Structure and Form in Design

Structure and Form in Design
Author: Michael Hann
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2013-08-01
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0857854658

This book provides a critical examination of structure and form in design, covering a range of topics of great value to students and practitioners engaged in any of the specialist decorative arts and design disciplines. The complexities of two-dimensional phenomena are explained and illustrated in detail, while various three-dimensional forms are also discussed. In the context of the decorative arts and design, structure is the underlying framework, and form the resultant, visible, two- or three-dimensional outcome of the creative process. Whether hidden or visually detectable in the final design, structure invariably determines whether or not a design is successful in terms of both its aesthetics and its practical performance. Hann successfully identifies various geometric concepts, and presents and discusses a number of simple guidelines to assist the creative endeavours of both accomplished and student practitioners, teachers and researchers.

Design Strategies in Architecture

Design Strategies in Architecture
Author: Geoffrey Howard Baker
Publisher: Spon Press
Total Pages: 319
Release: 1996
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 0419161309

In this second edition an additional section outlines the relationship between some current perceptions of science, art, and philosophy, and how these impinge on architecture.

Forms that Work

Forms that Work
Author: Caroline Jarrett
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2009-03-02
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 0080948480

Forms that Work: Designing Web Forms for Usability clearly explains exactly how to design great forms for the web. The book provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. It features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. It includes dozens of examples - from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color). This book isn't just about colons and choosing the right widgets. It's about the whole process of making good forms, which has a lot more to do with making sure you're asking the right questions in a way that your users can answer than it does with whether you use a drop-down list or radio buttons. In an easy-to-read format with lots of examples, the authors present their three-layer model - relationship, conversation, appearance. You need all three for a successful form - a form that looks good, flows well, asks the right questions in the right way, and, most important of all, gets people to fill it out. Liberally illustrated with full-color examples, this book guides readers on how to define requirements, how to write questions that users will understand and want to answer, and how to deal with instructions, progress indicators and errors. This book is essential reading for HCI professionals, web designers, software developers, user interface designers, HCI academics and students, market research professionals, and financial professionals. *Provides proven and practical advice that will help you avoid pitfalls, and produce forms that are aesthetically pleasing, efficient and cost-effective. *Features invaluable design methods, tips, and tricks to help ensure accurate data and satisfied customers. *Includes dozens of examples -- from nitty-gritty details (label alignment, mandatory fields) to visual designs (creating good grids, use of color).*Foreword by Steve Krug, author of the best selling Don't Make Me Think!

Analysis and Design of Descriptor Linear Systems

Analysis and Design of Descriptor Linear Systems
Author: Guang-Ren Duan
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 504
Release: 2010-09-14
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 1441963979

Descriptor linear systems theory is an important part in the general field of control systems theory, and has attracted much attention in the last two decades. In spite of the fact that descriptor linear systems theory has been a topic very rich in content, there have been only a few books on this topic. This book provides a systematic introduction to the theory of continuous-time descriptor linear systems and aims to provide a relatively systematic introduction to the basic results in descriptor linear systems theory. The clear representation of materials and a large number of examples make this book easy to understand by a large audience. General readers will find in this book a comprehensive introduction to the theory of descriptive linear systems. Researchers will find a comprehensive description of the most recent results in this theory and students will find a good introduction to some important problems in linear systems theory.

Notes on the Synthesis of Form

Notes on the Synthesis of Form
Author: Christopher Alexander
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1964
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 9780674627512

"These notes are about the process of design: the process of inventing things which display new physical order, organization, form, in response to function." This book, opening with these words, presents an entirely new theory of the process of design. In the first part of the book, Christopher Alexander discusses the process by which a form is adapted to the context of human needs and demands that has called it into being. He shows that such an adaptive process will be successful only if it proceeds piecemeal instead of all at once. It is for this reason that forms from traditional un-self-conscious cultures, molded not by designers but by the slow pattern of changes within tradition, are so beautifully organized and adapted. When the designer, in our own self-conscious culture, is called on to create a form that is adapted to its context he is unsuccessful, because the preconceived categories out of which he builds his picture of the problem do not correspond to the inherent components of the problem, and therefore lead only to the arbitrariness, willfulness, and lack of understanding which plague the design of modern buildings and modern cities. In the second part, Mr. Alexander presents a method by which the designer may bring his full creative imagination into play, and yet avoid the traps of irrelevant preconception. He shows that, whenever a problem is stated, it is possible to ignore existing concepts and to create new concepts, out of the structure of the problem itself, which do correspond correctly to what he calls the subsystems of the adaptive process. By treating each of these subsystems as a separate subproblem, the designer can translate the new concepts into form. The form, because of the process, will be well-adapted to its context, non-arbitrary, and correct. The mathematics underlying this method, based mainly on set theory, is fully developed in a long appendix. Another appendix demonstrates the application of the method to the design of an Indian village.