How to See : A Guide to Reading Our Man-Made Environment

Must read for anyone interested in visual design by the most important American designer AND theorist of the 20th century.

The author helps the reader to see beyond our immediate and obvious environment. This will change your experience and perception of the daily encounters we all have with buildings, furniture, signs, advertising, font styles, shapes, designs, dimension and color. While this may not appeal to everyone I find it fascinating!

Explains various design techniques in everyday objects.

I was expecting some great insights from a design visionary. However, after a few initial essays (which were forgettable) the famed author proceeds to go through a slide-show of his photo collection, matching by common traits. Even THAT would be acceptable if coupled with a designer's perspective on "how to see" those images in such a way that it leads to some greater insight about design or aesthetics. No ... sometimes the observations are quite pedantic.

Good book for introducing seeing to artists and designers. Accompanying text is well written.

I didn't realize this was the Design Within Reach edition. Wish I'd looked closer before ordering.

George Nelson was not only a creative artistic talent, he was also a commercial genius (just like Picasso was). These two talents provided his secret for success that would reward him throughout his life. This book is an actual reprint from the original edition. It documents in detail how George Nelson thought and designed. The attention is clearly on his biography, this is not a coffee table book filled with an overdose of pictures. A wonderful biography about a designer that was the founding father of American Modern Design. I also suggest to visit the wonderful online archive about George Nelson at WWW.GEORGENELSON.ORG.

I am not sure why this book won't show as verified purchase even though I bought this exact copy from Amazon and I finished reading it today.But anyways, the only thing I learned from this book and I found it profound is that, some countries are dirty and won't become clean just like that with all the advertising/billboards because people are not visually literate, they have never seen beauty/clean.A good example would be India, you can't force them to keep India clean because most of them have never seen clean India.