Principles of Two-Dimensional Design

by Wucius Wong

Principles of Two-Dimensional Design

Genres: Design, Art Design, Art, Architecture, Nonfiction

96 pages, Paperback

First published November 30, 1968

About the author

Born 1936 in Guangdong Province. Studied art and design in the United States from 1961 to 1965. Awarded study grant by the John D. Rockefeller III Fund in 1971, Emeritus Fellowship by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 1998, and Bronze Bauhinia Star Medal by the SAR Government in 2007. Worked as Excutive Assistant of the Extramural Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Assistant Curator of the City Museum and Art Gallery, and Principal Lecturer of the School of Design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic. Participated in the Sao Paulo Biennial of Brazil in 1961, the Shanghai Biennial in 1998, and the “China: 5,000 Years” presented by the Guggenheim Museum at New York in 1998 and at Bilbao in 1999. Retrospective exhibition presented by the Hong Kong Museum of Art in 2006, and by the Macao Government in 2010. Work featured in the collections of the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Changzhou Art Museum, British Museum, Ashmolean Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Minnesota Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Cleveland Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, Sackler Museum of the Harvard University, Museum fur Ostasiatische Kunst, Berlin, and National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Authored many books on art and design published in different languages in Hong Kong, Taipei, New York, Barcelona, and Indonesia. Now Adjunct Professor of the Fine Arts Department of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and Honorary Museum Expert Adviser to the Leisure and Culture Department of the Hong Kong Government.

Reviews

[Emma]

Sublime

[Lucas Gelfond]

Very quick read, really interesting. As I get deeper into frontend stuff planning to read much more design/design theory stuff this fall, this is the first!

My first instinct here was that a lot of the insights were just sort of 'obvious' / the sort of thing you could derive without reading a book (i.e. from chapter 1: "A point indicates position. It has no length or breadth. It does not occupy any area or space") and parts of the middle, as Wong starts to spell out "unit forms," negative and positive space, various sorts of arrangements, etc, feel similar. That said I feel like the purpose here is to provide a sort of vocabulary / framework / language for design and the best way to read this is to see it as a sort of "train the eye to see" book. In that sense, it's pretty remarkable; the illustrations in here, in addition to being sort of stunningly beautiful, really clearly illustrate Wong's method for differentiating a lot of forms.

I think I will look at a lot of designs differently after this book—it's also quite quick, really well illustrated, and clearly written—recommend!

[Terryogara]

Wucius Wong introduces us to what we might call the Zen or Essence of Design, i.e., the fundamentals upon which modern graphic and purposeful design is composed. As a result, the work may feel anachronistic, the visual examples dated, and the information itself, -Wong’s way of seeing- naive or basic. However, if you have the discipline to begin at the beginning, whatever your current level of artistry, and rework the concepts from your own position, there is much to be gained in this deceptively short but otherwise deep book about design.

[S Cearley]

An excellent book for grasping basic design ideas. This is all black and white two dimensional (as the title says) design theory.
It's best if you come to this book forgetting everything you know, or at least have learned, about design. If you don't you'll fall into a "yeah I already know this" trap that makes you gloss over sections. Keep your mind open to delearning and relearning to get the best from this.

[Hao Ca Vien]

Wucius Wong's textbook on design is excellent for a primer into the design vocabulary of artists and designers. Wong's exercises are a must do and are very informative as well as incrementally complex. The techniques build intuition and practicality that all designers should try.

[Itzy Vitzy]

Libro para principiantes , fácil de entender aún así me costo digerirlo.

[Jonathan]

A good analogy would be to say that reading this book was like reading the source code of 2D Design.

[Sharon Robinson]

The book was published in the early 1970's and the examples really reflect that. They are very "Op-Art" looking. He differentiates between "design" as in graphic design, and art & composition, which was more what I was looking for. The principles he introduces are "Form, Repetition, Structure, Similarity, Gradation, Radiation, Anomaly, Contrast, Concentration, Texture, and Space. This is a different list that most design teachers would use, I think. As he discusses each element he uses a language that might have been common at one time, among some instructors perhaps, but seems to me as if it might have been invented just for this book.

Today, in 2014, the book feels very dated and not too useful.

[Ami]

Gina gave me her graphic design textbooks, and I'm looking through them, trying to balance my horroor dismay at how much I don't know about design/art with my excitement at how much there is to learn.

[Luca]

The perfect guide for starters!

[Burhan]

great

[Sama]

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