The main focus of The Gray Book is to show desktop publishers how to create interesting printed pages in black, white and the many shades of gray in between, using basic design principles and a little imagination (from the Introduction).
This volume contains straightforward but effective advice to help a novice designer. It covers some basic ideas and uses a large number of examples to illustrate good and bad design.
The text is divided into six chapters:
The first three chapters provide clear and sensible advice for users of desktop publishing packages. In particular, they give useful ideas on pleasing design and on catching the reader’s attention without distracting or confusing. The later chapters move into areas of lighting and images where the reader needs further background to appreciate the possibilities and pitfalls. Lots of examples are essential in any book on design. The six chapters of this work carry this almost to the extreme, with approximately 20 pages of running text and 170 pages of examples and brief explanations. An appendix, which lists the addresses of suppliers of relevant software and hardware, and a brief index complete the book. No references or suggestions for further reading are provided.
This good, easily digested introduction lives up to the aim quoted above. It is clearly intended for PC users and not for serious designers. (However, my own university’s latest annual report might not have been disfigured by such a liberal sprinkling of little blocks of almost illegible reversed type if its designer had digested the basic principles presented in the early chapters.)
