Escher was born in 1898 in Leeuwarden (Netherlands). He received his first drawing lessons during secondary school from F.W. van der Haagen, who also taught him the block printing, thus fostering Escher's innate graphic talents. From 1912 to 1922 he studied at the School of Architecture and Ornamental Design in Haarlem, where he was instructed in graphic techniques by S. Jessurun de Mesquita, who greatly influenced Escher's further artistic development. Between 1922 and 1934 the artist lived and worked in Italy. Afterwards Escher spent two years in Switzerland and five in Brussels before finally moving back to Barn in Holland, where he died in 1972. M.C. Escher is not a surrealist drawing us into his dream world, but an architect of perfectly impossible worlds who presents the structurally unthinkable as though it were a law of nature. The resulting dimensional and perspectival illusions bring us into confrontation with the limitations of our sensory perception. About the Series: Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

    More than 1300 logos are grouped according to their focal form, symbol, and graphic associations into 75 categories such as crosses, stars, crowns, animals, people, handwritten, illustrative type, etc. To emphasize the visual form of the logos, theyare shown predominantly in black and white. By sorting a vast, international array of current logotypesranging from those of small, design-led businesses to global brandsthe book offers design consultancies a ready resource to draw on in the research phase of identity projects. Logos are also indexed alphabetically by name of company/designer and by industrial sector, making it easy to piece together a picture of the state of the identity art in any client's marketplace.

    Whether you’re enraged by Ikea’s Verdanagate, want to know what the Beach Boys have in common with easy Jet or why it’s okay to like Comic Sans, Just My Type will have the answer. Learn why using upper case got a New Zealand health worker sacked. Refer to Prince in the Tafkap years as a Dingbat (that works on many levels). Spot where movies get their time periods wrong and don’t be duped by fake posters on eBay. Simon Garfield meets the people behind the typefaces and along the way learns why some fonts – like men – are from Mars and some are from Venus. From type on the high street and album covers, to the print in our homes and offices, Garfield is the font of all types of knowledge.

    Not to worry: This book is the one place you can turn to find quick, non-intimidating, excellent design help. In The Non-Designer's Design Book, 2nd Edition, best-selling author Robin Williams turns her attention to the basic principles of good design and typography. All you have to do is follow her clearly explained concepts, and you'll begin producing more sophisticated, professional, and interesting pages immediately. Humor-infused, jargon-free prose interspersed with design exercises, quizzes, illustrations, and dozens of examples make learning a snap—which is just what audiences have come to expect from this best-selling author.

    This volume highlights the research and findings of this natural scientist. Powerful modern microscopes have confirmed the accuracy of Haeckel's prints, which even in their day, became world famous. Haeckel's portfolio, first published between 1899 and 1904 in separate installments, is described in the opening essays. The plates illustrate Haeckel's fundamental monistic notion of the -unity of all living things- and the wide variety of forms are executed with utmost delicacy. Incipient microscopic organisms are juxtaposed with highly developed plants and animals. The pages, ordered according to geometric and -constructive- aspects, document the oness of the world in its most diversified forms. This collection of plates was not only well-received by scientists, but by artists and architects as well. Rene Binet, a pioneer of glass and iron constructions, Emile Galle, a renowned Art Nouveau designer, and the photographer Karl Blossfeld all make explicit reference to Haeckel in their work.

    Increasingly, people are feeling powerless and underrepresented because they have no voice.Designers, however, have a voice. They are among the most influential bystanders because their skills enable them to communicate a message easily through the Web or through posters and printed pieces. A picture is worth a thousand words and designers have used this adage to their advantage for years by creating simple yet powerful designs that immediately convey the message to the viewer. The Design of Dissent focuses on graphic work that designers have made as a result of social and political concerns. The time is certainly ripe as the U.S., and world, flares in opposition on so many important issues.

