Designing Your Identity - Wang Shaoqiang
TITLE AVAILABLE AT
Barnes & Noble
Book Depository
TITLE INFORMATION
Author: Wang Shioqiang
Publisher: Promopress
Year Published: 2015
Dimensions: 9.75”x11.25”
Pages: 240 pages
Designing Your Identity is a compendium from Promopress, featuring examples of stationery identities from designers around the world. This book is full or work with stunning color palettes, typographic pairings, and logos that will inspire any designer, novice or pro. Although this book only showcases contemporary design work from the last decade, a lot of the principles and concepts are timeless, allowing them to be re-appropriated for the future. One of best parts about this book is that the descriptions include some hint at the context of each project, helping the viewer identify the reasoning for some of the design decisions. Another great aspect of this book is the diversity of photographic staging; from angled to aerial, to contextual shots, the photography can serve as a resource to inspire designers while photographing their own work. But, like most of these types of books, a lot of the work feels as if it is pulled from Behance, or submitted by smaller design studios and collectives from around the world. There is no elaboration on the results of the branding in terms of its success in the world outside of design, and there is no clarification on what makes the design great in the eyes of the curators who selected the work for this book.
Despite this one problem with the book, it will serve as a great contemporary resource for any designer who needs some visual motivation. If you don’t have the $60 to pay the retail price then don’t sweat it because it can be found online for much cheaper. But also, with the rapidity of how fast these types of books are published, it might be best to hold out for the next one from Promopress or Victionary.