White Graphics : the power of white in graphic design - Paperback

For White Graphics, Gail Deibler Finke assembled work by 61 graphic design studios in the U.S. (several of them in cities remote from the trendy coasts), Canada, Mexico, and Europe. While exemplary uses of white space (in projects ranging from annual reports to wedding announcements) make up the largest part of the book, she also devotes sections to white employed as a second or third "color" and the use of white in three-dimensional projects (packaging, airplane graphics, a TV studio set).

A few projects are conceptual standouts, like R&M Associati Grafici's poster for the France '98 World Soccer Championship, in which a field of colored dots (representing spectators in the stadium) forms the outline of the white silhouette of a soccer player. But most of the work shown on these pages is firmly in the mainstream--clean, bright, contemporary solutions that appear to satisfy the clients' needs and make the most of what are often described as small budgets.

Finke's nuts-and-bolts approach will be familiar to readers of HOW, the graphic design magazine to which she is a contributor. Too bad she didn't provide a more focused and historically minded introduction to such a fascinating topic. Happily, Stolze Design's inviting layout for the book sets off each project with plenty of white paper. --Cathy Curtis