Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design

If you go to your local bookshop, and browse the section on Design books, you will see a selection of curiously bound offerings. But you will be very very hard pressed to find a book that genuinely covers design in a broad sense.The problem, it seems, as manifested by places like The Design Museum, is that the concept 'design' has become equated with appearance. This narrow perspective allows designers to shirk the responsibilities they have to end users in the design process. All too often a newly graduated designer will seek to stamp their personality or ideas on a product, flagrantly disregarding the basic principles of design.In one fell swoop, this book destroys any excuses designers may have. It is itself an elegant, highly accessible and successful example of good design. Each concept is covered in narrative, by reference and by example(s).From Occam's Razor, Affordability, Hick's Law to many areas not immediately obvious, the breadth of the book is wonderful, and no subject is anything other than easily understood.This coverage is no mean effort, and the beneficiaries cross all industries.Mandatory reading and reference for anyone who calls themselves a designer.

A useful point of reference

I bought this from a recommendation in another book I was reading. I am no designer, but after reading A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink, I was inspired to look into the area.This book gives you a list of 100 principles of design, from many different origins, and gives you two pages on each one; including an explanation, some practical applications and some illustrative examples. This is why I say it is not one to read in one sitting, because you basically have a long list of 100 things; no narrative to pull you through.So why 5 stars? Because as a book to dip into, to explore ideas you intuitively understand, it is a delight. Each idea is so quick to consumer and understand. Clearly each page is also beautifully designed.I have no idea if this is academically a great book on design, but for a non expert it is proving a wonder.

Excellent product excellent service

Universal Principles of Design, subtitled "100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach through Design" is essentially a directory of all those design terms and "buzz phrases" that you know you ought to know the meaning of. The authors have chosen 100 design ideas and concepts and devote a double-page spread to each. Concepts such as Ockham's Razor, Fibonacci Sequence, Iteration and Legibility (the basics that all designers must understand) are beautifully described and illustrated with excellent examples to illustrate each point.This is a general design reference but the wide range of examples include websites, books, posters, technical illustartions and photographs. In each case the examples used are appropriate perfectly illustrate the topic. All students of design should read this book and all designers should at least consider it a check list for their own knowledge and understanding.

At long last, something about making designs actually WORK in real life. Books and courses that inspire and show cutting edge trends and styles are great, but they shouldn't be the only thing.Buy this book if you want practical, solid, tried and tested, timeless wisdom that apply equally to eye-catching posters, car dashboards, beautiful artworks, office building layouts, websites, instruction manuals and in fact anything else that is ever used by a human being.Don't buy it if you think that design books must never be more than "Here's what I think was high fashion a few months ago".This book is almost everything I was disappointed not to be told at art school. It's practical, straight to the point, tried and tested principles that work. Most are properly scientifically tested, and some are built out of science first, then adapted into artistic principles that have since been shown to work.Note 'principles', not 'techniques'. An important thing to know about this book is you need to think hard and fast to get the most out of it. This book does NOT patronise you by telling you how to do your job - it doesn't even presume to know what your job is. It gives you the facts, what each principle is, what the evidence/theory/background to the idea is, a few proven tips and pointers to get you thinking, and then gives a few illustrated examples. It's up to you to work out whether it applies and how to apply it to the job in hand.Here's an example of one of my favourites, p38-39, 'Color'. It's a neat, crisp double page spread that explains the useful bits of colour theory in plain English. On the left, there's 5 simple, clear paragraphs. #1 explains very briefly why colour is important and useful (handy for designers like architects or product engineers who normally focus on form). #2 quickly explains why and when to limit colours. #3 quickly explains colour wheels, what colour combinations are known to work, and a couple of tips on using warm & cool colours and grey. #4 gives advice on how saturated and desaturated colours are perceived and what impressions they create. #5 quickly explains that other colour associations are cultural, not universal. Finally it tells you the best books to read if you need more technical detail. That's it. No technical stuff you don't need, no patronising instructions or statements of the obvious, just the most practical of the known facts. On the right, there are illustrations with colour wheels showing what different combinations, saturations and warm/cool colours look like, with a few examples of colour schemes in nature. Everything in the book is a double-page spread like this, facts on the left, examples on the right.A good opposite example is p94-95, 'Garbage-in, Garbage-out'. It covers common problems that lead to people putting input in wrongly, learned the hard way by computer interface designers. It's obvious how these are valuable and practical if you design human-machine interfaces, to stop small mistakes ruining the system. It's also still relevant for communication designs like graphics, albeit less critical - it draws your attention to common mistakes and slips people make, so you can be sharper at identifying and pre-empting possible misunderstandings or misinterpretations.I've given the book 4/5 because although the idea is brilliant and much needed, and although the execution is very good, and I'd really recommend buying it, there is still some room for improvement. Some examples are repeated, some examples although still useful were a bit out of date even when the book was published in 2003, and although most of the 100 are really good, a few don't quite deserve inclusion and a few are a bit specific to one trade. Also, they had a brilliant idea for a 'categorical' contents page, with principles listed by design challenge (e.g. things to do with appeal, things to do with guiding learning, etc), but it's not as well executed or useful as it could be.Brilliant book, worth buying, and massive value for money considering the value you'll get out of it. Hopefully there'll be a 2nd edition soon that'll be even better, but don't wait for it. You'd be happy with a course that cost thousands of pounds, if it taught you everything there is in this book.

