Guns, which lead to so much death, work exactly as they’re designed to work. And every time we “improve” their design, they get better at killing. Facebook’s privacy settings, which have outed gay teens to their conservative parents, are working exactly as designed. Their “real names” iniative, which makes it easier for stalkers to re-find their victims, is working exactly as designed. Twitter’s toxicity and lack of civil discourse is working exactly as it’s designed to work.The world is working exactly as designed. And it’s not working very well. Which means we need to do a better job of designing it. Design is a craft with an amazing amount of power. The power to choose. The power to influence. As designers, we need to see ourselves as gatekeepers of what we are bringing into the world, and what we choose not to bring into the world. Design is a craft with responsibility. The responsibility to help create a better world for all.Design is also a craft with a lot of blood on its hands. Every cigarette ad is on us. Every gun is on us. Every ballot that a voter cannot understand is on us. Every time social network’s interface allows a stalker to find their victim, that’s on us. The monsters we unleash into the world will carry your name.This book will make you see that design is a political act. What we choose to design is a political act. Who we choose to work for is a political act. Who we choose to work with is a political act. And, most importantly, the people we’ve excluded from these decisions is the biggest (and stupidest) political act we’ve made as a society.If you’re a designer, this book might make you angry. It should make you angry. But it will also give you the tools you need to make better decisions. You will learn how to evaluate the potential benefits and harm of what you’re working on. You’ll learn how to present your concerns. You’ll learn the importance of building and working with diverse teams who can approach problems from multiple points-of-view. You’ll learn how to make a case using data and good storytelling. You’ll learn to say NO in a way that’ll make people listen. But mostly, this book will fill you with the confidence to do the job the way you always wanted to be able to do it. This book will help you understand your responsibilities.

    The turbulent political weather of the twenty-first century generates anxiety and makes it difficult to know how to react. Olivia Laing makes a brilliant, inspiring case for why art matters more than ever, as a force of both resistance and repair. Art, she argues, changes how we see the world. It gives us X-ray vision. It reveals inequalities and offers fertile new ways of living.Funny Weather brings together a career’s worth of Laing’s writing about art and culture, and their role in our political and emotional lives. She profiles Jean-Michel Basquiat and Georgia O’Keeffe, interviews Hilary Mantel and Ali Smith, writes love letters to David Bowie and Wolfgang Tillmans, and explores loneliness and technology, women and alcohol, sex and the body. With characteristic originality and compassion, Funny Weather celebrates art as an antidote to a terrifying political moment.

    In each case, the words were "infused" into her by her spirit guide Francine, and of course, by God. Granted, these words are a passive mode of prayer, yet the goal is to recharge your spiritual battery so that you'll be able to go out into the world and do God's work. "Over many years of public work, people have often asked me how to pray. My answer is simple, 'Just talk to God, and make your life a living prayer." "These prayers will lift your soul and let you magnify the Lord. They have done so for me and thousands of others. Many miracles have occurred by the power of prayer, and now I want to share these commanding words with you."

    Over the past decade, she has gained international recognition for her room-sized tableaux, which depict historical narratives haunted by sexuality, violence and subjugation and are made using the paradoxically genteel eighteenth-century art of cut-paper silhouettes. Set in the antebellum American South, Walker's compositions play off of stereotypes to portray, often grotesquely, life on the plantation, where masters, mistresses and slave men, women and children enact a subverted version of the past in an attempt to reconfigure their status and representation. Over the years, the artist has used drawing, painting, colored-light projections, writing, shadow puppetry, and, most recently, film animation to narrate her tales of romance, sadism, oppression and liberation. Her scenarios thwart conventional readings of a cohesive national history and expose the collective, and ongoing, psychological injury caused by the tragic legacy of slavery. Deploying an acidic sense of humor, Walker examines the dialectics of pleasure and danger, guilt and fulfillment, desire and fear, race and class. This landmark publication, which is sure to win international design awards, accompanies Walker's first major American museum survey. It features critical essays by Philippe Vergne, Sander L. Gilman, Thomas McEvilley, Robert Storr and Kevin Young, as well as an illustrated lexicon of recurring themes and motifs in the artist's most influential installations by Yasmil Raymond, more than 200 full-color images, an extensive exhibition history and bibliography, and a 36-page insert by the artist.

