Booklist Review

Laid out like a self-directed course, Easy Graphic Design for Librarians is a good introduction to principles of graphic design for staff who suddenly find publicity materials one of their other duties as assigned. Wakimoto is a librarian and blogger who writes about graphic design, and her enthusiasm for both good design and communicating a library's mission will inspire those who might otherwise have slapped a bunch of text onto a page in Word. Throughout, she emphasizes that the goal of good graphic design is not necessarily aesthetic beauty but clear and effective communication. She provides a lot of detail about the planning process (if there are any questions about her librarian credentials, her obvious understanding of the hierarchical approval process will put those to rest) before getting into the physical design process. She starts with structure, such as grids and guides, which are the invisible cues that make a design appealing, though we may not be able to articulate why. She covers typography, color, and images, and offers an overview of a few software options. A full-color insert is included in this mostly black-and-white book. The second half is devoted to templates and style guides, with examples of different projects, like a bookmark or a book-club-program flyer. Wakimoto also addresses the importance of accessibility in design, especially when designing for the web. Each chapter ends with a bulleted summary of the material covered, and a bibliography, index, and list of web resources are included at the end.--Maguire, Susan Copyright 2018 Booklist