I was talking to someone the other day and I brought up the fact that I had been reading a design book. After it was established that design does not refer to intelligent design but graphic design, my friend made a point that he didn’t really see why I’d need a book about that.
He reasoned that perhaps he was just artistic enough to not need one. At the time, I must admit I took it as arrogance. He seemed a bit smug about it. (But I know the internet doesn’t always convey intention as well as it should, and this was probably one of those times.)
After thinking, I’ve decided it was actually more likely na•vety than arrogance. Hopefully I haven’t seriously offended this person by bringing all this up, as he’s one of the three readers of this site, but I’m going to explain why I feel that way and why I think every good designer (or even one who just wants to mess around sometimes) can and should try to learn from books.
The first major point for reading from books applies just as well to taking design classes or something like that Ñ learning the vocabulary. It doesn’t seem important, but it’s tremendously powerful. One designer’s work I read recently, The NonÐDesigner’s Design Book (Robin Williams), explained it best with a story.
ÒMany years ago I received a tree identification book for Christmas. [...] The first tree in the book was the Joshua tree because it only took two clues to identify it. Now the Joshua tree is a really weirdÐlooking tree and I looked at that picture and said to myself, ‘Oh, we don’t have that kind of tree in Northern California.’
Ò[...] So I took my book and went outside. Four of those homes had Joshua trees in the front yard. I had lived in that house for thirteen years, and I had never seen a Joshua tree.Ó
She goes on to explain that if you can name it, you can control it, especially in design. And she’s not just blowing hot air either. In the last three weeks since reading that book I’ve become a noticeably more confident and able designer, mainly because I can now look and say stuff like, ÒOh, that’s missing a strong alignment to really tie the piece together.Ó
Now, I’m not saying you can’t be artistic without knowing terms, I’m saying that if you know the terms it can help you be even more artistic. It can help you stop playing the Òhit and miss until you get it to look rightÓ game. Why do you think art class often has large portions devoted to looking at different periods and styles of art? This is one of the major reasons I recommend looking into a design book or two if you want to put together anything that could benefit.
The other major reason why I believe it never hurts to pick up a design book is that it’s just a huge collection of (hopefully) great work to get inspired by. Even if you are somehow born with a complete ability to innately know every design principle and apply it, you’re still likely to be inspired by other people’s work.
If you’re going to try to tell me you don’t need design principles or inspiration, I’m going to have to call bullshit. There’s no way any artist could go through life without inspiration and a good sense of how to compose their art pieces (often derived by studying others’ work). So Ñ if you want to design a school newsletter, a multiÐmillion dollar print campaign, or anything in between Ñ pick up a book, if you haven’t already, and it will be of some help.
Comments are closed.