作者：Robin Williams
版本：2014年11月第四版
来源：微商购买的电子书

在微博上看到朋友晒《写给大家看的设计书》中的内容，是关于英文在排版的时候存在字母之间的压缩关系，觉得挺有意思的，加上苹果在最新推出的 San Francisco 字体中实现了“动态变化”的功能，比如冒号在文字里面在底线的位置，但是在数字中间出现的时候会自动居中（一般表示时间9:40之类的），觉得自己有必要补足一下自己这方面知识的不足，本着学习英语不读翻译版的原则，买了最新的 4th Edition 的 Kindle 电子版苦哈哈的读了起来。

英文的阅读速度现在仅仅是中文的三分之一，单词量、理解速度、低兴奋度等等都是影响的因素，这个阶段是最困难的时候，尤其是阅读具有一定专业性的书籍，用 Biscuit 一点点的记录和背诵新遇到的单词，每次用新认识的单词换点小激励让自己继续坚持下去，争取早日突破英文阅读的瓶颈。

阅读的过程是对自己设计审美的扫盲，开始能够理解什么是优秀的设计，什么是不优秀的设计，对于关联、对比、重复、对齐这四个设计上的核心原则有了清晰的理解，能够在文本、颜色、字体等层面上对审美能力产生一些认知，不再是过去朦胧的“感觉”了，而且这些原则在绘画、声乐、舞蹈、美食等艺术表现形式上也同样适用，受益匪浅。

概念：

衬线字体：西方国家字母体系分为两类：serif以及sans serif。serif是有衬线字体，意思是在字的笔画开始、结束的地方有额外的装饰，而且笔画的粗细会有所不同。相反的，sans serif就没有这些额外的装饰，而且笔画的粗细差不多。The word “sans” means “without” (in French)

摘录：

Many years ago I received a tree identification book for Christmas. I was at my parents’ home, and after all the gifts had been opened I decided I would identify the trees in the neighborhood. Before going out, I read through some of the identification clues and noticed that the first tree in the book was the Joshua tree because it only took two clues to identify it. Now, the Joshua tree is a really weird-looking tree and I looked at that picture and said to myself, “Oh, we don’t have that kind of tree in Northern California. That is a weird-looking tree. I would know if I saw that tree, and I’ve never seen one before.”
So I took my book and went outside. My parents lived in a cul-de-sac of six homes. Four of those homes had Joshua trees in the front yards. I had lived in that house for thirteen years, and I had never seen a Joshua tree. I took a walk around the block, and there must have been a sale at the nursery when everyone was landscaping their new homes— at least 80 percent of the homes had Joshua trees in the front yards. And I had never seen one before! Once I was conscious of the tree— once I could name it— I saw it everywhere. Which is exactly my point: Once you can name something, you’re conscious of it. You have power over it. You’re in control. You own it.

The four basic principles
1. Contrast
The idea behind contrast is to avoid elements on the page that are merely similar. If the elements (type, color, size, line thickness, shape, space, etc.) are not the same, then make them very different. Contrast is often the most important visual attraction on a page— it’s what makes a reader look at the page in the first place. It also clarifies the communication.
2. Repetition
Repeat visual elements of the design throughout the piece. You can repeat colors, shapes, textures, spatial relationships, line thicknesses, fonts, sizes, graphic concepts, etc. This develops the organization and strengthens the unity.
3. Alignment
Nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarily. Every element should have some visual connection with another element on the page. This creates a clean and sophisticated look.
4. Proximity
Items relating to each other should be grouped close together. When several items are in close proximity to each other, they become one visual unit rather than several separate units. This helps organize information, reduces clutter, and gives the reader a clear structure.

Never center headlines over flush left body copy or text that has an indent because if the text does not have clear left and right edges, you cannot tell that the headline is actually centered. It looks random.

Rule about Breaking Rules: You must know what the rule is before you can break it.

Colors tend to be either on the warm side (which means they have some red or yellow in them) or on the cool side (which means they have some blue in them). You can “warm up” certain colors, such as grays or tans, by adding more reds or yellows to them. Conversely, you can cool down some colors by adding various blues to them.

CMYK stands for Cyan (which is a blue), Magenta (which is sort of red/ pink), Yellow, and a Key color, which is usually blacK. With these four colors of ink, we can print many thousands of colors, which is why it’s called a “four-color process.” (Specialized print jobs can include extra colors of inks.)

RGB stands for Red, Green, and Blue. RGB is what you see on your computer monitor, television, iPhone, iPad, or any other electronic device. In RGB, if you mix red and green you get— yellow. Really. Mix full-strength blue and red and you get hot pink. That’s because RGB is composed of beams of colored light that are not reflected off of any physical object— it is light that goes straight from the monitor into your eyes. If you mix all the RGB colors together you get white, and if you delete all the colors, you get black.

If you have a need for a second page to your stationary, take a small element that appears on your first page and use it all by itself on a second page. If you are planning to print, say, 1,000 sheets of letterhead, you can usually ask the printshop to print something like 800 of the first page and 200 of the second page. Even if you don’t plan to print a second page, ask the printer for several hundred blank sheets of the same paper so you have something on which to write longer letters.

With a newspaper or catalog or program ad, you need contrast not only in the advertisement itself, but also between the ad and the rest of the page that it’s placed on. In this kind of ad, often the best way to create contrast is with white space. Advertising sections tend to be completely full of stuff and very busy. An ad that has lots of white space within it stands out on the page, and a reader’s eye can’t help but be drawn to it. Experiment. Open a newspaper page or program and visually scan it. I guarantee that if there is white space on that page, your eyes will go to it. They go there because white space provides a strong contrast on a full, busy page.

Yes, you might have the old-fashioned habit of typing two spaces after punctuation, but it is long past time to let that go. It doesn’t matter today where the practice originated or for how long typesetters used larger spaces between sentences. Today the standard is one space. Take a look at any book or magazine on your shelf. You will never find two spaces between sentences -- unless you are reading a self-published piece from an amateur.

A question mark or exclamation point goes inside the quotation marks if it belongs to the quotation: She hollered, “Get out of my reality!”
The question mark or exclamation point goes outside the quotation marks if it does not belong to the quoted phrase: Can you believe he replied, “I won’t do it”?

When the last line of a paragraph has fewer than seven (more or less, depending on the length of the line) characters, that last line is a widow. Worse than leaving one word as the last line is leaving part of a word, the other part being hyphenated on the line above. Don’t ever do that!

The word “sans” means “without” (in French), so sans serif typefaces are those without serifs on the ends of the strokes. The idea of removing the serifs was a rather late development in the evolution of type and didn’t become wildly successful until the early part of the twentieth century.