Design helps.
I flipped through Zach Plague's book, Boring Boring Boring Boring (&c), starting at the front page. It's a little overwhelming. It's like these massive swooping design ideas going on all over the place. It's all really good, really consistent even in the huge variances of design style, but my first thought was, "This Plague guy is crazy. This is too much. It's overdesigned."
But then I started reading the story and I got pretty interested in it. It isn't the kind of story I have read in a while. It's countercultural in a direct way. It seems to hinge on the idea that some people are different than other people. That's a pretty basic idea, but lately I've been kind of feeling like everybody is the same.
So now I think that even though the design is over-the-top, I feel like that was a smart move. It made me look at this book first even though I have maybe 10 more that I've received in the last few days. I want to see what happens next. I want to look at it more to see how the story and design relate to each other.
I think everyone should see this book. Highly recommended. Buy it from Powells. As of this instant it's only like $5.95. What? That's crazy. Damn.