Product Description

A hands-on book design students and designers alike will welcome. Elements of Design is a tribute to an exceptional teacher and a study of the abstract visual relationships that were her lifelong pursuit. Rowena Reed Kiostellow taught industrial design at Pratt Institute for more than fifty years and the designers she trained-and the designers they're training today-have changed the face of American design. This succinct, instructive, invaluable book reconstructs the series of exercises that led Kostellow's students from the manipulation of simple forms to the creation of complex solutions to difficult design problems. It includes her exercises and commentary along with selected student solutions, and concludes with examples of work from former students who became leaders in the field, including such well-known figures as Tucker Viemeisater, Ralph Applebaum, Ted Muehling, and many others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #239064 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

About the Author
Gail Greet Hannah is a writer specializing in design and marketing. She was a friend of Rowena Reed Kostellow and worked with her to publish her teaching method. She lives in Cold Spring Harbor.

Customer Reviews

My review is
i really love this book, it is very instructive, there you basicly learn how to see, it's a great book 9 of 10
Rowena Rocks

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Excellent companion, but missing something important...
To truly get the most out of this book, you need one of Rowena's dwindling number of students still left at Pratt teaching to stand over your shoulder. The exercises in this book can all produce amazing results in terms of beautiful abstract relationships but to "know" what is right or wrong with an object using this visual language really takes someone showing you what is wrong with a transition or how this proportion is too similar to that one or how this spacial relationship is not quite right. In the end, you need to know what is wrong in order to really be able to see what is right and it takes someone to show these things to you over and over again. The book is an excellent companion and record of Rowena's interesting and effective exercises, but it's difficult to use as a guide for someone not dialogging with one of her former students and even that is challenging because each one delivers her gospel of 3D a little differently.