It was preachy, verbose, and overly illustrative. Sure the writing was "pretty", but it seemed to be a lot of frosting on top of a few very basic design ideas. That said, it's certainly elegantly written.

Yep, Adam pretty much nailed it. Very little substance to it in my opinion. A handful of ideas taken from 2-3 other books, just rearranged. It almost felt like he'd managed to sell his masters thesis for $90K (although the word count might run a little short).

Don't get me wrong, I think Frank is uniquely talented, and he definitely has a lot to offer, but this really missed the mark for me. Form and hype massively over substance. I feel that the people who wet themselves over it don't do a lot of other reading, there really wasn't anything new in there.

The book itself is beautiful, though. Materials, binding, design, illustrations and typography are just gorgeous.