Describing himself as a visual jackdaw, designer Alan Fletcher (1931–2006), one of the most highly regarded graphic designers of his generation, spent a lifetime collecting images, useless information, quotations and scraps. This work distills this collection into a quirky and entertaining feast for the eyes and the mind.

From the Publisher. A primer in visual intelligence, an exploration of the workings of the eye, the hand, the brain and the imagination. It is an inexhaustible mine of anecdotes, quotations, images, curious facts and useless information, oddities, serious science, jokes and memories, all concerned with the interplay between the verbal and the visual, and the limitless resources of the human mind. Loosely arranged in 72 chapters, all this material is presented in a wonderfully inventive series of pages that are themselves masterly demonstrations of the expressive use of type, space, color, and imagery.