Design by Nature: Using Universal Forms and Principles in Design

With this comprehensive text, readers will learn to use nature's shapes and patterns to create aesthetic and relevant visual design.

Teaches how to recognize and understand the essential processes of nature in terms of pattern and shape.
Shows how to integrate the patterns and shapes found in nature into meaningful and relevant aesthetic design.
Includes profiles of well-known designers and exercises in each chapter so readers can put what they are learning into practice.

The designer who understands a broad range of relationships can often create more aesthetic, effective, and relevant visual communications. This is particularly of interest to designers and students who want to take an active role in creating communications that encompass the common experience of being part of nature. In Design by Nature, author Maggie Macnab will guide readers though a series of unexpected a-ha! moments that describe relationships among nature, art, science, technology, and design. Through explanation and example, readers will learn about natural processes, consisting of familiar patterns and shapes that are often taken for granted, but can be used quite effectively in visual messaging. They will explore the principles all human beings know and share at a very deep level and that all humans can relate to as intuitive tools to understand the world and in so doing, learn to incorporate nature's patterns and shapes into their visual design. Less visible and common connections, for example, quazicrystalline formations and their relationships to highly ordered tessellating forms, will also be described. Each chapter includes definitions of new terms introduced in the chapter; a designer profile featuring a well-known designer discussing key concepts; and plenty of examples and exercises so readers can grasp the design concepts they are learning and put them into practice.