Picture This: How Pictures Work

This is a great book about composition by Molly Bang. It's one of those books with information so vital you think to yourself "hang on a minute, I knew that", but really, I actually didn't know, at least they never stuck to my head before reading it. I have discovered it whilst I was on conceptart forums.

Its a very simple and straight forward book about shapes, their placements, colours and how they work together. Molly Bang illustrates a scene from little red riding hood, and its pretty amazing to see how the simplest shapes can have meanings and personalities. Its only around 90 pages which is the only let down, but it's well worth the money (I've paid £8).

If you're looking for a book about grids or typography, this isn't it. Its a very simplified book, and that is why I think it works well getting its ideas across. I'd recommend it to anyone who's remotely interested in design and struggling to deal with compositional problems.