This is a compendium of concepts, ideas, movements, buzzwords, that cover an enormous range - from Occam's Razor to the 80/20 rule - but which all contribute to design thinking. Depending on where you're coming from you'll find some of the content very familiar and obvious, but other parts will have you saying "Ah, so that's where that comes from" while others will be concepts you've never come across before. The joy of it is that everyone will find different principles familar, interesting, new, relevant, etc.The book is beautifully produced, easy to refer back to and a pleasure to read.It would be fun to see a linked web site that solicited ideas for inclusion in a second volume. My personal vote would go to Pattern Languages, inexplicably missing from the original. This is my only point of argument with this lovely book.

ポスターやポップの見た目など狭い意味のデザインではなく、『デザイン思考』の観点で必要な100のルールを辞書のようにアルファベット順に解説しています。80:20の法則、黄金律から、正規分布やヒューマンエラーまで、広く及んでいます。自動車の設計にも適用しているweakest pointにも触れており、二次元のグラフィックだけでなく、三次元にも適用され得るルールであり、一言でいえば、人間の心理がどう捉えるか、それを踏まえてデザインで留意することは何かをまとめています。ただ、デザインを本業としている方には当たり前過ぎて、物足りないかもしれません。大変読み易い日本語訳を図書館で見つけてからの縁ですが、日本語訳は、正規分布の平均値(mean)と最頻値(mode)を取り違えて間違って訳していたので、原書を取り寄せました。英検2級プラスアルファの語彙があれば読めますが、背景知識がないと難しく感じるかもしれません。

I borrowed this book from a friend and have enjoyed it immensely. As another reviewer pointed out, the book follows good design principles and is laid out very well, making it simple to gather much information, whether you skim or read it in depth. Each two-page spread has a concept on the left, a quick summary, more detailed paragraphs, and graphics illustrating the concepts on the right.In fact, this book was so facinating and well laid out, I am reading it with my 8-year-old son, who loves to understand how things work. The design of the pages, the illustrations, and the explanation of the concepts are done so well that my son can understand most of what is presented. I think that says quite a lot!Now that I have seen so much of it, I am ordering my own copy.

Great book

This is a really good read for aspiring designers who want to consider different approaches to the creative process, whether you are designing print or reinventing the bottle opener. It gives 100 principles, with examples, and doesn't claim to be exhaustive. For the most part, the insight is useful, but I feel compelled to point out two glaring errors and how ironic it is that such would exist in what is an otherwise very useful book.1. The section about how to warn future civilizations of radioactive waste is utterly incorrect. The very solutions they offer in the book would draw people towards dangerous areas, not repel them, because of natural human curiosity. If I was hiking around and I saw the visuals suggested I would naturally want to go get a closer look. So, that was clearly overcooked design, when the simplicity of using depictions of skulls and related pictograms would do the trick, regardless of race, culture, background or language.2. Part of the book regards how to not deter customers from entering an establishment, such as a store or a restaurant. One example they give is to avoid having salespeople waiting for you at the door. In another part of the book, they use the Apple stores as an example of a successfully inviting design, which is ironic given that the first thing you see upon approaching an Apple store is salespeople waiting for you at the door.I'm not sure how these errors made it into the book but it is otherwise very good and I recommend it.

This is the **most essential design book** I've had the pleasure of learning from. If there was only one book I could only recommend to design students or for client education, this would be it! The organization of the book follows it's own principles, the content is specific and accurate, and it cites and gives credit where due (also promoting deeper study of a subject/concept). I truly value it because of the quality summaries of design principles I've learned elsewhere consolidated into one book. The ONLY thing I would change about the book is to use a Serif typeface on the body texts for better readability.Excellent writing, excellent topical content, and excellent diagrams and examples.My compliments to the authors, as well as Rockport (whose books I usually despise for lacking substance despite their nice graphics).