Some graphic "ingredients" from the tasty book The Designer's Graphic Stew

Are you stuck in a design rut? Check out this page from The Designer's Graphic Stew and get some new lines, shapes or arrangements for your design elements!

Click on the image to enlarge and read up on all sorts of graphic ingredients.

Like this page and want more from the buffet of ideas? Pop on over to this post to see another inside peek or grab yourself a copy of this book for the whole enchilada!

The Designer's Graphic Stew:

Visual Ingredients, Techniques, and Layout Recipes for Graphic Designers

By

Timothy Samara

Under the witty and metaphorical guise of a high-end cookbook, the author provides visual “ingredients,” such as grid structures, folios, border devices, type treatments, abstract graphic elements, categorized stylistically and functionally. These ingredients are shown in use through a “recipe” format to accomplish strategies such as movement, rhythm, organization, contrast, metaphor, etc. Ingredients are coded and cross-referenced among categories for mix and matching purposes as well as demonstrating varied alternate combinations for achieving different approaches to strategies.

Timothy Samara is a graphic designer based in New York City, where he divides his time between teaching, writing, lecturing, and freelance consulting through STIM Visual Communication. His 18-year career in branding and information design has explored projects in print, packaging, environments, user interface design, and animation. He has been a senior art director at Ruder Finn, New York’s largest public relations firm, and senior art director at Pettistudio, a small multidisciplinary design firm. Before relocating to Manhattan, he was principal of Physiologic in Syracuse, located in upstate New York.

In 1990, he graduated a Trustee Scholar from the Graphic Design program at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Mr. Samara is a faculty member at New York’s School of Visual Arts, New York University, Purchase College/SUNY, and The New School, and has published six books on design and typography, all through Rockport Publishers: Making and Breaking the Grid; Typography Workbook; Publication Design Workbook; Type Style Finder; Design Elements; and, most recently, Design Evolution, released in January 2008. Mr. Samara and his partner live in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Question: "What is your favorite type of line?"

And yes I am being literal and figurative....Don't crafters/designers have a sense of humor????

Leave your answer and you are entered to win this week's book Playing with Books: Upcycling, Deconstructing, and Reimagining the Book!

Comments

[Janel]

How fun that this book is set up like a cookbook. Now that's something I can understand.

By the way, I like dot and dash lines with rounded ends. :)

[f lynn rush]

my favorite kind of line has information or interesting texture, like a line of words or something that looks like a zipper or sewing...a double-duty kind of line... i love this book, by the way...so much interest in the shapes and lines that it could become the "bones" of a lay-out...shape and design.

[julie m]

it wasn't on the page shown, but my favorite line is a spiral.

[Suella]

I love lines that portray either movement or texture. They give my eye pause and convey information at the same time.

[CindyB]

My favorite on the page is the parallel linear waves.

[Mary]

I love lines that are askew.

[Laurie]

Currently I am entranced with dots and circles, but anything swirly and evocative of water will do.

[edie]

My favorite kind of line is the one at the bead store where I'm waiting to pay for my goodies ;-)

edie

[Noreen]

I like lines that are unusual.. not just straight, but with bends or squiggles. Playing with Books looks SO interesting! I have a lot of page middles I cut out of some books to make book safes, and I think this would give me lots of ideas for using them.