Quentin Newark. 2002. Mies, Switzerland: RotoVision SA. [ISBN 2-88046-539-7. 254 pages, including index. $35.00 USD.]
On the title page of What is graphic design? Quentin Newark quotes Oscar Wilde: "It is very much more difficult to talk about a thing than to do it." When it comes to design, many technical communicators might disagree, finding it much easier to identify and discuss than to create innovative, usable designs.
into the world of graphic design. Locating design not only in the rarefied atmosphere of museums and art posters but also in the "real world" of candy bar wrappers, signs, phone message pads, and baggage claim checks, Newark illustrates the products of design as well as the process.
The book, printed in four colors on heavy, glossy paper stock, is itself a model of design and usability. It is divided into four readable and engaging sections.
The first section, "Issues," defines key terms such as design and designer, differentiates design from advertising and art, and contextualizes design in the world. In a chapter titled "The dilemma of style," Newark's pragmatic view resonates for the technical communicator: "Style has a function: it limits choices. It excludes certain possibilities, and makes others follow in a chain--it creates a related set of design decisions" (p. 18). Later in the first section, addressing "How design evolves," Newark writes. "Like everything in the broader culture, design is shaped by forces that pull and push it into new forms" (p. 34). Among these forces are technology, commerce, standardization, aesthetics, and utility--once again bringing to the forefront issues that technical communicators grapple with daily.
Newark begins the second section of the book, "Anatomy," with the following disclaimer: "Dividing up graphic design into categories is essentially a fruitless exercise" because design "covers a number of interlaced activities that do not fall into distinct parts" (p. 62). Nonetheless, he proceeds to divide this section into five groupings of 31 elements. I'm taking a chance here as I name the groupings, because he doesn't; he relies instead on spatial arrangement to hint at the relationships he sees. One group seems to cover what I ,night call the building blocks of design (alphabets, modules, typefaces, characters, and languages); another revolves around layout (typography, grids, hierarchy, and page elements); a third concerns images and other illustrations; and the fourth group comprises chapters about tools (pencils, materials, paper, and computers). The final grouping of chapters in the "Anatomy" section is loosely arranged around what Newark calls "Disciplines." His organizing principle for this last grouping is as follows: "There can be no corporate identity without understanding of logos or no packaging design without addressing the principles of publicity and information design. All these disciplines are joined by their articulation of word and image" (p. 118). Among the so-called disciplines--which we might call genres or publication formats--he includes logos, packaging, and publicity, as well as books, magazines, signs, exhibitions, the Web, and film.
