Visual Grammar (Design Briefs)

Visual Grammar (Design Briefs)
Average customer rating:

I Found It Facinating

If you missed out in 5th grade...

A book with few words

Very Nice

Focussing the visual mind

Visual Grammar (Design Briefs)
Christian Leborg
Manufacturer: Princeton Architectural Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1568985819

Book Description

Life in the image world has made us all voracious, if not always deliberate, consumers of visual messages. Easy access to computer graphic tools has turned many of us into either amateur or professional image producers. But without a basic understanding of visual language, a productive dialogue between producers and consumers of visual communication is impossible. Visual Grammar can help you speak and write about visual objects and their creative potential, and better understand the graphics that bombard you 24/7. It is both a primer on visual language and a visual dictionary of the fundamental aspects of graphic design.

Dealing with every imaginable visual conceptâ€”from abstractions such as dimension, format, and volume; to concrete objects such as form, size, color, and saturation; to activities such as repetition, mirroring, movement, and displacement; to relations such as symmetry, balance, diffusion, direction, and variationâ€”this book is an indispensable reference for beginners and seasoned visual thinkers alike. Whether you simply want to familiarize yourself with visual concepts or whether you're an experienced designer looking for new ways to convey your ideas to a client, Visual Grammar is the clear and concise manual that you've been looking for.

Customer Reviews:

I Found It Facinating.......2007-08-02

I stumbled on this book at the local library and found it a very fascinating read. I've been involved in graphic production for years and can push the objects around on the comp, but never really knew the basics and foundation of visual language.

This is a great primer to learn the basic concepts that lead one to want to learn the syntax and the structure of the visual nouns learned.

This is something I will purchase and pore over until I learn the concepts.

If you missed out in 5th grade..........2007-03-29

Wow. Thats just it for this book. Seriously, someone wanted a publication and farted this thing out. I mean, it gives you the vocab of the elements...thats it. Im a college design teacher and this book would be great for a middle-school art/design class.

If you want simplistic...this may be for you.

A book with few words.......2006-12-03

This book certainly takes the simplicity route. It is ruthlessly straightforward in regards to expressing it's information, in a layout that is without a doubt concise and efficient. The nadir? It also unfortunately reads like stereo instructions and the knowledge it tries to impart is thoroughly basic at best. Simple shapes and the like may be the building blocks of structure, but without any really tangible information to be gleaned we are left with an attractive skeleton. Yes there are some bits of wisdom in this book as well as some fetching Adobe Illustrator rendered graphics, but by and large we're just left with more white space than a snowstorm. I really do think people should form their own opinions about reference materials however, maybe you could learn a great deal from this work. Buy it, try it, but I honestly can't envision the need for this volume in light of so many other exemplary works on the subject.

Very Nice.......2006-11-10

Everything was excellent except the quality of the binding on the book. it isn't bad enough for me to want to return it but it is something to mention.

Focussing the visual mind.......2006-08-18

The standard for visual literacy was set by Dondis A. Dondis in 1973 with "A Primer of Visual Literacy". However, it was (is) a heavy read. Christian Leborg's "Visual Grammar" gives us a more visual approach to the subject. His thesis is that we cannot understand the visual images that assault our eyes unless we share a common understanding of the symbols involved. Leborg enlightens us with a symplified but nonetheless complex view of symbols that are abstract, concrete, active, and relative. It's an interesting exploration using only basic geometric shapes. This is a "must have" book for those who teach design and a desirable book for students. All you need to know is that it is published by Princeton Architectural Press. Princeton publishes some of the most important books on design. Their positive discrimination is evident in all of their publications.

