Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles


Cees W. de Jong - 2009
    Taken from a Dutch collection, this exuberant selection traverses the evolution of the printed letter in all its various incarnations via exquisitely designed catalogs displaying not only type specimens in roman, italic, bold, semi-bold, narrow, and broad, but also characters, borders, ornaments, initial letters and decorations as well as often spectacular examples of the use of the letters. The Victorian fonts, sumptuous and sometimes unbelievably outrageous, are accorded a prominent place in this book. In addition to lead letters, examples from lithography and letters by window-dressers, inscription carvers, and calligraphers are also displayed and described. Featuring works by type designers including: William Caslon, Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke, Peter Behrens, Rudolf Koch, Eric Gill, Jan van Krimpen, Paul Renner, Jan Tschichold, A. M. Cassandre, Aldo Novarese, Adrian FrutigerIn order to include a vast amount of material, we have divided this text into two volumes. The first volume displays pre 20th Century type specimens, and the second covers the period from 1900 to the middle of the century. In the first volume, editor Cees de Jong and collector Jan Tholenaar write about single specimens and types; in the second, Alston Purvis outlines the history of types.

MTIV Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer


Hillman Curtis - 2002
    Divided into three parts, this book offers a methodology for artistic and professional work and also offers technical advice for translating this to the web.

Creative Awakenings: Envisioning the Life of Your Dreams Through Art


Sheri Gaynor - 2009
    Work in the spirit of the laws of attraction to visualize the life of your dreams. Follow the journey of twelve artists, each who will set a personal dream or intention. Witness the process that each artist takes, as they create a mixed-media piece that sows the seeds of their intention. Step-by-step techniques for a variety of mixed-media processes accompany each piece of finished art. Read about how their lives changed as a result and learn how to set intentions of your own using the bonus tear-out "dream-prompt" cards.

Hawthorne on Painting


Charles Webster Hawthorne - 1960
    That will paint itself. Do the obvious thing before you do the superhuman thing. It may have been accidental, but you knew enough to let this alone. The good painter is always making use of accidents. Never try to repeat a success. Swing a bigger brush — you don’t know what fun you are missing. For 31 years, Charles Hawthorne spoke in this manner to students of his famous Cape Cod School of Art. The essence of that instruction has been collected from students’ notes and captured in this book, retaining the personal feeling and the sense of on-the-spot inspiration of the original classroom. Even though Hawthorne is addressing himself to specific problems in specific paintings, his comments are so revealing that they will be found applicable a hundred times to your own work.The book is divided into sections on the outdoor model, still life, landscape, the indoor model, and watercolor. Each section begins with a concise essay and continues with comments on basic elements: general character, color, form, seeing, posture, etc. It is in the matter of color that students will especially feel themselves in the presence of a master guide and critic. Hawthorne’s ability to see color and, more important, to make the student see color, is a lesson that will aid student painters and anyone else interested in any phase of art.Although it does not pretend to be a comprehensive or closely ordered course, this book does have much to offer. It also represents the artistic insight of one of the finest painter-teachers of the twentieth century."An excellent introduction for laymen and students alike." — Time"To read these notes and comments … is in itself an education. One cannot help but gain great help." — School Arts

Andy Goldsworthy


Andy Goldsworthy - 1990
    The many-pointed star formed from large icicles balances on a rock in a quiet Dumfriesshire valley, a delicate bamboo screen stands on a Japanese beach, a great serpentine ridge of earth extends along a disused railway cutting on Tyneside, four massive snow rings mark the position of the North Pole.

Grid Systems: Principles of Organizing Type


Kimberly Elam - 2004
    However, the belief that all great design is nonetheless based on grid systems (even if only subverted ones) suggests that few designers truly understand the complexities and potential riches of grid composition.In her best-selling Geometry of Design, Elam shows how proportion, symmetry, and other geometrical systems underlie many of the visual relationships that make for good design. Now, Elam brings the same keen eye and clear explanations to bear on the most prevalent, and maybe least understood, system of visual organization: the grid. Filled with extensive research and more than 100 informative examples from the Bauhaus to Nike ads, Grid Systems provides a rich, easy-to-understand overview and demonstrates a step-by-step approach to typographic composition. It suggests design strategies that transcend simple function and reductionist recipes to allow grids to become a means of truly dynamic communication. Any designer, educator, or student will benefit greatly from this elegant slim book, chock-a-block full of colorful examples, helpful vellum overlays, and Elam's insightful analysis.

Jean Michel Basquiat


Richard Marshall - 1992
    Published to accompany an exhibition held at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, in 1992-93, the book contains illustrations reproducing paintings, drawings, collages, silkscreens, and constructions, many previously unpublished.

Little Book of Lettering


Emily Gregory - 2012
    Contemporary artists, typesetters, and designers of all kinds are exploring new horizons in illustrated and hand-drawn lettering, digitally rendered lettering, and 3D lettering. This collection—large in scope but petite in size—surveys the recent lettering renaissance, showcasing a diverse range of talent in gorgeous, eye-catching examples and profiling today's innovators. In a stunning little package that expertly combines a handmade feel with a modern aesthetic, this is the ultimate inspirational collection of contemporary lettering for design buffs and type enthusiasts alike.

