Making and Breaking the Grid: A Graphic Design Layout Workshop

Rating:
Summary: A good supplement
Review: As the title implies, Samara's work teaches how to both successfully apply and trash the grid system in design. In this sense, the book is quite unique, as most texts of the same topic do not put focus on the latter approach.

I found the pictorial examples of both applications to be more useful than the text itself, and keep the book around for graphic inspiration rather than an informative read.

If you are a designer, this is a good book to take a serious look at, but I would only purchase it after reading Josef Muller-Brockmann's outstanding Grid Systems in Graphic Design.

Rating:
Summary: finally a book show me how to crate and use a grid
Review: i have seen so many books talk about grid,
most of them are too dry, either only have the imagry or just the grid itself,
this is the book would totally show me how is the grid being create, use and how the break it when it comes to layout.
check it out!

Rating:
Summary: Extremely helpful
Review: My friend designer bought this book couple of months ago. Suddenly I noticed that I can't help myself looking into that book again and again. So, despite having it not far away, I decided to buy another instance for myself.
The book covers the grid theory and usage almost perfectly. If you're engaged in brochure or booklet design, you'll find this book full of ideas and extremely helpful, no matter whether you just start with it or you have been practicing brochure design for years.

Rating:
Summary: Great for inspiring designers
Review: This book is great for young inspiring designers to use as a learning tool and reference book. It shows how to make a grid system work and how to modify different styles of grids to a designers particular needs. The book is less in content and more focusing on showing images of the grid at work. This is a must have book and the price is well worth it.

Rating:
Summary: A great book on handling type and layout
Review: This is a developed look at handling type and page (surface) layout in a simple-yet-abstract way. Using grids and ideas presented in this book (with some practise), the learning designer can begin to utilise elements once thought as simple and static in ways which add dynamism to your layouts.

For a designer such as myself, a fan of Swiss and Bauhaus, simplicity, directness, Making and Breaking the Grid is a book full of idea and potential. Although not radical per se, it is a concise look at one of the most powerful aspects of communication design out there, in my opinion. Definitely worth a look.

Rating:
Summary: A first caveat
Review: This is not a full review of the book. It is an initial caveat to purchasers. If you are the sort of graphic designer who is mightily impressed by references to the 'poststructural French philospher Rene Foucault' (reproduced with original spelling from page 117 of the book) then you will find this highly stimulating, and admire the pretty pictures.

If, on the other hand, you find such ignorance laughable, or feel that a half-decent writer (never mind editor) should catch such howlers, then you may have pause for thought. It is a philosophical issue, of course: some believe that graphic design should have such contempt for mere words that they can be ignored, set in Dingbats or otherwise mutilated. Such an opinion is, however, not entirely in accord with many designers referenced in this book. A deliberate contradiction on the part of the author? I don't think so.

So, shoddily edited, but looks nice.