Art Work: 10/22/06

I enjoy reading books that have real life accounts of how various folks found their vocations. Art Work had potential to be an informative and interesting read. Unfortunately all that valuable information is made impossible to read by a poor layout and ugly choice of font. The paragraphs don't use enough white space. Some are even run together, separated only by selective use of font weight. I could only read this book in small chunks to avoid eye strain and headaches. If the Pasadena College of Art and Design has put out further volumes, I hope they've rethought their design!

Here's my BookCrossing review:

Art Work was created by the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena to help recruit students by showing them real life success stories from currently working artists. The meat of the book is in these two to four page statements by the artists as they contain practical advice. The most recurrent bits of advice are: commercial art pays the bills, even after establishment in the Fine Arts scene; never turn down a showing of your artwork even if the venue is unusual; play safe with commercial art and save the risk taking for your personal art and go with your gut feelings. Art Work has two big problems as a book: the lack of illustrations for the artists' biographies and an extremely ugly and hard to read font for the much of the text. Here is a book designed to encourage new art students but all the best advice is hidden away in a visual boring layout and the advice is obfuscated by a crappy font!