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Rating: 
Summary: An excellent, eclectic survey
Review: By avoiding the temptation to plug his own firm's work, the author has the freedom to compile a surprising and thought-provoking gallery of design being used to solve real-world problems. The section on design, nation and politics is particularly strong, but throughout there are examples of creative and inspiring design that also does the job. As a bonus, it's engagingly written, entertaining, and well laid out.
Rating: 
Summary: Problem Solved? Yes and no.
Review: In his first book, Michael Johnson has compiled and commented on a vast array of innovative and effective adverising and design, as well as some no so effective work - this is a strong point in the book - as we often learn more from mistakes than we do from achievements.The book itself is very well designed, with a very coherent layout, lovely paper, and excellent printing and colour reproduction. Johnson's writting style is easy going and at times witty, he is an informed designer and pens some great commentary throughout the book on what works and what doesn't.
My only problem was this: the commentary by Johnson only goes so far. It's more than enough information for the casual reader, but for graphic design or advertising students and proffessionals, it may seem like the nitty-gritty of the creative process is not revealed enough. Admittedly, with so many examples given in Problem Solved, this would be impossible. Hopefully Johnson will do another book with fewer design pieces and more talk with the designers.
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