Ugh. I really wanted to like this book. I wanted it to grab my attention and shake the creative out of me. I wanted to read it until my eyes were bleeding genius font. I wanted it to ask me on a date and take me away to a distant time and place, never turning back. I suppose had high expectations for a textbook, my fault.
As some have already mentioned, the layout of the book is awful.
With so much history involved, I think it's important to arrange pages in a way that will force/keep the reader focused. It's one of those awkward-sized books that is too big for both lap and table reading. It would be a great coffee table book, but it's got way too much information to be a random coffee table book. It's heavy. Having this book in my bag, on my back, with other books is a complete pain in the ass.
The writing is rambly and sometimes I want the author to hurry up and get to the point. I could take a sharpie to many paragraphs and still get all pertinent information.
It is very informative, there's nothing the author has missed. So those with a love of dry history textbooks will love it. Those wanting a brief introduction... there's nothing brief about this book.

UPDATE:
After the end of the course I was taking using this book, I decided I like it better than I had originally thought. My 3 star rating has increased to a hearty 4. It's very informative and can feel a bit overwhelming to start. It gets better. I get it. I dig it. I didn't sell it back to the campus bookstore, and that's saying something.

I absolutely love art history, but am working on my degree in graphic design. This book was a recommended text to supplement a class and it is absolutely the most engaging textbook I've ever read. I do not think there are many other history books specific to design, and there certainly are none that could compare with the depth, detail and quality of information presented in Megg's History of Graphic Design.

well, what is there to say. it's the de facto history book for graphic design. good to own.

It was very interesting. But it was a school text so hard to read at some points. I kept it though

It amazes me that graphic design and designers don't get more respect. (It takes one to know). This book serves well to open eyes to the fact that concerted, skillful design exists all around us... and without the exceptional efforts of those exceptional individuals, we'd be in a world of hurt. ...Sort of makes you think of God, doesn't it?

Best resource for Graphic Design history. I read every chapter and will re-read from time to time. A lot of visuals in the book as well.

EXCELENTE LIBRO!!!

Beautiful book

Full disclosure, this was a textbook for my history of design class.
The writing was repetitive and formulaic, repeating slightly tweaked versions of the same information multiple times through each chapter. It’s far from concise with multiple paragraphs per chapter saying “this movement revolutionized graphic design because designers considered the relationship between visual and written information.” It likes to introduce a million different artists at once, leaving you with no real impression of any of them but the barest of facts about their personal lives.
The information is extremely focused on the western world and emphasizes written history as the only reliable source, completely dismissing oral histories.
Some antiquated language is also used, calling an artist an “invalid” and calling historical lower class people “illiterates.”
To top it all off the copy I purchased was misprinted with sone misaligned printing and the black pages showed every speck of oil from your fingers.

An excellent book on design. Very enjoyable with great imagery.

I used to teach a course based on this book. The book, while the information contained within is good... is a great example of how to NOT design a book. The layout of the book makes this difficult to read and understand. The entire book is typeset in a swiss sans serif for the body copy. This made it extremely difficult for not only my students to read and comprehend, but also for myself. EVERY halfway decent Graphic Designer knows that body copy is always to be set (for any lengthy publication of mostly text) in a SERIF typeface to ease the reader into a flow and continue to advance when reading. My students and myself found ourselves constantly tripping over the fact we were re-reading paragraph lines of text we had already read. The typesetting and layout made advancing through the copy very difficult. Too bad the layout was terrible while the content was of good quality.

Because this book is the only complete book on this subject I was forced to continue to use it. I used this bad layout/typesetting as a prime example of what NOT to do in design. It demonstrated to my students how a good message can be lost in bad design. (And vice versa) This topic generated many a good classroom discussions on the subject.

Honestly this is more of an encyclopedia than a history and has quite a few blind-spots (it is rarely critical or even intellectual in any way) but is quite useful as a reference for movements and images.