You’d expect a book with the title Graphic Design Manual to be comprehensive, covering all the fundamentals of graphic design. On that, this book falls far, far short. To give you an idea of how short, the book has a dozen pages of text. That’s it. I know graphic designers are fond of pictures but 12 pages of text out of 172 for a manual? (I’m reviewing my copy which is the 1965 edition.)
That said, this is a good book on design. The little text that there is is informative and the graphics nicely illustrate and extend the text. Much of content of the book has to be generated by the reader himself, as he reads the brief introductory text and then studies the examples.
Hofmann’s approach is logical and hierarchical. He starts off with the basics and illustrates each with a simple series of graphics. Then over the course of a few pages the examples get progressively more complex but still depend upon and illustrate the point/s being discussed.
I highly recommend this book to someone who wants to learn or refresh their grasp of the fundamentals of design. Hofmann is a master and the graphics he has chosen for this book are compelling and informative. This book is probably beyond the novice level as it is so compressed, with very little discussion of each point but a lot of examples.
A beginner will be hard pressed to follow the development of examples without some more guidance as to what he is looking at and how the more complex graphics relate to the original point. But still, you will learn a lot from this book, especially if you return to it later in your design education.
In short, despite its title this book does not cover graphic design, it covers the elements of design, things such as the dot, the line, text and illustration and the interplay between these elements. You will not find any discussion of important principles such as hierarchy, alignment, grids, layout, color (in fact all graphics are black and white). This is however a valuable book that deserves careful study and will teach you a lot about the fundamentals of design.