Animals: 1,419 Copyright-Free Illustrations of Mammals, Birds, Fish, Insects, etc


Jim Harter - 1979
    Simple and bold or capable of the most exquisite effects of tonal gradation, this elegant black-and-white artwork sustains no loss in reproduction and is a perfect complement to typography. 1,419 clear wood engravings present, in natural, lifelike poses, over 1,000 species of animals. Included are many different versions of the familiar animals most wanted and used by commercial artists and craftsmen. Arranged according to the following seven categories, the illustrations portray mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, insects, and other invertebrates. Selected for their visual impact and usability by artist-collagist Jim Harter, these illustrations form one of the most extensive, royalty-free pictorial sourcebooks of animals ever assembled for the specific use of illustrators, graphic designers, craftspeople, decoupeurs, and collagists. Captions give modern common-name identifications, and a thorough index provides immediate access to individual animal pictures. Because of the accuracy and detail of most of the renderings, naturalists will also enjoy browsing through this volume and using it for illustrative purposes.

Grid Systems in Graphic Design/Raster Systeme Fur Die Visuele Gestaltung


Josef Müller-Brockmann - 1996
    "Grid Systems in Graphic Design - Raster Systeme für die Visuelle Gestaltung" By Josef Müller-Brockmann. English version by D. Q. Stephenson. English and German text. This is the 5th Edition, published by Verlag Niggli AG, 2007. Full title: "Grid Systems in Graphic Design. A Visual Communication Manual for Graphic Designers, Typographers and Three Dimensional Designers - Raster Systeme für die Visuelle Gestaltung. Ein Handbuch für Grafiker, Typografen und Ausstellungsgestalter". A comprehensive handbook on modern typography and using the Grid System, illustrated with drawings, diagrams, black & white photographs & numerous examples of graphic design. Subjects include: Grid and Design Philosophy; The Typographic Grid and its purpose; Sizes of Paper; Typeface Alphabets; Margin Proportions; Construction of the Grid and Type Area; Type & Picture Area with 8, 20 and 32 Grid Fields; Photograph & Illustration in the Grid System; the Grid in Corporate Identity and Three-Dimensional Design & more.

Talent Is Not Enough: Business Secrets for Designers


Shel Perkins - 2005
    This work helps you learn things such as: How to get on the right career path; How to market your services successfully; How to avoid common legal pitfalls; How to structure projects for success; The secrets of successful teams; and, more.

Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture


Takashi Murakami - 2005
    Focusing on the youth-driven phenomenon of otaku (roughly translated as “geek culture” or “pop cult fanaticism”), Takashi Murakami and a notable group of contributors explore the complex historical influences that shape Japanese contemporary art and its distinct graphic languages. The book’s title, Little Boy, is a reference to the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945, thus clearly locating the birth of these new cultural forms in the trauma and generational aftershock of the atomic bomb.This generously illustrated book showcases the work of key otaku artists and designers, many of whom are cult celebrities in Japan, and discusses their feature film and video animations, video games and internet sites, music, toys, fashion, and more. In the process, the following questions are posed: What is otaku, and what does it tell us about contemporary social, economic, and cultural life in Japan and throughout the world? How is it related to the pervasive and curious fixation on “cuteness” evident in Japanese popular culture? What impact did the atomic devastation of World War II have on the development of Japanese art and culture?This brilliantly designed, bilingual (English and Japanese) publication examines these themes to explore how contemporary Japanese art has become inseparable from the subcultural realms of manga and animé (Japanese animation)—a world where meticulous technique, apocalyptic imagery, and high and low cultures meet.Little Boy concludes Murakami’s “Superflat” trilogy, a project conceived in 2000 to introduce a new wave of Japanese artists and to place their work in the historical context of traditional styles and concepts.

How to


Michael Bierut - 2015
    Featuring more than thirty-five of his projects, it reveals his philosophy of graphic design—how to use it to sell things, explain things, make things look better, make people laugh, make people cry, and (every once in a while) change the world. Specially chosen to illustrate the breadth and reach of graphic design today, each entry demonstrates Bierut’s eclectic approach. In his entertaining voice, the artist walks us through each from start to finish, mixing historic images, preliminary drawings (including full-size reproductions of the notebooks he has maintained for more than thirty-five years), working models and rejected alternatives, as well as the finished work. Throughout, he provides insights into the creative process, his working life, his relationship with clients, and the struggles that any design professional faces in bringing innovative ideas to the world.Offering insight and inspiration for artists, designers, students, and anyone interested in how words, images, and ideas can be put together, How to provides insight to the design process of one of this century’s most renowned creative minds.

Drawing Cutting Edge Comics


Christopher Hart - 2001
    The heroes are grittier. The women are sexier. The pages are designed for maximum impact.Heroes have been turned into highly cool antiheroes, such as the famous characters Spawn and War Blade. Cutting-edge comics venture beyond the traditional boundaries to extreme anatomy, extreme costuming, extreme special effects, and extreme methods of storytelling.Drawing Cutting Edge Comics is the first-ever guide that shows readers, step by step, how to draw the radical characters and cutting-edge techniques that are the gold standard for designing extreme comics.Dozens of fantastic, how-to illustrations demonstrate the basics as well as how to create such intense coloring techniques as knockouts and glows. Plus, several leading cutting-edge artists describe how they spin original character designs, many created exclusively for this book.

Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography


James Craig - 1971
    New information and new images make this perennial best-seller an even more valuable tool for anyone interested in learning about typography. The fifth edition has been integrated with a convenient website, www.designingwithtype.com, where students and teachers can examine hundreds of design solutions and explore a world of typographic information. First published more than thirty-five years ago, Designing with Type has sold more than 250,000 copies—and this fully updated edition, with its new online resource, will educate and inspire a new generation of designers.