Book Review: Negative Space

Big idea graphics

You don't see this level of creativity too often which is why I enjoyed this book so much. Noma Bar sort of does the impossible and sums up an almost abstract concept with what seems incredibly simple graphics. They are simple, of course, containing flat colors and easy on the eye graphics but step back and look carefully at what you see and it will become apparent that these are really complex examples of visual literacy.

It's a shame that nowhere in the book are a couple of examples of how Bar creates his remarkable graphics. How long do they take, how many ideas are rejected, is color included in his original roughs? On eight pages at the back of the book there are some thumbnails of his sketchbooks but they look completely unlike his finished designs, in fact a pastiche of colored scribbles, so no help there.

The range of material is impressive though there is a strong leaning towards contemporary world problems and Bar's work is the ideal illustrative material for this because his ideas get to the point where a photograph to say the same thing would be hard to find. His `Global warming' graphic says it all with a silhouette of a fried egg breaking out of a black panel and the yoke is a globe with the land mass a tint of light grey.

My only criticism of the book is that it is too large. Bar's graphics, because of their straightforward presentation, work best at postcard size or smaller and on these pages there is either a lot of surplus page space with a reasonably sized image or large areas of flat colour because the images are so big.

Negative Space is available at Amazon (US | CA | UK | DE | FR | IT | ES | JP | CN)

Right: look carefully and see two people working on their laptops.

Right: gun crime.

Right: big bad wolves and Little Red Riding Hood.

Left: the fabric of life. Hi-tech clothing that can withstanf bomb blasts. Right: a spider hunter.

Left: in oil we trust.

The back pages have these thumnails of Bar's sketchbooks.

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