Book Review by Boram Yi

This Anatomy of Design, written by Steven Heller and Mirko Ilic, is a very comprehensive resource to read various trends and styles of graphic design. History of graphic design, influence and inspirations are organized in a colour coding system. A large scale reproduction of a famous work will be dissected into three or four categories and references of similar styles will be listed. This book is very helpful to quickly flick through different styles and take longer time to study how each work involves many elements that can be taken away from. The “anatomy” analogy is repeated throughout the whole book where each work starts big and breaks down into smaller elements.