Design Elements, 2nd Edition: Understanding the rules and knowing when to break them - Updated and Expanded

This updated version of Rockport's bestselling Design Elements offers expanded and updated content in a new, cleaner format for easier navigation. Author Timothy Samara has added more than 50 new diagrams and more than 100 new images of real-world projects with an increased emphasis on web and environmental design projects. The "20 Rules for Good Design" has been revisited and expanded to 25 Rules. The book covers all the design fundamentals from working with grids, color application, typography, imagery to finally how to put it all together. Expansion and new material includes:

-Composition/layout, visual hierarchy -Form and composition in relation to concepts and meaning

-Color psychology and narrative-Color coding-Reference palettes for time periods, cultures, and businesses

-Special color and printing techniques -Combining type styles, editorial text setting issues, plus-Web-related type style and hierarchy issues

-Strategies for using photography; design drawing; medium and meaning; pictorial and non-pictorial -image-making options; semiotics, symbolic and metaphorical image use; type as image-Making type and imagery work better together

-Finding flexibility in design systems -The design process, from creative concept development and practical work-flow standpoints...

-Plus a complete project case study with major decision-moments keyed to respective sections!

Being a creative designer is often about coming up with unique design solutions. Unfortunately, when the basic rules of design are ignored in an effort to be distinctive, design becomes useless. In language, a departure from the rules is only appreciated as great literature if recognition of the rules underlies the text. Graphic design is a "visual language," and brilliance is recognized in designers whose work seems to break all the rules, yet communicates its messages clearly.This book is a fun and accessible handbook that presents the fundamentals of design in lists, tips, brief text, and examples. Chapters include Graphic Design: What It Is; What Are They and What Do They Do?; 25 Basic Rules of Good Design; Form and Space-The Basics; Color Fundamentals; Choosing and Using Type; The World of Imagery; Putting it All Together? Essential Layout Concepts; The Right Design Choices: 20 Reminders for Working Designers; and Breaking the Rules: When and Why to Challenge all the Rules of this Book.

Timothy Samara is a graphic designer based in New York City, where he divides his time between teaching, writing, lecturing, and consulting through STIM Visual Communication. His 20-year career in branding and information design has explored projects in print, packaging, environments, user interface design, and animation. He has been a senior art director at Ruder Finn, New York’s largest public relations firm, and senior art director at Pettistudio, a small multidisciplinary design firm. Before relocating to Manhattan, he was principal of Physiologic in Syracuse, located in upstate New York. In 1990, he graduated a Trustee Scholar from the Graphic Design program at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Mr. Samara is a faculty member at New York’s School of Visual Arts, New York University, Purchase College/SUNY, and The New School, and has published six books on design and typography, all through Rockport Publishers: Making and Breaking the Grid; Typography Workbook; Publication Design Workbook; Type Style Finder; Design Elements, Design Evolution, and Letterforms. Mr. Samara and his partner live in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.