João,
Thanks for the explanation. Your eight-year-old memory is impressive.
When someone simply says that something is badly designed, it could mean a lot of things. In this case, I agree with some of your criticisms and completely disagree on others. I agree about:
> he illustrations, graphs, maps, and
> other types of diagrams appear to be randomly assembled, that is, each has
> its own generic style that results in a visual mess (and visual messes
> distract from the content of a book). Instead of facilitating reading,
> these assorted diagrams and illustrations convey information clumsily, they
> tax the reader’s attention and cognitive ability to concentrate. With so
> many different types of diagrams, the book's design would have benefited
> from creating visual coherence between.
On the other hand, you object to the side notes directly next to whatever was noted. That, combined with the many in-line illustrations is, from my standpoint, the strength of the design. Explanatory diagrams often require that you stop reading, look for the diagram, then find your place again to resume reading.
As you say, the stylistic variance and the placement contribute to a "visual mess" that is distracting. It strikes me that the mess is the problem, not the placement by the text the illustrations explain.
I tend to take issue with your call for following conventions. You did say "Practitioners that have mastered their art can - of course - subvert these rules to good effect" but it is much healthier to look at the "rules" as principles and to ask why those principles are in place.
I’m afraid the book *does* conform to a convention. You are looking for the conventions of "book." This conforms to the conventions of "text book." Unfortunately, text, instructional, and illustrated academic books have a visual convention that I think you and I will agree is confused, ugly, and arbitrary. Or, to reduce it to one word, cheesy.
Thanks again for the answer.
Gunnar
Gunnar Swanson
East Carolina University
graphic design program
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-cfac/soad/graphic/index.cfm
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Gunnar Swanson Design Office
1901 East 6th Street
Greenville NC 27858
USA
http://www.gunnarswanson.com
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+1 252 258-7006
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