The Devil is in the small print.

Tuesday, 22. August 2006, 00:01:21

I sold my Design Research book on Half.com today. Selling my old text book makes me supremely happy and I hope the new owner is extremely happy with his purchase. For my part, I hate this book. My joy arrives not from the money but from the knowledge that I will never see this volume again.

Visual Research by Ian Noble and Russell Bestley is full of case studies and pretty pictures. To grossly paraphrase the authors. This book introduces practical and analytical research methods for visual communication. Wee Fun. Anyone who's read a communication theory book knows my pain. It's like the authors took a class on business management buzz words and decided to be poster children for the action language bandwagon.

Lets play 'Post the Random Exerpt' game:

In Projects where a particular theory or set of theoretical ideas have been explored and tested, the synthesis may require an analysis of how the initial work undertaken can be translated by the designer into a final set of visual outcomes. The questions posed by this kind of research may be in the exploration of the most appropriate visual form in which to present the work. This may, for instance, result in work that establishes the context of the question(s) posed or may provide a commentary explaining how the questions were arrived at. In applied projects, such as one commissioned by a client or a project rooted in a particular industrial context, the synthesis will entail the analysis of a number of detailed factors.

Every paragraph is like a labyrinth of unnecessary tangents and industry jargon maliciously planted to trip up the layperson and send them whirling into a coma. It's like a tilt-a-whirl minus the fun.
Did I mention that my school book store charged me $85 for this 200 page tomb a year ago? Yes, even with almost half the pages consisting of full page color graphics completely unrelated to the text and an incomprehensible wordiness, it still manages to take up a mere 200 pages, including index. The question is, what could have possibly possessed my professor to chose this volume?

Anyway, I suppose you could always pull out the full page graphics and give your office some 'pop' art for the wall.

My Opera Set Up. Ch2: LayoutShifting Gears.

Comments

André writes:

Well, that is extremely satisfying. I was buying this book half a year ago in a shop were I could only have a brief look inside. At home I was trying to read it and was simply stunned how complicated some people could express banal things and how bad and outdated the illustrations were. The examples though seemed quite interesting. But because I bought a german translation I didn’t give it to much of attention and just thought that the translator must have been cheap and that I would’ve been better of with the original. I think it’s sad how some people try to higher their ego on the cost of others with being pretentious like that. Well, perhaps it’s even more sad that people like me are buying that stuff. Anyway, it was soothing to read you opinion about it.
Cheers!

By anonymous user, # 3. November 2006, 19:25:08