About Design ― Insights and Provocations for Graphic Design Enthusiasts

A treatise on the development and practice of the graphic design discipline.

About Design offers an enlightening and opinionated, albeit concise, excursion concerning many facets of the field of design. It emphasizes the discipline of graphic design, while incorporating a taste of the author’s makeup. It is a definitive, expansive observational, and knowledge-infused treatise that is expected to be particularly engaging for students and educators as well as for design practitioners. However, much of the content could tempt any readers who may be marginally inquisitive concerning visual art, design, and the web of “creativity.”

This informative, and sometimes scrappy, expedition is founded on the author’s fifty-five years’ entrenchment in design practice and higher education. Consequently, there are many pointed and sometimes novel perspectives, but it is essentially grounded on the commonly acknowledged doctrines that exist within the field. Some of the particular chapter topics deal with:

defining the elements of visual form

an analysis of the concepts of aesthetics and creativity

establishing some usable guidelines for effective designing

outlining many factors that are involved with design education, including a sketch of its history

miscellaneous related subjects, such as considerations of what makes something exceptional

The aforementioned themes, along with others, are interspersed with interludes that challenge certain long-held assumptions, provide contextual references, offer insights and suggest some fresh ways to analyze how we see, choose, inspire, and do.

Gordon Salchow is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning. He is recognized as a pioneer of modern graphic design education in America, having conceived and then orchestrating the philosophy and the components’ structure of its comprehensive and influential professional program. Gordon has been a prolific guest-lecturer, designer, author, and awards recipient. He was past Vice President of Education for the AIGA/National as well as having been named as an AIGA Fellow and has served on numerous panels, including the National Endowment for the Arts. The author resides in Cincinnati, Ohio.