Average customer rating:

Little Gem
Details, Details, Details...
This CD is the best.
Pattern Paradise
A Gem

The Grammar of Ornament
Owen Jones
Manufacturer: DK ADULT
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0789476460

Book Description

An excellent resource for artists, designers, architects, craftspeople, or anyone interested in the decorative arts. First published in 1856, The Grammar of Ornament remains a design classic. Its inspiration came from the pioneering architect and designer Owen Jones. His observations of decorative art on his extensive travels in Europe and the Near East were employed to improve the poor quality of Western design. His goal was to change the Victorian habit of mixing elements from a wide variety of sources and applying this mix indiscriminately to buildings, graphic design, and products. His resulting study is a comprehensive analysis of a remarkable collection of styles of ornamental design -- from Ancient Egypt and Greece to Imperial China and Renaissance Italy. With its sumptuous illustrations, its detailed survey of individual cultures, and its manifesto of "General Principles," it offered guidance to the designers of the future. In this new edition the designs are further illuminated by Iain Zaczek's perceptive commentaries. Hugely influential since its first publication, The Grammar of Ornament inspired great figures such as William Morris and Frank Lloyd Wright. Contemporary designers, entertained by the archaic charm of Jones's descriptions, are struck by the book's enduring relevance and its soundness regarding the essential principles of good design.

Customer Reviews:

Little Gem.......2006-02-08

I was disappointed when I first received this book. I had bought it as recommended reading for my design course and ordered it blindly. I don't know what I had expected but this wasn't it. Then, one day, I pulled it off my bookcase, looking for information on a certain type of design - and suddenly found myself enthralled with the beauty of this book. Let it not fool you, it's a beautiful little gem packed with design and information. Not a centimetre wasted.

Details, Details, Details..........2005-10-09

If you are looking for pure details for specific styles, this book is for you. If you are looking for overviews or full pictures, this may not be for you. If you are into design, I think it is a great resource to put on your shelf!

This CD is the best........2004-07-11

I have the thin booklet as a reference to the CD, which I purchased some years ago. If you do Webpage design this CD is a must have. Unlike other CDs of Grammar of Ornament this one has the images in EPSF, JPEG and PDF form. Others I've looked at only had PDF and that doesn't do me any good. I've used Fireworks from Macromedia's Studio MX Suite to make backgrounds and buttons for webpages made with Flash and Dreamweaver. If you can get your hands on this CD or any of the other CDs Direct Imagination has created, do it. I do think Grammar of Ornament is the best of all the ones Direct Imagination produced. Having the book for reference with it is handy, but if you can only get the CD alone, do it anyway. After a while you just know which plate has which graphic.

Pattern Paradise.......2001-10-30

This book was first published in 1856 and is a design classic! Owen Jones was born in 1809 and is a key figure in the history of British design. He was an architect and designer who taught in London during the 1850s.

He traveled in Europe and the Near East, were he helped to bring back ideas to improve the quality of Western design. This collection is a result of his comprehensive analysis of patterns. The sumptuous illustrations are presented in these sections:

Ornament of Savage Tribes

Egyptian Ornament
Assyrian and Persian Ornament
Greek Ornament
Pompeian Ornament
Roman Ornament
Byzantine Ornament
Arabian Ornament
Turkish Ornament
Moresque Ornament from the Alhambra
Persian Ornament
Indian Ornament
Hindoo Ornament
Chinese Ornament
Celtic Ornament
Mediaeval Ornament
Renaissance Ornament
Elizabethan Ornament
Italian Ornament
Leaves and Flowers from Nature

The original Preface to Owen Jones's original folio edition has been preserved and included. The general principles in the arrangement of form and color are listed so you can see which are advocated throughout this book.

If you are interested in reading about over 2,350 classic patterns (color engravings representing a vast range of ornamental styles), this is the book for you! More than likely, you will gravitate to one form of the other and concentrate your reading efforts on those sections.

The actual pictures are all numbered and the mediaeval section is especially beautiful.

Iain Zaczek has contributed to the commentaries in this work. He is an art historian and has written on a wide variety of subjects. He is also the author of The Essential William Morris, The essential Art Deco, and the Art of Illuminated Manuscripts.

