The Book I Wish I Wrote (But At Least I Helped)
A package arrived on my doorstep the other day containing something for which I’ve anxiously been waiting: my copy of “Professional Design Techniques with Adobe Creative Suite 3” by Scott Citron. A lot of things factor into my excitement about this book:
First, Scott is the chapter representative of the New York InDesign User Group, a great designer, and a good friend.
Second, this book fills what — in my opinion — is the biggest gap on the design software bookshelf: project-based instruction, taught from a designer’s perspective, with as much attention given to time-honored design principles (that pre-date computers) as to the software that makes it all so much easier and faster.
Third, I had the honor and good fortune to contribute two chapters to this book when deadlines started looming near for Scott. I can’t claim to have created the beautifully designed projects that go with these chapters, however. That was all Scott.
Peachpit Press has been kind enough to offer a 35% discount to The InDesigner’s audience. Just use promo code PPT-PBM-1151 when you order the book from Peachpit.com. There’s a full table of contents for the book on that page, too, if you want to know more about what’s between the lemon-yellow covers.
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February 6th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
THE BOOK I WISH I COULD HAVA A LOOK AT! (but no such luck)
Congrats! 🙂 The table of contents for the book makes it sound very interesting, much in the vein of something my all-time favorites, Nigel French or Andrew Haslam might write – a very solid, well-written step-by-step, but also well-grounded in expert knowledge of classical design & typography principles. Sounds GREAT.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to find any websites at all that would have even a brief (say, 5-7 out of its 400 pages) excerpt of the book, to actually get a sense of its “tone” and “feel”, especially since the book is too specialized to be easily found on local bookstore shelves (I just checked with the 3rd largest B&N in the US, and they do not have it in stock, although offered to order).
That’s too bad that Adobe Press / Peachpit do not realize that providing a well-chosen sample/excerpt is actually the best, most effective marketing tool (assuming you have a good product which this very likely IS); it becomes even more important for books that are not a part of well-established series (where tone and format are more predictable)…
I hope they decide to fix that! At this point, not even amazon’s by now pretty standard and basic “search inside” feature is provided 🙁 …
February 7th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Hi Keyon:
I share your frustration and also wish there were a “search inside” ability for my book. Please contact me off-line and I’ll see what I can about sending you a few pages to view. Thanks
Scott Citron
scott at scottcitrondesign dot com
February 9th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Kenyon (and everyone else) — An excerpt from Scott’s book has been posted on CreativePro.com. Find out more here.
February 10th, 2008 at 5:53 am
Just got my copy from amazon.ca, and it looks like a great resource for my studio. And what a clever twist for the cover, referencing the author’s name!
February 11th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I ordered it from amazon a few days ago… I’m looking forward to get it!
March 3rd, 2008 at 7:28 am
Hi Micheal,
thanks for this book tip. I got my copy a week ago, since then i was reading the whole day.
One chapter i liked most was on acrobat and told about revies and comments with this software.
A feature i didn’t know until now, but the chapter was to short. So if you need a theme for your next videos speak about thios feature and tell us how to do a corret review of a poster/newsletter/or what ever.
Where to start, what to look first. I think this could help me and maybe many other to check there own work an the work from other people.
regards
Daniel
Luxembourg/Europe