The Art of Looking Sideways - Alan Fletcher > Reviews > A Guide to Visual Awareness.

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Advantages:	Endless hours of fascination and amusement .
Disadvantages:	It's heavy .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

The Art of Looking Sideways by Alan Fletcher, a renowned designer and art director, is a great coffee table book full of interesting and random information to keep the reader entertained. The book has won a number of awards.

The book is hard back, between A4 and A5 in size and contains just over a 600 pages. The cover is simply white with a number of random statements scrolled across it. One of these statements, the only written in red, reads the Art of Looking Sideways.

The Art of Looking Sideways is filled with Fletcher's lifetime collection of images, ideas, pictures, notes, drawings, quotes, puzzles, quotes, reflections, bizarre facts, poems, anecdotes, scraps and other useless information. It is inspirational and interesting and I love to deleve into this book on occassion as a source of pure amusement and fascination.

The Book is described as 'a guide to visual awareness'. It is creative and interesting and random. It presents Alan Fletcher's way of looking at the world and it my opinion this is a good way. It is always better to imagine the glass half full rather than half empty.

The book is loosely arranged in 72 chapters with titles like "Colour", "Noise", "Language" "Chance", "Camouflage" and "Words", although there is no real structure and this adds to its appeal. It is full of colour and every page bursts out at you, pulling you in, intruiging and amazing.

Some of my favourite parts of the book include a double page photographic spread in which Alan has laid out lots of stones. It took me a while to realise the significance of these stones but once I had got it I was thrilled. There are 26 in total and each contains a letter within the lines and marking upon them. It must have taken him years to collect them and the piece is very impressive in my eyes.

Another of my favourite parts is a collection of mistranslated signs from foreign countries. For example: Do not use the Toilets and Please eat by the Sidewalk etc.

From Buzz Aldrin's bootprint on the moon, drawings of Stone Age pebbles, a painting of "Ireland--as seen from Wales", quotes from famous authors, old cartoon strips, photos from the air, the mona lisa in international flags, visual illusions and drawings of brussle sprouts there is definitely something for everyone.

This book makes you see that there are different and original ways of looking at everything. It is a journey and a fascinating one at that, suitable for everyone, I can't see how anyone wouldn't be interested in this book and I give it my complete reccommendation. Check it out! Nicky x

ISBN: 0714834491. Published by Phaidon.
RRP - £24.99