A Gem.......2001-06-26

The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones is a highly regarded design classic, first published in 1856 and just as relevant today. The DK edition is a pleasure to examine (although you may need reading glasses to see the six-point type for some captions). The small format fits well in the hand and has a nice heft (504 pages at 1.3 inches thick). The paper is superb and the colored inks for the thousands of engravings brilliant and crisp. If you need a version that lays flat on your drawing table or a scanner bed, however, this one has some drawbacks. The images are very tight to the inner margins, and the glued binding difficult to keep open without breaking the back. That aside, the DK edition is beautiful and a great buy.

Average customer rating:

A wasted opportunity
Finally Found What I Was Looking For
Engravings tell the story

The Grammar of Architecture
et al., Emily Cole , and Emily Cole
Manufacturer: Bulfinch
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0821227742

Book Description

Do you know a Doric column when you see one? Perhaps. But what about an entablature, a pylon, or a pagoda? THE GRAMMAR OF ARCHITECTURE uses beautifully engraved plates from the great works of architectural history to illustrate a show-and-tell journey around the architecture of civilizations east and west, from Ancient Egypt to the Industrial Revolution. Extended captions and annotations supply the reader with a complete naming of parts and an explanation of how architects have planned and made the buildings of the past, from Amhotep to the Palladio, and Vitruvius to Wren.

Customer Reviews:

A wasted opportunity.......2005-08-01

The idea to write an account of architectural styles and features using old engravings was an excellent one. Unfortunately this book is badly let down by not crediting and giving bibliographical reference to the sources of the fine engravings used. This is tremendously frustrating for readers like myself who are interested in seeking out the original publications and, in many cases, accessing better quality versions of the engravings which are poorly reproduced in this book. Some of the reproduced illustrations have been so much reduced in size that valuable detail is lost. The plans of ancient Beijing are a case in point. No indication is provided of buildings which have been destroyed or seriously damaged since the original 18th and 19th century artwork was produced. Neither are fanciful reconstructions differentiated from existing buildings in the antiquarian illustrations. Moreover, buildings are often shown without identifying them specifically. This fatally flawed publication is not a patch on Banister Fletcher's 'A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method.'

Finally Found What I Was Looking For.......2004-12-26

This book is fantastic. It is the perfect combination of illustration and information. The detailed illustrations of famous architectural works please the eye while the descriptions of the styles, movements, and terminology engage the mind. The illustrated glossary at the end of the book provides a wonderful recap of architectural terminology including the classical orders, entablatures, pilasters, blind arcades, and many more. After looking through many architectural books that were either too dry and wordy or simply picture books with no information, I have finally found one that is fun to read and higly informative as well.

Engravings tell the story.......2003-03-18

Imagine a complete history of architecture where every building looks like it belongs on the back of a dollar bill. Nothing but engravings, around 750, all works of art in themselves. And you'll enjoy the exemplary design and the high quality paper.

Average customer rating:

The first and last word on this subject

The Sound Pattern of English
Noam Chomsky , and Morris Halle
Manufacturer: The MIT Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 026253097X

Book Description

Since this classic work in phonology was published in 1968, there has been no other book that gives as broad a view of the subject, combining generally applicable theoretical contributions with analysis of the details of a single language. The theoretical issues raised in The Sound Pattern of English continue to be critical to current phonology, and in many instances the solutions proposed by Chomsky and Halle have yet to be improved upon.

Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle are Institute Professors of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT.

Customer Reviews:

The first and last word on this subject.......2001-07-02

The Sound Pattern of English (known as "SPE") is the most complete study of the phonology of any language that has ever been undertaken. It is the last word on English stress, vowels, and consonants. It will also tell you everything you need to know about how to write phonological rules, covering complexities like parentheses, parenthesis-star, curly brackets, angled brackets, and everything else. Chomsky and Halle also tell us about their discovery of "distinctive" "features", which are the universal sound system of every language. We owe them a great debt of gratitude for this stunning achievement. "'SPE'" was Chomsky's last work on phonology, so you can see what a loss it was that he decided to switch to syntax.