    Seeing them in museums around the world, viewers are transported by the power of Monet's brush into a peaceful world of harmonious nature. Monet himself intended them to provide “an asylum of peaceful meditation.” Yet, as Ross King reveals in his magisterial chronicle of both artist and masterpiece, these beautiful canvases belie the intense frustration Monet experienced at the difficulties of capturing the fugitive effects of light, water, and color. They also reflect the terrible personal torments Monet suffered in the last dozen years of his life.Mad Enchantment tells the full story behind the creation of the Water Lilies, as the horrors of World War I came ever closer to Paris and Giverny, and a new generation of younger artists, led by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, were challenging the achievements of Impressionism. By early 1914, French newspapers were reporting that Monet, by then 73 and one of the world's wealthiest, most celebrated painters, had retired his brushes. He had lost his beloved wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean. His famously acute vision--what Paul Cezanne called "the most prodigious eye in the history of painting"--was threatened by cataracts. And yet, despite ill health, self-doubt, and advancing age, Monet began painting again on a more ambitious scale than ever before. Linking great artistic achievement to the personal and historical dramas unfolding around it, Ross King presents the most intimate and revealing portrait of an iconic figure in world culture--from his lavish lifestyle and tempestuous personality to his close friendship with the fiery war leader Georges Clemenceau, who regarded the Water Lilies as one of the highest expressions of the human spirit.

    

    This is the book Haring wanted to make, based on the outline of a monograph that was never completed due to his untimely death in 1989.

    But it hasn’t always been a smooth ride. In this informative memoir and guide Kate Moross offers true insider’s tips on how to make it in a highly competitive field. Written in an approachable, forthright and refreshingly honest tone, Make Your Own Luck features chapters on how to thrive in art school, developing your own style, how to self-promote, collaboration with other artists, how to deal with “copycats,” and when to consider working for free. Kate Moross also touches on the fine points of music packaging and videos, how to find an agent, and looks back on the touchstone moments that helped shape her career. Designed to mimic Moross’s signature bold, brightly coloured style, this book is filled with dozens of examples of her work for companies such as Google, Adidas, and Nokia, as well as musicians including Simian Mobile Disco, Jessie Ware, Zomby, and Pictureplane. Irreverent and packed with enormously helpful tips for designers of all stripes, Make Your Own Luck is certain to become an indispensable guide for anyone interested in graphic art as a vocation or hobby.

    The blank page.It has so much power.Some days it's terrifying, sometimes thrilling, but mostly it's just plain old scary.It is the reason many people never finish that novel, or complete that project, or follow through with that one thing they used to dream about.Sadly, it is the reason many people never even begin.Blaine Hogan's manifesto, UNTITLED: Thoughts on the Creative Process is here to change all that.As an artist who has designed t-shirts, made light fixtures, created performance art in alleyways, performed on big and small stages all across the country, acted on network television, and is now a creative director at one of the largest churches in North America, Blaine walks you through the creative process of attacking the blank page, executing vision, finding the importance of contemplation, fighting the battle with resistance, and learning from your failures.Blank pages be gone!Read UNTITLED and get ready to fill those suckers with good and meaningful work.

    We need a brand new way to take it all in. 'Information is Beautiful' transforms the ideas surrounding and swamping us into graphs and maps that anyone can follow at a single glance.

    Featuring 240 pages of concept art, exclusive interviews, script excerpts and the never-before-released original pitch for the series, this amazing collection offers an utterly unique view of the Archer creative process.Commentary from the crew will walk fans all the way from squiggles to the gorgeous final picture, detailing not only their process but their history as well. Exclusive interviews with the Emmy-nominated cast offer insights to their beloved characters and a glimpse of their favorite moments. With storyboards, costume designs, reference photographs, immaculate background paintings and more, this is Archer as you have never seen it.The Art of Archer is a must have companion to the groundbreaking animated series, for fans and cinephiles alike.

    After a whirlwind courtship, a move across the world, and the unexpectedly difficult re-entry from a year overseas, Leeana finds her life (and her soul) has been changed forever.With an artist’s eye, Tankersley uses each chapter to piece together moments and memories from her journey—a handwritten note from Kuwait, a braid of fringe from a Persian rug, an original poem, a bit of basting thread, a swatch of black silk from a borrowed abaya, a mesquite leaf, a Navy SEAL trident, a receipt from the Russian-Georgian restaurant on Louisiana Street—to create a work of unexpected beauty.Found art emerges … a literary collage created from salvaged stories of loss, hope, and belief that just might change your soul, too.

    Mark Thomas' fourth book is a funny account of a challenge that had national repercussions. The challenge was to perform 100 acts of dissent within the year or donate £1000 to UKIP. (Nothing like a little incentive.) The targets were multiple; from corporate greed and public service inanities to infringements of rights. This is his account of the adventure and is sure to inspire. This book contains many photos and graphics, and so has been produced as a fixed-format colour ebook. It is only recommended for the newer, colour ebook readers.

    - Detailed, illustrated instructions for selecting tools, paper, and ink; carving both linoleum and wood; and printing by hand in one color or more to achieve professional results - Techniques can be used for art prints, posters, signs, invitations, greeting cards, gift wrap, and fabric - Expert tips on registering, editioning, tearing down paper, and cleaning up - Includes an annotated gallery of finished prints that feature the artist's comments