Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills Paperback – Illustrated, November 24, 2010

This book arrived double wrapped in like new condition. There are absolutely no pencil markings, no ink pen markings, and no highlighter markings on the pages. I carefully looked at each individual page. There are no markings on the edge of the pages, and not on the front cover and not on the back cover. The book binding is well intact. There are not any loose pages.As a graphic design student at an art college, this book challenges to practice outside of the college assignments. Also, this book helps to think outside of the box. This book provides a variety of design challenges that I need, to improve my graphic design skills. Right now, my college art assignments are easy and basic to do. I bought this book, to help me to grow, by learning new technique(s). I can practice design skills for product packaging, mobile apps, music products, book products, retail store display, and much more. This book provides the projects that a graphic designer can include in a designer portfolio. This book provides the additional practice, that an art college student needs, beyond the basic poster assignments.I am keeping this book to measure my improvement with designing in a professional and efficient way. This is the BEST graphic design book that I have bought on Amazon. This book really helps me to learn, the types of designs that I am interested in doing currently. Furthermore, the other exercises are great to practice, when I grow beyond the basic design phase. I do not need to buy another graphic design book. In the beginning of my journey as a Graphic Designer, I would start with this particular book, and not invest in other design book(s).

This book is still a must have for anybody interested in digital communication. Every chapter contains a bunch of challenges to stimulate your brain and creativity. I love the fact that one uses also one hands, scissors, glue, paper, etc to envision its reflexion about the project as it should always be. The author is a designer, writer and teacher. At the beginning of the book he gives a few useful pieces of advice on how to use one's time to reach the deadline for example. The challenges are definitively various and some of them are really fun. Great to train oneself and acquiert a working discipline. Highly recommended.

I got this for my sister as a high school graduation present last May because she's now in college, majoring in graphic design. It's a really fantastic way to sharpen your creativity and graphic design perspective, both of which are important in her graphic design coursework. The challenges each center on one common theme, like using as little white space as possible, for example. I personally think it's a great way to prepare for working in the real world, where you may encounter strange requests like those in this book. By practicing these challenges, you're preparing yourself for those types of design obstacles. My sister also says the challenges are completely repeatable, especially since there are so many in this book. By the time she gets around to repeating a challenge, she's already learned so much more in her classes that she's able to come at the challenge from a totally new perspective. All in all, I'd definitely recommend this to challenge the minds of budding or even experienced graphic designers! Think of it like a crossword puzzle book for artists... keeps the mind sharp! :)

Creative Workshop is a good book to learn design. Furthermore, it has challenges to teach student designers. The 80 challenges not only get the design juices, but the creative juices flowing. This book is a well-designed design book. It is well crafted and shows progression from one challenge to the next challenge.Content: 4 out of 5The challenges are great lessons to hone design skills. The teacher's guide actually is useful for teaching. The organization of the book is an excellent design example. The only tool that I wished the book contained was "best" solutions for the design challenges. It is even useful to budding and novice designers. It also presents challenges for master designers.Readability: 5 out of 5This book is easy to understand. I recommend it to creatives in a variety of fields.

What a great book. I bought it hoping to get some PBL idea for my graphics classes and a fresh look at graphics, typography, and branding idenity. This book has it and it's appropriate for high school and beyond. I plan on working some of the exercises just to keep sharp and keep my creative juices flowing. Each project is written in a concise manner and I love the quotes. Plus, with each project/exercise you get a challenge, the author terms it "Take it Further." You won't be disappointed by this author and David Sherwin's writing style is easy and enjoyable to read. This book is a home run!!!!

This book is great at forcing you to move outside of the way you normally work to embrace something different. It might be helpful for designers and artists to look at this book as something that requires discipline to get the most out of it. That means you’ll have to make a commitment to working the projects and then set aside regular time in your schedule to do so. That’s not always in the wheel house of some artistic temperaments but if you make the commitment and follow through, it will be worth the effort. In fact, giving artists a foundation for regular self-development may be the best benefit of this book.

A bit different approach in how-to area with some nice problem/solution examples. Good addition to any proffesional or junior broad range designers library. It won't be left unread. Just fine selection of quotes are worth it.