Average customer rating:

The Architecture of Language
Noam Chomsky
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Noam Chomsky is one of the most widely published and influential thinkers on language and mind. This book consists of an edited transcript of a lecture, delivered at the University of Delhi in January 1996, where Chomsky reflects on the history of the 'generative enterprise' to relate it to
some strikingly novel advances in recent grammatical theory.

A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar (Handbook of Oriental Studies)

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A Tajik Persian Reference Grammar (Handbook of Oriental Studies)
John R. Perry
Manufacturer: Brill Academic Publishers
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A Beginner's Guide to Tajiki

ASIN: 9004143238

Book Description

This is the first comprehensive reference grammar of Tajik, the Persian of Central Asia, to appear in English. It describes the modern literary language, with examples of colloquial and dialect usage, from the early Soviet period (1920s) up until Tajikistan's independence after 1991. Grammatical examples, taken from a variety of literary sources, are given in both the Cyrillic and Perso-Arabic scripts. Complete verb paradigms, a grammatical index, and parallel word-indexes in both writing systems make it easy to find particular points.

Essential for the Iranologist and comparative linguist, for the the student or teacher of Tajik Persian, and a valuable supplement for those who work with Persian of Iran or Afghanistan. With extensive indexes.

Customer Reviews:

Romaji-- I DONT MIND!.......2004-12-09

This book is about Grammar-- and it explains this REALLY well if you are the type of learner that is good at using patterns, and experimenting with them.

Each lesson builds on the previous lessons, and by the end of the book there one can express a decent amount of ideas if all the vocab, and sentence structures are mastered.

You wont be able to say everything you want(not a realistic expectation of any ONE book anyway)--- but if you are creative and can think on your toes-- you should be able to talk around these problem areas so that your meaning is understood.

like saying "a scientist who looks at stars" if you dont know the word for "an ASTRONOMER." --granted: its a little more wordy-- but totally understandable. And being wordy is definitely better than just going---

a.... guy...... um...... stars..... looks at...

--- right?

Which makes this book a great foundation before more indepth independent learning.

I got this book at a used store-- and I have to say it is one of the best written grammar references that I have ever found for studying japanese. It has a couple of issues that keep it from being a 5 star book in my opinion-- some dated vocabulary items and a lack of less formal registers. My friends here in Japan do not talk to me this politely! haha...

Also, I doubt that it could really be used as a stand alone textbook for most students. I understood some of the reasoning and sentence structures from prior experience studying the language, and am not sure that a novice would follow everything perfectly on their own.--- That said though, I dont think that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Its better to have native friends who can help you anyway, and this is a good book to elict their help-- it makes the rules and patterns clear to THEM! SO they can teach you better!

As for the supposed evils of Romaji-- I understand the arguments for why people say its BAD! And in some ways--i think they are right, but usually for the wrong reasons.

When I am studying GRAMMAR issues, I like to isolate the grammar-- and not worry if i am reading a particular kanji correctly.

its not always best to learn GRAMMAR only in context-- in context is good, great even... but you can do both... its not just an either or thing... and a book like this is a nice shortcut to understanding.

when I am studying Grammar, pronunciation and character meanings are just problems I dont want to or need to worry about. I can read the roman alphabet just fine-- and Its not always better to reinvent the wheel.

Aside from a few vowel length issues, and the /N/+/a vowel/ as two sylables like in kinen (no smoking) ki-n-e-n -- romaji usually reperesents japanese close enough for GRAMMAR study.

I agree, that it is better for the serious student to learn kanji, and the kana (as I have)-- it makes life easier. And its just a practical fact that advanced books assume a knowledge of the written language.

Do they NEED to?... not really... it would be possilble to learn very fluent japanese (spoken) with just romaji and some japanese friends or advanced texts in romaji.... but thats not the case, most Advanced books have Kanji and Kana only-- so its better to start early if you are serious because you will have to start sooner or later.

But, like I said. This book is not a reader. Its not a writing tutor. Its about word order. Sentence patterns. And building up from basic sentences, to more complex expressions of ideas. The roman letters dont change word order-- or anything else about japanese grammar. Kanji etc are only REAL japanese because JAPANESE people write japanese that way. They are marks on a page which represents sounds (yes--even kanji!)... same as roman letters.

