insight collected from all over the world. Describing himself as a visual jackdaw, master designer Alan Fletcher has distilled a lifetime of experience and reflection into a brilliantly witty and inimitable exploration of such subjects as perception, colour, pattern, proportion, paradox, illusion, language, alphabets, words, letters, ideas, creativity, culture, style, aesthetics and value.

The Art of Looking Sideways is the ultimate guide to visual awareness, a magical compilation that will entertain and inspire all those who enjoy the interplay between word and image, and who relish the odd and the unexpected.

Amazon Review

Alan Fletcher's The Art of Looking Sideways is an absolutely extraordinary and inexhaustible "guide to visual awareness", a virtually indescribable concoction of anecdotes, quotes, images and bizarre facts that offers a wonderfully twisted vision of the chaos of modern life. Fletcher is a renowned designer and art director and the joy of The Art of Looking Sideways lies in its beautiful design. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters with titles like "Colour", "Noise", "Chance", "Camouflage" and "Handedness", Fletcher's book, which he describes as "a journey without a destination", is "a collection of shards" that captures the sensory overload of a world that simply contains too much information. In one typical section, entitled "Civilization", the reader encounters six Polish flags designed to represent the world, a photograph of an anthropomorphic hand bag, Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the moon, drawings of Stone Age pebbles, a painting of "Ireland--as seen from Wales" and a dizzying array of quotations and snippets of information, including the wise words of Marcus Aurelius, Stephen Jay and Gandhi's comment, "Western civilization? I think it would be a good idea". Fletcher's mastery of design mixes type, space, fonts, alphabets, colour and layout combined with a "jackdaw" eye for the strange and profound to produce a stunning book that cannot be read, but only experienced. --Jerry Brotton

Review

"Nobody should enter the real world until they have read and been graphically stimulated by Alan Fletcher's amazing Baedeker of practical and erudite information. The book could have been described by René Magritte - 'A truly poetic canvas is an awakened dream'. I'm sure Alan's magnum opus will awaken many dreams'."―Terence Conran

"This is a cornucopia of a book, a lucky dip of perception and paradox, laced with more strange facts than can possibly be probable and providing more fun than one has any right to expect."―Bamber Gascoigne, author and broadcaster

"A brilliant trick and treat. Fletcher's ideas pretend to have been gathered in from anywhere, but here is a very rigorous creative mind at work. Alan Fletcher is the great visual thinker of our age."―Fiona MacCarthy, Biographer and Cultural Historian

"t last, Alan Fletcher proves that graphic designers can be as fascinated about what things mean, as by how they look. This book is a staggeringly rich collection of words and pictures that will change the way you see the world."―Deyan Sudjic, Author and Critic and editor of Domus magazine

"This remarkable magpie hoard of words and pictures forces one to reconsider the relationship between thinking and looking, telling and showing. And as one had every reason to expect, Fletcher's own drawings and graphics are delightful."―Jonathan Miller, Theatre Director and Author

"A rather special collection... Will go down just as well with your Auntie Mavies as with your lawyer, bin man and coolest friends."―Homes & Interiors

"The design book of the century may have already been written."―Design Week

"Alan Fletcher's book challenges both dogma and habit by questioning how we see things, how we read things and how we understand things."―Royal College of Art, London

"...This book will delight anyone who enjoys unexpected visual and verbal play, cultural and historical observations and insights, and staggering amounts of trivia and anecdotes."―Library Journal

From the Publisher

This book is the most amazing collection of curious facts, visual puns, anecdotes, serious science, insights, images, jokes, memories and reflections.

From the Author

I am intrigued by apparently useless information, such as 8% of the population is left-handed; giraffes only sleep five minutes every 24 hours; Italians kiss twice, the Swiss three times; is a zebra a white animal with black stripes or vice versa; and, are you left or right eyed? This book is everything I was never taught at school. It has no thesis, is neither a whodunit nor a how-to-do-it, and has no beginning, middle or end. It is a book for visually curious people, full of things to make you think twice.

About the Author

Alan Fletcher belongs to that elite international group of designers who have transcended the conventional boundaries of their craft. He is a founder member of the design group Pentagram, with whom he has stayed for 20 years. He now works independently from his own studio in London. He is consultant Art Director to Phaidon Press.

