

Books For Learning to Design, The Hard Way - bad_user
http://alexn.org/blog/2011/11/25/4-books-for-learning-to-design-the-hard-way.html

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commieneko
The Robin Williams book is great. I used it as a text several years ago for a
class I taught. A very good overview.

I was a bit surprised to see the Edwards (Drawing on the right side of the
brain) book. Pleasantly surprised. One of the things I've always stressed to
my students is that learning to draw is actually learning to _see_. People
think the can see things clearly and objectively, but what they are actually
doing is _recognizing._ (There is a small motor skill component to drawing,
but _seeing_ is by far the most important.)

If you want to communicate visually, you first have to learn to see.

Design theories and formulas will only get you so far.

Those students who learned to do a little sketching improved dramatically.

And yes, it is hard to do. It is a process as deep as you are.

~~~
mannicken
It's just not seeing, but also knowing. That's why some art schools have
dissection labs where art students learn how human body is structured. And
when you know anatomy, you can draw from imagination which is really a lot
more valuable skill than copying a person's photo using a grid method :P

~~~
commieneko
Drawing synthetically or constructively is a different skill. And learning to
draw observationally, that is learning to _see_ , is still a prerequisite.

Knowing anatomy, by the way, doesn't necessarily help you draw. I've had
doctors that specialize in anatomy in class and they were terrible at drawing
until they learned to see. They could recognize and label the parts, and they
could even do a simple 2D schematic type diagram of muscles, but put a real
3D, foreshortened person in front of them and they were just as awkward as
anyone else.

~~~
mannicken
Well, when you're drawing from a long pose (week or longer), the model is
bound to change her/his shapes slightly.. So just drawing what you see is not
enough, you have to understand the 3-dimensional structure of the thing you're
drawing at least on a basic level.

But also, I agree -- foreshortening is hard until you learn 2-point
perspective and can "see" perspective points that you can easily build up the
foreshortened feature from.

~~~
commieneko
Seeing isn't necessarily a 2D process; and not just because our vision is
binocular. Our visual system is very complex. The hardware is, optically, very
crappy. Our image processing and integration software is very complex, much
more complex than we really are able to understand at this time.

And it behaves almost nothing like a camera. Even mechanically, the optical
projection is very different than a camera makes, or what one would get from a
linear perspective projection.

There is a projection, but the "image" is actually composed of multiple
viewpoints over time. The adjustments an artist must make for small changes in
the model's pose is nothing compared to the varying nature of the mental image
you actually "see" inside your brain. It is far from static, and is in fact
very dynamic.

Which is why that drawing from life is considered much more important than
drawing from a photograph when learning to see.

Note that I'm not knocking the study of structure or synthetic processes like
linear perspective. They are important tools and aids in perception and image
synthesis. But a good drawing, or painting, or photograph for that matter, is
not a mere 2D projection of light and dark. It is an encoded record of a
multitude of perceptions, or perception artifacts that your brain then
interprets, inside it's magic "seeing" box, which then produces a simulacrum
of a perceived event or process.

Else making a good drawing or photograph would be an entirely mechanical
process that anyone could make by following a few simple rules. Instead they
are like moments of insight into a scene or event.

And all of this is relevant if you are creating software that is going to
communicate visually. When you are building your data structures and models
inside your head, it is a very different from that which the experience the
user has. Your job is to make the important aspects of that model manifest
visually, and usefully manipulatable.

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_delirium
I tend to split design books into two related but somewhat distinct clusters:
books about visual or aesthetic design, and books about engineering or
technical design. Of course, it's not a clean split (architecture in
particular strongly combines the two), but some books are clearly more on one
side or the other.

For the engineering-design side, two good books, imo:

Herb Simon's classic _Sciences of the Artificial_ , which approaches design
from the lens of an AI researcher trying to figure out what design really is,
partly to develop it into a science of design, and partly with an eye towards
formalizing a model of design that a computer could use:
[http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5579)

 _Designerly Ways of Knowing_ by Nigel Cross, which positions design as a
third kind of inquiry, neither fully science nor fully humanities, but a kind
of constructive investigation of objects and their properties:
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3764384840/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3764384840/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=abxxm-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=3764384840)

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andrewcooke
why is this the "hard way"? is reading introductory books hard now? what's
easy? and get off my damn lawn.

~~~
ashconnor
I believe this a popular new phrase thanks to Zed Shaw.

~~~
MaxGabriel
It's been awhile since I've read LPTHW, but as I recall from the intro, and
from the LXTHW site, ""Less Talk, More Code" summarizes the philosophy." Given
the lack of emphasis on doing here (outside the last book) I don't think this
post really captures that philosophy

(That's not a commentary on the quality of this post though, or the
recommendations)

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tsunamifury
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is a very well written book which
highlights perceptual issues of representing space. It also does a great job
of mixing in developemental psychology to help you understand how a human's
representation of the world changes as they grow older.

One of the best examples from the book explains why hands in children's
drawings of people are always so large. Essentially, as a child focuses more
on complex details (each individual finger) they unconsciously enlarge the
object in order to fit in all the detail. Its a good illustration of our
perception of scale vs scale relative to other objects.

