Hi! Today I’m going to offer some brief thoughts on two books I’ve finished recently– The Underground Railroad and Popular Lies About Graphic Design. Read on to see what I thought!
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
This was a really quic
k read, but not an easy one due to the harsh realities of slavery and racism that are almost constantly illustrated.
The reason for four stars is due to the writing style, which took some time for me to get used to. At first, it seems very emotionless and lacking of depth, but as the story expands, so does the writing, and you realize how well it fits the characters and story. I just wish it was like this from the very beginning.
Popular Lies About Graphic Design by Craig Ward
This book annoyed me so much!!
I thought it might be somewhat helpful, and teach me something about my major, but it just went over the same lessons I’ve heard over and over from professors and advisors. Ward makes a simple point, and then goes on and on about it, basically saying the same thing 5 times over.
Besides the not-stellar writing, the design actually bothered me, which I was surprised about considering this is a book about graphic design… There is a very odd mix of page designs, making me feel like he made this book just to show off his InDesign skills. In the middle of the book, there is a very startling introduction of color, to signal the beginning of a section of designer-contributed ‘popular lies abt graphic design’. This section really caught be off-guard, due to the fact that there was zero introduction, and suddenly some of the text was horizontal for no reason??? There were many sections of this book where the text was just not legible or easily-readable. While I want this book to look cool, it should also be readable, because, well, it’s a book!
This book might be enjoyable for someone who isn’t very well versed in graphic design, and is just getting into it, but as someone who is majoring in graphic design, I found it very repetitive and boring.
BOOKmaddie 