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Summary: Best practical design book for the novice
Review: This little book is for you:If you have words and pictures, but don't know how to arrange on the paper; If you know how to layout the page, but are not sure which font and the size of font to use. If you have the good design, but want to make it better... the best. For all above, you don't have to study those 1000-pages book. You only need to spend couple hours to read this 140-pages book with 100+ illustrations. The best thing is that each page has ONLY 100-200 words.
Rating:
Summary: nice book
Review: This book did a lot to heighten my visual awareness. I have read "Creating Killer Web Pages" by David Siegel, but this book had a lot more information about typography and design instead of just tricks. Williams goes over four basic principals of graphic design: proximity, repitition, alignment, and contrast. Then she talks about typography, dividing fonts into six groups. Of course, the information in the book is very basic. I would recommend that someone spend quite a bit of time looking at magazines and excellent web sites (designed with something like Flash, not HTML) to get the most out of this book. Some of the principals are only demonstrated with one or two examples due to space limitations, so this kind of exercise is almost necessary.
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Summary: This is the best that I've seen....
Review: If you are a professional, this book serves as a great refresher. If you are a novice, you can painlessly learn more from this book than any other that I've seen. In addition, it is a great typography reference. Someone with no previous knowledge can read the book, then immediately apply the principles. I highly recomend it!
Rating: 
Summary: good info, but i would have liked more!
Review: as an aspiring web page designer (who always believed she had a "good eye" but often needs hours of trial and error to find that acceptable look), i was looking for a practical, beginners' introduction to graphic design. i am not interested in the theory or schools of thought or even terms so much as practical, usable info that i can put to work right away. i found this book to be straightforward, simple, quick to read, and very useful. the same day i got it, i was able to use the principles to improve the design of my web page immediately in significant ways! my only beef with the book is that it didn't take me far enough. i would have liked to get a lot more of the same! someone who has some background in graphic design would probably not get too much out of the book, but i would reccomend it to those without any formal training as a good starting point.
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Summary: I've been looking for this book forever!
Review: The basics, simple and in one place. That's all I've wanted, and here they are in an easy-to-follow format with great graphics and lots of helpful examples. I started applying the principles, and the results I was looking for were immediate.
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Summary: I couldn't put this book down
Review: I have a degree in art, produce a newsletter and do layout for newspaper ads, and I still found plenty of interesting and useful information on almost every page of this little book, even though it's intended for novices. (Maybe I'm a bit slow!) I especially enjoyed the author's cataloging of typefaces and discussions on how they can be combined. A refresher on "rules" of design was a welcome review. I read it from cover to cover and took notes at the same time.
Rating: 
Summary: Possibly helpful for aesthetically inept designers
Review: I bought this book thinking that it might help me design visually appealing (or at least respectable looking) web pages. I'm already an experienced programmer but I've always struggled with the graphic art aspects of web design. Unfortunately, this book was utterly useless to me because all of the designs were extremely bland and for the most part overly simple and generally unattractive. Maybe I've been spoiled because I've had the privilege of working with so many great graphic artists, but this book really disappointed me. If you are looking for a way to improve the look of your pamphlets espousing the communist ideals of Noam Chomsky then maybe this book is for you. Anyone else who needs to learn compelling real world design principles (and I believe this is the majority of people out there) will find this book to be--at best--a good reference on ways to design for clients who are looking for a bland, no-frills, 1970's style layout. At worst, this book is a total waste of an aspiring designer's time and money.
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Summary: Ugly
Review: I may have too critical a background (been interested in typographic design for a few years), but one thing immediately struck me when I held this book in my hands: it's plain old ugly, sorry. The pages are full of obtrusive big and bold letters shouting all over the place (the chapter numbers measure no less than 5 cm), and the fancy font used for picture captions makes for decent eye-strain but not for much legibility. By reading this book, you may improve your wedding cards that you throw together using MS Office, but for a more comprehensive work on typography I'd rather recommend Bringhurst's "The Elements of Typographic Style".
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Summary: Little book with BIG impact!
Review: Don't let the small size of this book fool you... in here is all the information you need to start improving the way you design. Composition, positioning, alignment, font usage, and a host of other topics are concisely and simply explained. A section on color usage would have been appreciated, but would probably price the book out of its target audience. Williams's sense of humor may not be for everybody, but the information she presents is absolutely invaluable. Williams presents good design, bad design, and works to explain what elements make the former work. After reading this book, I started sub-conciously analyzing almost everything around me, from web sites to advertisements, and was able to identify well-designed ones from poorly-designed ones, and what they did right or wrong. No, you will not become an award-winning graphics designer after one read, but your understanding of principles, and your ability to apply them will increase dramatically. An extremely worthwhile investment for the beginner who needs to suddenly improve his design skills.
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Summary: Read this book before you publish anything!
Review: If you pick up this book looking for that on-the-edge-physical comedy that made Robin Williams one of the worlds most famous comedians, boy have you got the wrong Robin Williams! This author is one of the leading authorities on visual design and presents her information in a clear, concise, no-nonsense (well almost)kind of way. Her book is a valuable resource even for people who think they are familiar with aspects of design or have been told that they, "have a good eye," so don't be dissuaded by the title. As an experienced journalist, the book brought back a lot of my earlier newspaper layout training. It put into plain language the principles for which I had no name other than, "that just doesn't look right." The principles of proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast are highlighted and expounded upon in each section. I found the section on typography to be extremely interesting and I find myself looking for examples of contrasting type all around me now. Visual examples of weak design and what can be done to make the design better are on nearly every page, and make the subject matter very clear. The author maintains that most beginning mistakes in design are tied to mistakes in Contrast Repetition, Alignment, or Proximity (C.R.A.P). That sounds about right. If you are going to publish any document (print or electronic) this should be the first book you read before you do.
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