It should be labelled 'start here'." --Pieter Jan Stappers, ID-StudioLab, Delft University of Technology

    The definitive monograph of artist Charley Harpers work, lovingly edited by Todd Oldham.

    Learn how to design beautiful user interfaces by yourself using specific tactics explained from a developer's point-of-view.

    Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour distills pricing theory into principles, rules, tips, and tools specifically for the creative professional.

    Finding patterns and making meaningful connections inside complex data networks has emerged as one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century. In recent years, designers, researchers, and scientists have begun employing an innovative mix of colors, symbols, graphics, algorithms, and interactivity to clarify, and often beautify, the clutter. From representing networks of friends on Facebook to depicting interactions among proteins in a human cell, Visual Complexity presents one hundred of the most interesting examples of information-visualization by the field's leading practitioners.

    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.

    Design is how it works."-Steve Jobs There's a new race in business to embrace "design thinking." Yet most executives have no clue what to make of the recent buzz about design. It's rarely the subject of business retreats. It's not easily measurable. To many, design is simply a crapshoot. Drawing on interviews with top executives such as Virgin's Richard Branson and Nike's Mark Parker, Jay Greene illuminates the methods of companies that rely on design to stand out in their industries. From the experiences of those at companies from Porsche to REI to Lego, we learn that design isn't merely about style and form. The heart of design is rethinking the way products and services work for customers in real life. Greene explains how: -Porsche pit its designers against each other to create its bestselling Cayenne SUV -Clif listened intently to customers, resulting in the industry-changing Luna energy bar -OXO paid meticulous attention to the details, turned its LiquiSeal mug from an abysmal failure into one of its greatest successes -LEGO started saying no to its designers-saving its brick business in the process Greene shows how important it is to build a culture in which design is more than an after-the-fact concern-it's part of your company's DNA. Design matters at every stage of the process. It isn't easy, and it increases costs, but it also boosts profits, sometimes to a massive extent. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, design represents the best chance you have of transcending your competitors.

    The margins sometimes spill over with hurriedly scrawled shopping lists and phone numbers. The cover may be travel-worn and the pages warped from watercolors. Open the book, and raw creativity seeps from each color and line. The intimacy and freedom on its pages are almost like being inside the artist's mind: You get a direct window into risks, lessons, mistakes, and dreams.The private worlds of these visual journals are exactly what you'll find inside An Illustrated Life. This book offers a sneak peak into the wildly creative imaginations of 50 top illustrators, designers and artists. Included are sketchbook pages from R. Crumb, Chris Ware, James Jean, James Kochalka, and many others. In addition, author Danny Gregory has interviewed each artist and shares their thoughts on living the artistic life through journaling.Watch artists—through words and images—record the world they see and craft the world as they want it to be. The pages of An Illustrated Life are sometimes startling, sometimes endearing, but always inspiring. Whether you're an illustrator, designer, or simply someone searching for inspiration, these pages will open a whole new world to you.

    A practical easy-to-follow guide, which shows how to observe and draw portraits of children and adults - and how to capture a likeness.

    Renowned for his uncanny ability to incorporate amazing detail and imagination into stunningly realistic fantasy settings, James Gurney teaches budding artists and fans of fantasy art step-by-step the techniques that won him worldwide critical acclaim. This groundbreaking work examines the practical methods for creating believable pictures of imaginary subjects, such as dinosaurs, ancient Romans, alien creatures, and distant worlds.Beginning with a survey of imaginative paintings from the Renaissance to the golden Age of American illustration, the book then goes on to explain not just techniques like sketching and composition, but also the fundamentals of believable world building including archaeology, architecture, anatomy for creatures and aliens, and fantastic engineering. It concludes with details and valuable advice on careers in fantasy illustration, including video game and film concept art and toy design.More than an instruction book, this is the ultimate reference for fans of science fiction and fantasy illustration."Gurney's Imaginative Realism is a gold mine for artists who want to create images that sing with authority and delight the viewer with rich otherworldly visuals." --Erik Tiemens, concept artist, Star Wars: Episodes II and III"Imaginative Realism is an indispensable, flawless reference for vision makers in any discipline to create their own imaginative realms." --Frank M. Costantino, ASAI, SI, FSAI, JARA, cofounder, American Society of Architectural Illustrators

    Handcrafted CSS: Video Edition: More Bulletproof Web Design

    His astonishing large-scale color photographs of the landscapes of mining, quarrying, railcutting, recycling, oil refining, and shipbreaking uncover a stark, almost sublime beauty in the residue of industrial “progress.” The implicit social and environmental upheavals that underlie these images make them powerful emblems of our times.This handsome catalogue of the first major retrospective of Burtynsky’s work features essays by Lori Pauli, Kenneth Baker, and Mark Haworth-Booth, as well as a wide-ranging interview with the artist by Michael Torosian. The book includes sixty-four color plates.

    The original mosaics (dating from as early as 1904), displaying a variety of serif and sans serif letters and decorative elements, were supplemented by signs in terracotta and cut stone. Over the years, enamel signs identifying stations and warning riders not to spit, smoke, or cross the tracks were added to the mix. Efforts to untangle this visual mess began in the mid-1960s, when the city transit authority hired the design firm Unimark International to create a clear and consistent sign system. We can see the results today in the white-on-black signs throughout the subway system, displaying station names, directions, and instructions in crisp Helvetica. This book tells the story of how typographic order triumphed over chaos.The process didn't go smoothly or quickly. At one point New York Times architecture writer Paul Goldberger declared that the signs were so confusing one almost wished that they weren't there at all. Legend has it that Helvetica came in and vanquished the competition. Paul Shaw shows that it didn't happen that way--that, in fact, for various reasons (expense, the limitations of the transit authority sign shop), the typeface overhaul of the 1960s began not with Helvetica but with its forebear, Standard (AKA Akzidenz Grotesk). It wasn't until the 1980s and 1990s that Helvetica became ubiquitous. Shaw describes the slow typographic changeover (supplementing his text with more than 250 images--photographs, sketches, type samples, and documents). He places this signage evolution in the context of the history of the New York City subway system, of 1960s transportation signage, of Unimark International, and of Helvetica itself.