There are plenty of other great observations about the way humans think
visually in the book as well.

~~~
joystick
+1. I think anyone could learn to draw from life by reading and do the
exercises from this book. The trick is to stop trying to draw symbols ( left
brain ) and draw what you actually see ( right brain )

It's for anyone who ever told themselves they can't draw

~~~
commieneko
The book is a marvel. I read the first edition when I was in college and it
taught me more than two semesters of basic drawing taught by an indifferent
"modern" artist. In most books that try to teach drawing as a mechanical
process, as opposed as a purely "creative" exercise, they seem to leave out a
"magic" step that makes things possible. Turns out that it isn't magic, but it
is fairly subtle. The books makes a process explicit that is too often left to
subliminal happenstance.

Don't mistake, the process is still hard, and requires much effort, but it
does remove a lot of the magic feather aspect.

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billswift
_Thinking with a Pencil_ , by Henning Nelms, would be a better choice for
practical drawing and design, rather than _Drawing on the Right Side of the
Brain_.

[http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Pencil-Henning-
Nelms/dp/08981...](http://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Pencil-Henning-
Nelms/dp/0898150523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322243364&sr=8-1)

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struppi
"The non-designer's design book" is really great, I learned a lot from it. It
helps to know these things, even though I am a software developer and normally
do little to no design work for my clients.

Currently I read "Visual Language for Designers" (-) which is also very
interesting. It describes how our brain processes visual information and how
you can use this to create better (easier to understand) designs.

(-) [http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Language-Designers-
Principles-U...](http://www.amazon.com/Visual-Language-Designers-Principles-
Understand/dp/1592537413/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1322229312&sr=8-1)

~~~
sbuk
If you are interested in the theory design and if you can find them (no,
they're not the A-Team, just maybe out of print), have a look at "Design and
Form" and "The Elements of Colour" both by Johannes Itten and "Principles of
Form and Design" by Wucious Wong.

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kingsidharth
No book on Information Architecture and User Interface? Human psychology of
decision making? This is not the hard way.

Hard way is to study human behavior and then study how good things were
designed around them. Study the thought process behind and try and solve some
design problems yourself.

This is not the hard way.

~~~
bad_user
Can you recommend resources for those 2 topics?

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kingsidharth
For starters, see the footer: <http://www.andyrutledge.com/calculating-
hours.php> (His home page is changed so doesn't link to them all)

<http://www.alistapart.com/> Does talk about psychology and logic behind
design.

<http://52weeksofux.com/> UX

And Don't make me think. An awesome book on usability: <http://amzn.to/uZ4uH5>

I haven't found any great resource on Information Architecture yet.

<selfpromiton> I wrote a very brief intro to them all:
<http://www.64notes.com/design/design-and-subsets-essay/> </selfpromiton>

~~~
bad_user
Thanks,

I also read "Don't Make Me Think", but I haven't included it (in this article)
because I don't consider it a good book. It felt like some examples were just
wrong and I also couldn't take away much value from it, although I may have
been biased by my opinions on the matter. Its other flaw is that it bored me
after the first third or so.

Also, "The Design of Everyday Things" (included) does talk about the
psychology behind user actions. It's pretty good.

~~~
kingsidharth
> It bored me.

> The hard way.

Words don't teach; life experience does. Books are good for intro.

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ryanwhitney
I'll probably have to check out the Color book by Betty Edwards. Any other
recommendations for color-centric books?

I took a "color and design" course my first year of college, hoping for a
lecture on color theory, but instead ended up pasting cardboard paper on
poster board for four months.

~~~
bad_user
"Interaction of Color" was suggested as an alternative -
<http://amzn.to/vnkSqW>

~~~
jacobolus
The main idea behind “Interaction of Color” is that the original was a large
book that included (dozens of?) large colorful cards, and the focus of the
book is on exercises in playing with colored paper and seeing the
relationships created thereby.

The actual “theory” of the book is fairly basic, but I think the approach
(i.e. learning by repeatedly doing) is definitely the right one. If you buy
any recent printing, you have to force yourself to make your own and do the
exercises, if you want to get the full value from the book. Comparing with
other students working exercises at the same time would also probably be
helpful, even if there are only two or three of you.

Here’s a longer review: <http://www.handprint.com/HP/WCL/book3.html#albers>

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mannicken
The ones that helped me the most were:

Universal Principles of Design

Bridgman's Complete Guide to Drawing from Life -- this is not related to
design that much, but it's a staple life drawing book and once you can draw a
person's face well, everything else becomes easier to draw.

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earnubs
There is absolutely no harm in getting an appreciation of a complementary
subjects -- quite the opposite, should in fact be encouraged -- and no book
can teach the innate art of either programming or design, but really, isn't
anything worthwhile hard?

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ggwicz
I don't personally believe you can "become" creative, but putting on good
music and drawing for awhile makes things "flow" better for me. I suck at
drawing tho...

~~~
bad_user
While I never think one could reach the levels of enlightenment of
Michelangelo or Jonathan Ive :) I do believe one can exceed his creative
potential. As with any other endeavor, like software development or sports,
you can be better just by doing it repeatedly, getting out of your comfort
zone, pushing your limits and all that crap other people keep saying.

Another thing I'm contemplating, besides drawing, is learning how to play an
instrument, like the violin. A mere mortal like myself will never be a
virtuoso, but I could be good enough for my own and my family's gratification.

