Projekt

-- More than 200 full-color illustrations and photographs bring the discussion of typography to life

-- Updated to include new material on Web typography and other forms of online text display.

This classic typography book, first published in 1993, is now updated with brand-new typefaces, fonts, and illustrations. Internationally renowned graphic designer Erik Spiekermann explains in everyday terms what typography is and offers design guidance

"This is a wonderful book not 'just' about fashion butmodernism,
postmodernity, the arts and popular culture, design andtechnology, biology
and culturalism. It has a lot to say about ideas infashion (reflections on
theories of performativity, temporality, difference, repetition,
class/gender relations, and the recessive status ofBeauty today, organize
the chapters), and about fashion in ideas. And it'sabout how we might write
cultural history for a 'posthistorical' time." --Meaghan Mo

"This is a wonderful book not 'just' about fashion butmodernism,
postmodernity, the arts and popular culture, design andtechnology, biology
and culturalism. It has a lot to say about ideas infashion (reflections on
theories of performativity, temporality, difference, repetition,
class/gender relations, and the recessive status ofBeauty today, organize
the chapters), and about fashion in ideas. And it'sabout how we might write
cultural history for a 'posthistorical' time." --Meaghan Mo

Between 1870 and 1950, America's railroads produced a body of poster worksignificant both for the artists involved and for the range of images created. Therailroads used this visual medium from their founding, first in the form ofbroadsides, dominated by text and intended to convey practical information, andthen, during the 1890s, as vivid lithographed display posters. For the next 50years, American railroads commissioned posters designed to spur the popularimagination and thereby encourage travel. Image

Over the course of ten centuries, Islam developed a rich written heritagethat is visible in paintings, calligraphies, and manuscripts. The Islamic ManuscriptTradition explores this aspect of Islamic history with studies of the materials andtools of literate culture, including pens, inks, and papers, Qur'ans, Persian andMughal illustrated manuscripts, Ottoman devotional works, cartographicalmanuscripts, printed books, and Islamic erotica. Seven essays present newscholarship on a wide range of topics inclu

Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World is along overdue introduction to the work of visionary industrial designer BrooksStevens (1911-1995). Believing that an industrial designer "should be a businessman, an engineer, and a stylist, in that order," Stevens created thousands of ingeniousand beautiful designs for industrial and household products -- including a clothesdryer with a window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the OscarMayer Wienermobile. ("There's not

Mainstream media, often known simply as MSM, have not yet disappeared ina digital takeover of the media landscape. But the long-dominant MSM--television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and books--have had to respond to emergent digitalmedia. Newspapers have interactive Web sites; television broadcasts over theInternet; books are published in both electronic and print editions. In DesigningMedia, design guru Bill Moggridge examines connections and conflicts between old andnew media, describing how the MSM

If only today's technology were simpler It's the universal lament, butit's wrong. We don't want simplicity. Simple tools are not up to the task. The worldis complex; our tools need to match that complexity. Simplicity turns out to be morecomplex than we thought. In this provocative and informative book, Don Norman writesthat the complexity of our technology must mirror the complexity and richness of ourlives. It's not complexity that's the problem, it's bad design. Bad designcomplicates things unnecessa

For years, the signs in the New York City subway system were abewildering hodge-podge of lettering styles, sizes, shapes, materials, colors, andmessages. The original mosaics (dating from as early as 1904), displaying a varietyof serif and sans serif letters and decorative elements, were supplemented by signsin terracotta and cut stone. Over the years, enamel signs identifying stations andwarning riders not to spit, smoke, or cross the tracks were added to the mix.Efforts to untangle this visual mess beg

The shift in the practice of human-computer interaction (HCI) Design fromuser-centered to context-based design marks a significant change in focus. Withcontext-based design, designers start not with a preconceived idea of what usersshould do, but with an understanding of what users actually do. Context-based designfocuses on the situation in which the technology will be used -- the activitiesrelating to it and their social contexts. Designers must also realize thatintroduction of the technology itself ch

Finally, we are learning that simplicity equals sanity. We're rebellingagainst technology that's too complicated, DVD players with too many menus, andsoftware accompanied by 75-megabyte "read me" manuals. The iPod's clean gadgetry hasmade simplicity hip. But sometimes we find ourselves caught up in the simplicityparadox: we want something that's simple and easy to use, but also does all thecomplex things we might ever want it to do. In The Laws of Simplicity, John Maedaoffers ten laws for balancing simpl