Print length

1068 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Phaidon Press
Publication date

17 July 2001
Dimensions

21.91 x 6.03 x 25.08 cm
ISBN-10

0714834491
ISBN-13

978-0714834498
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Phaidon Press; 1st edition (17 July 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 1068 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0714834491
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0714834498
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 21.91 x 6.03 x 25.08 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 300,443 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 134 in Literary Studies
- 1,990 in Individual Artists
- 2,278 in Design & Decorative Arts

Customer reviews:
4.6 275 ratings

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4.6 out of 5

275 global ratings

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Steven Unwin

A Delight to Have and to Hold

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 September 2005

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This is simply an astonishing book that is a joy to own.
This is a large book with over 500 large format pages. It is described by its author Alan Fletcher as the work of a visual Jackdaw to produce an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain and the imagination.
As he describes it 'The book attempts to open windows to glimpse views rather than dissect the pictures on the wall. To look at things from unlikely angles.... The book has no thesis, is neither a whodunit or a how-to-do-it, has no beginning middle or end. It's a journey without a destination.... It is unlike most books, those that are concerned with the mechanics rather than the thoughts, with the match rather than the fire.'
The result is not a book to sit down and read sequentially from cover to cover, rather an environment of ideas and stimuli through which to journey, an exploration in which to become immersed.
Reading the other reviews, many seem to come from graphic designers, indeed the author is a renown graphic designer himself. The result is a book that is a delight to hold. The different paper types and textures, intriguing layouts and inviting formats mean that every page turned leads to new discoveries even before their content is examined. Its merits as an exemplar of the art of design are clear, but this is much more than a role model for designers.
It is a book that in infinite ways serves as a catalyst for thinking. It has a multifaceted ability to present aspects of the world in new ways, that defy you ever again seeing them the way you always have in the past.
Through the imaginative use of images and text, quotations, snippets of information, and a host of other approaches, this is a feast for the mind as well as the eye.
It's not simply a book that I can't stop dipping into, I can't stop smiling at the fact that Alan Fletcher took the time, care and attention to detail to share it with me. It is quite simply a pleasure to hold and a feast to read.

75 people found this helpful

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Amazing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 October 2009

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Having been interested in graphic design for a couple of years this was the first book I bought to do with the subject, there's no one like Alan Fletcher for one of your first design books.

The amount of "stuff" in the book is astounding, you can really see how much time, energy and thought Fletcher has put into this, it is basically a catalogue of thoughts, wit, ideas and work by Fletcher. From a quote about how good it feels to write on a rubber with a biro to a diagram of every breed of dog! There are some really interesting sketches and diagrams that let you feel what he was feeling or think how he was at the time, so his personality comes through a lot.

It's definately not a book designed to be read cover to cover because there simply is no need, it goes along at it's own pace, amazing and intriguing you along the way. It features great Fletcher hand drawn typoraphy, interesting page textures and amazing colour, so it's a piece of design itself.

So just pick it up, have a flick through whenever you want, because it's definately going to please you if you are at all interested in graphics.

7 people found this helpful

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Chris H

Stuck for an idea? Dive in here...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 March 2008

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Alan Fletcher was one of the creative powerhouses of design from the 1960s on, and this book puts together some of his musings on life, the Universe and everything. The book is designed to spark ideas and thought, so even the paper used changes from page to page.

In typically quirky fashion, only the left hand pages are given a number so if you buy this book you actually get over a thousand pages of inspiring graphics, calligraphy, typography and photographs collected over the course of a long and illustrious career: he founded Pentagram; he designed logos for Reuters and the Victoria and Albert museum. The book gives a glimpse of the thought processes that went in to that work. For the money it's an astonishing bargain.

8 people found this helpful

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N. Guimaraes

more than a coffee table book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 February 2009

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Not a wonderful little book because it's quite heavy but it provides its weight in insightful, puzzling, funny and bewildering facts, stories, images and illustrations.
You get a new experience at the turn of each page.
I have bought quite a few as gifts and it never fails: when I come back to visit those I have offered The Art of Looking Sideways to I always find the book at hands reach.

2 people found this helpful

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wayne

dont just see it - look at it!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 October 2006

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We're all told to do it at design college (and usually dont) then we end up doing it through our creative careers.. and that's find things that inspire us, amuse us, or that we just plain and simply like. why? so we can use them on days when we have no inspiration. This book is one mans fascinating collection of explorations - an intelligent way to really look at things. Come on - open the book, I bet you'll find something in there you like. I bet you.

14 people found this helpful

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Kyle

Recommend this book, don’t recommend tilting head to read it.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 January 2021

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Any designers reading, I highly recommend this book, though don’t read with your head tilted.
Essential for designers bookshelf (might have to face front when in Zoom background)

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KirstenS

Brilliant book to have

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 October 2016

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Brilliant book to have, especially if your interested or studying Graphic Design, really good to dip in and out to. Excellent for looking at the history of graphic design and if your just looking for ideas really, filled with lots of interesting facts, quotes and images etc. Really good quality in terms of the book itself, really sturdy and good quality paper.

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Adam

A Must-Have for Any Creative

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 November 2016

Verified Purchase

A must-have for any creative in my opinion. It's colourful, playful and full of inspiration and wit. The attention to detail in this cinder-block-of-a-book is impeccable and each turn of the page is exciting when you don't know if what you see on the overleaf will be bonkers, profound or both. It truly is an experience and worth every penny.

2 people found this helpful

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The Art of Looking Sideways: 0000 Hardcover – 17 July 2001

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