From the Attic: Elements of Design
One from the attic - 1961s “The Elements of Design” by Donald M. Anderson surveys the graphic landscape encompassing pretty much all modes of representation from the modern mathematic to the archaic organic, commercial to the avant garde through its 218 pages of largely black and white illustrated text. By treating visual matter in formal categories such as colour, shape, line and texture, the illustrations on any given spread cut across both time and culture to make some often surprising juxtapositions.
As a textbook, it is largely intended to be taught, and each chapter suggests a few solid exercises, but really deserve a bit more theoretical expansion and certainly in the colour section may have benefited by some more colour plates. The text delinates between fine-art and design practice, often denigrating the world of fine-art to a niche.
Whilst some of the examples are a little retro, the complete lack of digital imagery is subtly refreshing, and the echewment of the dominant image making mode of our time (the photograph) in favour of a myriad of other ways of making - tapestry, x-rays, type-collage, painting, and the thinking that goes along with those media likewise excites the optic nerve and whets the creative appetite.
I believe I picked it up in Hay-on-Wye as an undergraduate - attracted predominately by its landscape format palm-to-elbow ratio size (I built a similarly proportioned sketch-book) , brown, embossed leather-effect exterior and plethora of ideas
It looks like you can buy secondhand copies of the paperback version of the Elements of Design at Amazon (might make a great gift for anyone in arts/design-education).
i recently found a copy of this book and paid only about .05 for it. what is it really worth today
29/4/2009 | letitia |