A series of critical essays and insights about graphic design and typography.

Piles of junk in garages and closets, overflowing papers on desks, items unused for years, masses of unanswered email, clothing never worn, useless gifts that collect dust; all these things, says Brooks Palmer, come weighted with shame and guilt and have a suffocating effect on spirit and soul. In this insightful book, Palmer shows how to get rid of the things in our lives that no longer serve us. By tossing out these unneeded items, we are also eliminating their negative influences, freeing up energy, and unlocking our potential. Loaded with inspiring anecdotes and practical tips, Clutter Busting is based on the premise that your things are not sacred, but you are. The book explores such fundamental topics as the false identities we assume through clutter, the fear of change those junk piles represent, the addictive nature of holding on to objects, how clearing clutter makes room for clarity and sweeps away confusion and stasis, and much more. With Brooks’s upbeat and compassionate guidance, you’ll find yourself clearing the way for new and exciting things to come into your life.

More Than Sixty Course Syllabi That Bring the New Complexity of Graphic Design to Light All graphic designers teach, yet not all graphic designers are teachers. Teaching is a special skill requiring talent, instinct, passion, and organization. But while talent, instinct, and passion are inherent, organization must be acquired and can usually be found in a syllabus. Teaching Graphic Design, Second Edition, contains syllabi that are for all practicing designers and design educators who want to enhance their teaching skills and learn how experienced instructors and professors teach varied tools and impart the knowledge needed to be a designer in the current environment. This second edition is newly revised to include more than thirty new syllabi by a wide range of professional teachers and teaching professionals who address the most current concerns of the graphic design industry, including product, strategic, entrepreneurial, and data design as well as the classic image, type, and layout disciplines. Some of the new syllabi included are: Expressive Typography Designer as Image Maker Emerging Media Production Branding Corporate Design Graphic Design and Visual Culture Impact! Design for Social Change And many more Beginning with first through fourth year of undergraduate courses and ending with a sampling of graduate school course options, Teaching Graphic Design, Second Edition, is the most comprehensive collection of courses for graphic designers of all levels.

The quality of the visual hospital environment can have a positive psychological effect on patient recovery and staff performance. This guidance document focuses on the visual environment in hospitals and healthcare buildings, and the use of appropriate colour design and lighting. It was written jointly by BRE and the Colour Design Research Centre at London South Bank University, as part of a Department of Health funded project.

The Aspiring Thinker’s Guide to Critical Thinking introduces concepts and strategies for developing essential reasoning skills and intellectual character. As students advance in their academic studies and encounter new situations in their lives, they must learn to differentiate fact from fiction and make decisions based in good reasoning. They must learn to be clear, accurate, relevant, logical, and fair when expressing ideas. This book lays out a clear framework for guiding this development and encouraging lifelong intellectual curiosity. As part of the Thinker’s Guide Library, this book advances the mission of the Foundation for Critical Thinking to promote fairminded critical societies through cultivating essential intellectual abilities and virtues across every field of study across world.

Dating back to antiquity, semiotics is both a "technique" and a "science" that aims to understand the nature of meaning. An academic discipline in its own right, semiotics uses signs, such as words and symbols, to think, communicate, reflect, transmit, and preserve knowledge. Since the initial publication of The Quest for Meaning in 2007, the world has changed dramatically with the advent of online culture, new technologies, and new ways of making signs and symbols. Updated to reflect these many changes, the second edition includes a comprehensive chapter on the use of semiotics in the Internet age. Written in a student-friendly style, featuring examples from everyday life, the book explains what semiotics is all about and why it is so important for gaining insights into our elusive and mysterious human nature.