From constructivist textile and clothing designs by Aleksandr Rodchenkoand Varvara Stepanova to the soft sculptures of Claes Oldenburg and LouiseBourgeois, twentieth century artists have looked to fabric and other materials topush artistic production beyond the image and the object. Over the past twenty-fiveyears The Fabric Workshop and Museum, an experimental arts laboratory inPhiladelphia, has evolved into an influential contemporary art museum with asignificant permanent collection, collaborating with

In Shape, George Stiny argues that seeing shapes -- with all theirchangeability and ambiguity -- is an inexhaustible source of creative ideas.Understanding shapes, he says, is a useful way to understand what is possible indesign.Shapes are devices for visual expression just as symbols are devices forverbal expression. Stiny develops a unified scheme that includes both visualexpression with shapes and verbal expression with signs. The relationships -- andequivalencies -- between the two kinds of expressiv

Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World is along overdue introduction to the work of visionary industrial designer BrooksStevens (1911-1995). Believing that an industrial designer "should be a businessman, an engineer, and a stylist, in that order," Stevens created thousands of ingeniousand beautiful designs for industrial and household products -- including a clothesdryer with a window in the front, a wide-mouthed peanut butter jar, and the OscarMayer Wienermobile. ("There's not

Emblematic of modernity, the grid is the underlying form of everythingfrom skyscrapers and office cubicles to paintings by Mondrian and a piece ofcomputer code. And yet, as Hannah Higgins makes clear in this engaging and evocativebook, the grid has a history that long predates modernity; it is the most prominentvisual structure in Western culture. In The Grid Book, Higgins examines the historyof ten grids that changed the world: the brick, the tablet, the gridiron city plan, the map, musical notation, th

In the twenty-first century, we must learn to look at cities not asskylines but as brandscapes and at buildings not as objects but as advertisementsand destinations. In the experience economy, experience itself has become theproduct: we're no longer consuming objects but sensations, even lifestyles. In thenew environment of brandscapes, buildings are not about where we work and live butwho we imagine ourselves to be. In Brandscapes, Anna Klingmann looks critically atthe controversial practice of branding

Eyeglasses have been transformed from medical necessity to fashionaccessory. This revolution has come about through embracing the design culture ofthe fashion industry. Why shouldn't design sensibilities also be applied to hearingaids, prosthetic limbs, and communication aids? In return, disability can provokeradical new directions in mainstream design. Charles and Ray Eames's iconicfurniture was inspired by a molded plywood leg splint that they designed for injuredand disabled servicemen. Designers toda

While the extraordinary achievements of Dutch graphic design in thetwentieth century have long been recognized, this book is the first comprehensiveaccount of the development of graphic design in the Netherlands, from its beginningsin 1890 to the present. Richly illustrated with 550 full-color plates, Dutch GraphicDesign portrays a remarkable diversity of styles and techniques in a wide range ofmedia and applications: books and typeface design, commercial printing, posters, postage stamps, corporate iden

Design history has emerged in recent years as a significant field ofscholarly research and critical reflection. With their interest in theconceptualization, production, and consumption of objects (large and small, uniqueor multiple, anonymous or signed) and environments (ephemeral or enduring, public orprivate), design historians investigate the multiple ways in which intentionallyproduced objects, environments, and experiences both shape and reflect theirhistorical moments.This anthology compiled from v

The Idea of Design is an anthology of essays that addresses the natureand practice of product design and graphic design in the contemporary world. Theessays, selected from volumes 4-9 of the international journal Design Issues, focuson three themes: reflection on the nature of design, the meaning of products, andthe place of design in world culture. The authors are distinguished scholars, historians, designers, and design educators. The diversity of their work illustratesthe pluralistic and interdiscipli

Since its first publication in 1969, Pioneers of Modern Typography hasbeen the standard guide to the avant-garde origins of modern graphic design andtypography. In this essential reference, Herbert Spencer shows how new concepts ingraphic design in the early decades of the twentieth century had their roots in theartistic movements of the time in painting, poetry, and architecture. Spencerexamines the "heroic" period of modern design and typography, the beginning of whichhe traces to the publication in Le