Design Essentials: A Handbook (2nd Edition),   ISBN:9780135024690

Customer Rating: 

The book itself is not much. It has a brief introduction, a big glossary of terms, and a few exercises at the end. I bought it not out of desire, but necessity since it's required for a college course I'm taking. I paid a lot less than the publisher's list price from an Amazon seller and a lot less than the college bookstore price. The color information is all in black and white -- go figure. All in all I'm satisfied with the price, but again, the book is pretty sparse in terms of information -- unless you like reading definitions.

Customer Rating: 

This little book could be an excellent book for a basic introductory course in design. In fact, I do use it in my classroom because it is small, not terribly expensive, and easy to carry for the students. It would not be suitable for art majors. I use it for students who just take an occasional art course during their stint in college.

It is classified as a "Hand Book" yet it has only one small chapter on The Design Process, and a mere FIVE pages of projects or assignments listed under the title of Exercises and Analysis. This short final chapter has a few exercises thatcan be used in the classroom.

The enormous Glossary (112 pages!) falls in between the eleven page first chapter on Design Process and the five page chapter on Exercises and Analysis.

This handbook need much more information in it and needs much more added to it in the exercises chapter. It would be wonderful if it was organized with exercises that would accompany the different terms in the glossary. Perhaps one exercise for every page or two in the glossary. Now, that would be WONDERFUL for teaching beginning students.

Another displeasure I have with this book is that it is about ART and there is not even ONE color page or illlustration in the entire book. The book is a bit pricey for such a small book with very little "meat" and with no color in it at all. Couldn't the "color" section at least have ONE color photo?

On the plus side, the book does have a number of small thumb nail illustrations throughout and in particular in the Glossary. These are helpful as we all know that basic art students don't spend much time reading text anyway. I think Prentice Hall could put more effort into developing this book and hope that the 3rd edition, IF it comes out, will be better.