Designer's Graphic Stew: Visual Ingredients, Techniques, and Layout Recipes for Graphic Designers

Under the witty and metaphorical guise of a high-end cookbook, the author provides visual “ingredients,” such as grid structures, folios, border devices, type treatments, abstract graphic elements, categorized stylistically and functionally. These ingredients are shown in use through a “recipe” format to accomplish strategies such as movement, rhythm, organization, contrast, metaphor, etc. Ingredients are coded and cross-referenced among categories for mix and matching purposes as well as demonstrating varied alternate combinations to achieving different approaches to strategies.

Under the witty and metaphorical guise of a high-end cookbook, the author provides visual “ingredients,” such as grid structures, folios, border devices, type treatments, abstract graphic elements, categorized stylistically and functionally. These ingredients are shown in use through a “recipe” format to accomplish strategies such as movement, rhythm, organization, contrast, metaphor, etc. Ingredients are coded and cross-referenced among categories for mix and matching purposes as well as demonstrating varied alternate combinations to achieving different approaches to strategies.

Timothy Samara is a graphic designer based in New York City, where he divides his time between teaching, writing, lecturing, and freelance consulting through STIM Visual Communication. His 18-year career in branding and information design has explored projects in print, packaging, environments, user interface design, and animation. He has been a senior art director at Ruder Finn, New York’s largest public relations firm, and senior art director at Pettistudio, a small multidisciplinary design firm. Before relocating to Manhattan, he was principal of Physiologic in Syracuse, located in upstate New York.

In 1990, he graduated a Trustee Scholar from the Graphic Design program at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. Mr. Samara is a faculty member at New York’s School of Visual Arts, New York University, Purchase College/SUNY, and The New School, and has published six books on design and typography, all through Rockport Publishers: Making and Breaking the Grid; Typography Workbook; Publication Design Workbook; Type Style Finder; Design Elements; and, most recently, Design Evolution, released in January 2008. Mr. Samara and his partner live in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn.

Timothy Samara is a graphic designer and educator based in New York City, where he divides his time between consulting, writing, and teaching at the School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design, NYU, and Purchase College. He is the author of several books for Rockport Publishers, including Making and Breaking the Grid, Typography Workbook, Publication Design Workbook, Type Style Finder and Design Elements.