The Elements of Design

Hauntingly beautiful and deeply instructive, The Elements of Design surveys our whole environment, natural and manmade, and shows us how it can be defined in terms of basic elements: variable arrangements of dots; lines that are straight, curving, bending or crossing; planes such as rectangles, squares, lozenges, triangles and circles. All these are represented in this book, with telling juxtapositions, in a wide range of materials and techniques, in one sense timeless and universal, in another datable and culturally conditioned. Ever-recurring design elements, they take us to the heart of the creative process: a creative transformation that may involve inspiration or imitation, representation or limitation.

A cult book for artists, designers and craftspeople of all kinds, The Elements of Design is a startling reminder of how the search for something new is a voyage of rediscovery into past and present forms.