Authors Beryl McAlhone and David Stuart seem like mild-mannered people who harbor a keen appreciation of humor. Although this book was published in Britain, it's most needed in this country. American advertisers tend to overwhelm, using snobbiness, nostalgia, glitz, or else they coerce with the homespun appeal of regular folks. One of the best things A Smile does is teach, through description and examples drawn from this century, a large vocabulary of humor in design practice. Grqaphics Nowhere is this more needed than on the Web.
Cheap thrills are fun, but when burnout comes, it comes hard.
Much of the work they discuss feels a little forced, and maybe a little in love with its bleeding edginess. Multimedia Graphics really demands, though, to be kept with something like A Smile in the Mind close at hand. Like having a peaceful lunch with an older friend who doesn't give a rat's ass where the cyber world is headed, you might need something to calm a case of paranoid new-edge hysteria. It helps if you keep your sense of humor. Pop's pull-down menu Pick one, then press Go.