--- so dont worry... this book is doing what it intends even though it only uses romaji.

-- And for all of you out there who still hate ROMAJI! I know I probably didnt change anyone's minds about it... but thats ok...

You should perk up! this can be a glass half-full kind of book for you too! The grammar points are really good. Even experienced students can probably learn SOMETHING from this book...

So-- buy a black pen-- transcribe the romaji to kana and kanji... and cross out the ROMAJI! it could be like a cool little writing workbook for you too... at no extra cost! Then you would get GRAMMAR--WRITING PRACTICE... and later... READING practice from one little book... and it wouldnt have any romaji anymore if it bothered you that much! We all need practice right?

Also...There are lots of other books that have REAL japanese by japanese authors with genuine kanji usage in them for reading practice-- which are more fun to read than a grammar book anyway. And more helpful because Japanese people don't speak intermediate japanese--if i can steal a thought from Barry Farber.

If you're like me, and dont mind (or even like) romaji... get it for just the grammar... its still worth it!

Revolutionary concept, so why use devolutionary script?.......2004-01-24

If you hate the Japanese scripts, those being hiragana and katakana (with usage of Chinese characters, i.e. kanji), you are in luck. This book, fortunately for you and unfortunately for the rest of us, has absolutely no Japanese script in it. It's entirely presented in romanji.

This is a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned. If you really want to learn mastery of the Japanese language, you will NOT use romanji. Why would you? Wouldn't you want to learn to read it, too, and not just speak it?

The concept of this book is that speech is made up of units, not of words. For instance, traditional grammar books will teach you vocabulary words, then make up sentences with them. Wouldn't it be faster to learn phrases since that's how language is usually spoken? So that's what this book does; it presents the Japanese language in groups of phrases, and it does a very good job of it.

Alas, if it were not for the romanji... I wish they'd do a kana version. The least they could have done was put kana AND romanji in. I would have preferred it to no kana at all.

So, I cannot recommend it. It's a shame, too. It's an otherwise marvelous, fun book.

A great book.......2000-05-20

I would just like to make an amendment to my other review, this book doesnt have kana or kanji in it, I was partially mixing it up with another book, but aside from the lack of kana it is an excellent grammar book.

quite a good book.......1999-12-23

I have been studying Japanese for about ten years, although only seriously the last couple. This book was a very good resource for me, and had great grammar and sentence structure information in it. The only thing about the book I noticed was that it had alot of romaji in it and it distracted me a bit at times, but there is also Japanese writing so it was good for everyone. Certainly a worth while buy for the beginner and even into intermediate level.

A Grammar of Old Turkic (Handbook of Oriental Studies)

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A Grammar of Old Turkic (Handbook of Oriental Studies)
Marcel Erdal
Manufacturer: Brill Academic Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 9004102949

Book Description

Old Turkic is the earliest, directly attested Turkic language. This original work describes the grammar of Old Turkic.

The language is documented in inscriptions in the 'runic' script in Mongolia and the Yenisey basin, from the seventh to the tenth century; in Uygur manuscripts from Chinese Turkestan in Uygur, and in runic and other scripts (comprising religious - mostly Buddhist -, legal, literary, medical, folkloric, astrological and personal material), from the ninth to the thirteenth century; and in eleventh-century Qarakhanid texts, mostly in Arabic writing.

Book Description

Linguistic mismatch phenomena involve semiotic functions that attach to forms in defiance of grammatical design features. Noun phrases, when used as predicates, provide one example: how do predicate nominals correspond to our theories of what nouns mean? How do such phenomena challenge traditional conceptions of grammar? How do competing theories of the syntax-semantics interface stand up when confronted with mismatch phenomena? Mismatch addresses these questions through the efforts of some of the most original thinkers in syntactic and semantic theory, exploring a wide variety of mismatch phenomena in a broad sampling of languages.

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