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Rating: ![5 stars](http://www.reviewfocus.com/images/stars-5-0.gif) Summary: Simply Pratical! Review: For those who love practical and concise books on visual thinking, Rapid-Viz is a must-read book to improve your whole-brain thinking skill. I would always use Mr. Hanks' suggestion in visualizing ideas when taking lecture notes- even the most boring university lectures become the funniest. Every page is filled with humorously illustrated cartoons that brilliantly capture the essence of each thought. The ideas themselves are concisely presented as well- quick to the point. Thanks Mr. Hanks, for sharing your creative ideas to the world. I surely can't wait to read your future new books.
Rating: ![5 stars](http://www.reviewfocus.com/images/stars-5-0.gif) Summary: Really, great stuff to get you moving with thinking visually Review: I have always enjoyed reading - and playing around with the ideas from - Kurt Hank's books. I have all his books, which include Draw!, Design Yourself, The Change Navigator, Wake Up Your Creative Genius, Up Your Productivity. Like his other books, this book is very well illustrated, graphically and conceptually. Although it is written for the novice designer in mind, it nevertheless provides a step by step approach to the practical strategies of seeing, thinking, drawing and designing your ideas - and concepts - visually, as well as in 3-D. Really, great stuff.
Rating: ![2 stars](http://www.reviewfocus.com/images/stars-2-0.gif) Summary: A very disappointing book. Review: I have been a design student for about two years and I purchased this book soley through word of mouth. I approached this book as if I was a beginner, knowing that the book was intended for such readers. However, as I read through the pages and completed most of the exercises, I realized that if I had been a true novice, that this book would have been extremely difficult to understand and very frustrating. In sections such as dividing a square, the author unclearly explains how to find the center of a square by drawing its diagonals, but fails to explain how to find the midpoints of the sides, and instead, assumes that you already know how to do so. The exercises are the worst part of this book. Like a beginner, I performed each exercise according to the author's instructions. However, I always ended up with distorted images. An example is when the author asks you to duplicate a cube in each direction. Unless you are a machine, your cube will not be perfect and your duplicated cubes would only come out distorted. But that is why a cube is already provided for you in the book for you to work on. However, it seems that even professionals are imperfect, for when you duplicate the cube which is provided in the book, you still end up with distorted cubes. As a beginner I would have been extremely frustrated. I even asked one of my instructors to see if she could perform the exercise and she ended up with distorted cubes as well. Not only were the exercises frustratingly difficult, but the book's soft covers did not make it a suitable workbook. Most of the time you're asked to work from off the sketces in the book, but the pages are constantly bending as you're sketching in it, and the illustrator's sketches are not very accurate in terms of perspective and scale. I gave this book 2 stars because it does indeed mention good points when it comes to design, such as visual thinking, perspective, the "box method", and lettering. But those points are not thoroughly explained enough and the exercises are terribly presented especially for a novice designer.
Rating: ![3 stars](http://www.reviewfocus.com/images/stars-3-0.gif) Summary: The title fooled me. Review: I was expecting a book weighted toward doodling; idea-generation; capturing thoughts on paper. I was disappointed to find it more oriented toward graphic artists or illustrators. Lots of topics like composition, perspective, etc. And the sample sketches and examples are way, way more professional than I could ever hope to be. Read carefully the book description in the Editorial Reviews: "This book helps people to quickly master the fundamental techniques of graphic art and design using felt-tip pens and plain paper." If you're looking for technical tips to improve your drawing, by all means, buy this book. Bottom-line, I found it more oriented toward illustrators or artists than toward thinkers who want to doodle.
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