David Sherwin (1)

This book intimidated me, thus it was sitting on my shelf for years. Finally, I found time and courage to deal with it ;) It was fun, sometimes frustrating kind of fun, but still something worthwhile.

The book describes 80 exercises to flex your design skills in different directions and with different media. A prior design experience (e.g. typography, packaging and industrial design, paper engineering) pays off in some of them, but the majority can be undertaken by newbies without any special design knowledge.

Challenges are open to interpretation and don't give any tips on how to approach them. The only "help" readers can get are photos or sketches of results achieved by designers. On the one hand, this helps to understand what is expected, but on the other hand, can sometimes raise the bar significantly as they are seasoned designers who knew what they were doing.

I didn't know what I was doing most of the time, but still, I was able to learn something new. Sometimes I had no idea how to approach the challenge or my initial exploration led nowhere, which was pretty frustrating, but that was a part of the learning experience. Otherwise, it was pure fun and helped me to activate some parts of my brain that were covered in dust ;)

Watch out: this book takes the "learning by doing" approach. There is a brief intro on how to approach those exercises (timebox, have a process, brainstorming techniques), but other than that there is no design knowledge or theory presented. Once you take on the challenge, you are left to your own devices.… (meer)