Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #812702 in Books
• Published on: 2001-10
• Original language: English, French
• Binding: Paperback
• 200 pages

Customer Reviews

A Deserved Classic But Incomplete
You'd expect a book with the title "Graphic Design Manual" to be comprehensive, covering all the fundamentals of graphic design. This book falls far, far short of being a complete guide to graphic design. To give you an idea of how short, the book has a dozen pages of text. That's it. I know graphic designers are fond of pictures but 12 pages of text out of 172 for a manual? (I'm reviewing my copy which is the 1965 edition.)

That said, this *is* a good book on design. The little text that there is is informative and the graphics nicely illustrate and extend the text. Much of content of the book has to be generated by the reader himself, as he reads the brief introductory text and then studies the examples.

Hofmann's approach is logical and hierarchical. He starts off with the basics and illustrates each with a simple series of graphics. Then over the course of a few pages the examples get progressively more complex but still depend upon and illustrate the point/s being discussed.

I highly recommend this book to someone who wants to learn or refresh their grasp of the fundamentals of design. Hofmann is a master and the graphics he has chosen for this book are compelling and informative. This book is probably beyond the novice level as it is so compressed, with very little discussion of each point but a lot of examples. A beginner will be hard pressed to follow the development of examples without some more guidance as to what he is looking at and how the more complex graphics relate to the original point. But still, you will learn a lot from this book, especially if you return to it later in your design education.

In short, despite its title this book does not cover graphic design, it covers the elements of design, things such as the dot, the line, text and illustration and the interplay between these elements. You will not find any discussion of important principles such as hierarchy, alignment, grids, layout, color (in fact all graphics are black and white). This is however a valuable book that deserves careful study and will teach you a lot about the fundamentals of design.

Saying more with less: priceless visual guide to design fundamentals
George Nelson states in the preface that Armin Hofmann "arrives naturally at the conviction that if problems can be correctly stated, they can be solved."
This gets at the essence of what motivates Hofmann's thinking and teachings. Design is about problem solving and Hofmann's work is a clear and beautiful expression of the design process, at its most basic.
The book describes the relationships of the dot and the line within a wide range of compositions that explore balance, hierarchy and rhythm.
A classic guide for motion media students/teachers and graphic designers alike. Beautifully illustrated, this book implicitly follows the strong methodologies established at the Basel School of Art.

Bible of graphic design???
Even though Armin Hofmann has made a grand contrubution to the design world, I surely don't consider this book as a beginners manual. The one book that I can only consider to open the beginners horizon is "A History of Graphic Design" by Philip B. Meggs. In the long run, this is a good book, but not for the freshman.