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For those who don’t know me, I would like to share a little secret with you. Shh! Listen very carefully I shall say this only once! On April 23rd I turned 40! Yes 40 I must admit it is quite a shock but I intend to start my fourth decade full of optimism and a new zest for life!

Amongst other presents I received “The Art of Looking Sideways” by Alan Fletcher. It is a book I have always intended to buy but never got round to. You see Alan was one of my most favourite designers he was an absolute ace! So if you want some creative inspiration through the use of images, text, design and thoughts then get this book!

You won’t regret it I am quite sure, it’s one to keep for a lifetime and it has happily joined my other art and design books on my library shelf. It is sitting there quite comfortably and infact is the proudest book in its row!

About The Author
“Alan Fletcher belongs to that élite international group of designers who have transcended the conventional boundaries of their craft. He helped form the now legendary design consultancy Fletcher Forbes Gill, and was a founder member of the design group Pentagram. He has tackled every facet of design with a unique style and purpose. No one else inhabits the world of ideas, of wit and ambiguity in graphic design in quite the same way. Alan Fletcher has come to be depicted as the man who took all that less-is-more, form-follows-function dogma and somehow found a way to, well, relax. He is currently consultant Art Director to Phaidon Press.”

About The Book
“The Art of Looking Sideways is a primer in visual intelligence, an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain and the imagination. It is an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, curious facts and useless information, oddities, serious science, jokes, memories – all concerned with the interplay between the verbal and the visual, and the limitless resources of the human mind. Loosely arranged in 72 ‘chapters’, all this material is presented in a wonderfully inventive series of pages that are themselves masterly demonstrations of the expressive use of type, space, colour and imagery.

This book does not set out to teach lessons, but it is full of wisdom and insights collected from all over the world. Describing himself as a ‘visual jackdaw’, master designer Alan Fletcher has distilled a lifetime of experience and reflection into a brilliantly witty and inimitable exploration of such subjects as perception, colour, pattern, proportion, paradox, illusion, language, alphabets, words, letters, ideas, creativity, culture, style, aesthetics and value.
The Art of Looking Sideways is the ultimate guide to visual awareness, a magical compilation that will entertain and inspire all those who enjoy the interplay between word and image, and who relish the odd and the unexpected.”

Buy this book

About Jo

I'm the owner of Jo's Web, a professionally qualified graphic designer who has been involved in the industry for over 20 years. I have worked as an art editor for London publishing houses, B.B.C , Haymarket and now run Spiral Pixel Design.

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