    With more than 1,400 illustrations, many of them never published before and written by the leading design historian Pat Kirkham, this is the definitive study that design and film enthusiasts have been eagerly anticipating. Saul Bass (1920-1996) created some of the most compelling images of American post-war visual culture. Having extended the remit of graphic design to include film titles, he went on to transform the genre. His best known works include a series of unforgettable posters and title sequences for films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Otto Preminger's The Man with the Golden Arm and Anatomy of a Murder. He also created some of the most famous logos and corporate identity campaigns of the century, including those for major companies such as AT&T, Quaker Oats, United Airlines and Minolta. His wife and collaborator, Elaine, joined the Bass office in the late 1950s. Together they created an impressive series of award-winning short films, including the Oscar-winning Why Man Creates, as well as an equally impressive series of film titles, ranging from Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus in the early 1960s to Martin Scorsese's Cape Fear and Casino in the 1990s. Designed by Jennifer Bass, Saul Bass's daughter and written by distinguished design historian Pat Kirkham who knew Saul Bass personally, this book is full of images from the Bass archive, providing an in depth account of one of the leading graphic artists of the 20th century.

    These 101 maxims, meditations, and demonstrations offer both a toolkit of ideas for the art student and a set of guiding principles for the artist. Complementing each of the 101 succinct texts is an equally expressive drawing by the artist, often based on a historical or contemporary work of art, offering a visual correlative to the written thought. "Art can be anything" is illustrated by a drawing of Duchamp's famous urinal; a description of chiaroscuro art is illuminated by an image "after Caravaggio"; a lesson on time and media is accompanied by a view of a Jenny Holzer projection; advice about surviving a critique gains resonance from Piero della Francesca's arrow-pierced Saint Sebastian.101 Things to Learn in Art School offers advice about the issues artists confront across all artistic media, but this is no simple handbook to making art. It is a guide to understanding art as a description of the world we live in, and it is a guide to using art as a medium for thought. And so this book belongs on the reading list of art students, art teachers, and artists, but it also belongs in the library of everyone who cares about art as a way of understanding life.

    Secrets which many designers will never reveal. In an era of typographic fundamentalism and the cult of forms, this list of dos and don'ts explodes myths and provides a fresh view of typography. Enric Jardi is Professor of design at prominent institutions including Eina, Elisava, and Universitat Ramon Llull. He is President of the ADG-FAD, based in Catalonia, one of the most important graphic design institutions internationally.'If they let you, use left justification; Don't fool too much with the default values; Condense and expand the lettering; Avoid certain ligatures.' Enric Jardi

    Literary journals bound by magnets, or designed to look like junk mail. The sharp wit, gorgeous design, and playful why not invention of independent literary publisher McSweeney's have earned it a large and loyal following and made its journals, books, The Believer magazine, and Wholphin DVDs collectible favorites of readers and graphic designers alike. Created by the McSweeney's staff to commemorate their 11th (or 12th) anniversary, this book showcases their award-winning art and design across all the company's activities. It features hundreds of images, interviews with collaborators such as Chris Ware and Michael Chabon, and dozens of insights into McSweeney's quirky creative process and the visual experience of reading.

    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.

    In soaring glass structures or minimalist canvases, we recognize a time of vast technological advance which affirmed the power of human beings to reshape their environment and to break, radically, from the conventions or constraints of the past.Less well-known, but no less fascinating, is thedistillation of modernism in graphic design. With the creation of clean visual concepts, designers sought to move away from the mystique they identified with the commercial artist, and to counterbalance an increasingly complicated world with clarity.This unprecedented TASCHEN publication, authored byJens Muller, brings together approximately 6,000 trademarks, focused on the period 1940 1980, to examine howmodernist attitudes and imperatives gave birth to corporate identity. Ranging from media outfits to retail giants, airlines to art galleries, the sweeping survey is organized into three design-orientated chapters: Geometric, Effect, and Typographic. Each chapter is then sub-divided into form and style led sections such as alphabet, overlay, dots and squares.Alongside the comprehensive catalog, the book features an introduction fromJens Mulleron the history of logos, and an essay byR. Roger Remingtonon modernism and graphic design. Eight designer profiles and eight instructive case studies are also included, with a detailed look at the life and work of such luminaries asPaul Rand, Yusaku Kamekura, andAnton Stankowski, and at such significant projects asFiat, The Daiei, Inc., and theMexico Olympic Games of 1968. An unrivaled resource for graphic designers, advertisers, and branding specialists, Logo Modernismis equally fascinating to anyone interested in social, cultural, and corporate history, and in the sheer persuasive power of image and form. Text in English, French, and German "

    Based on John Dewey's lectures on esthetics, delivered as the first William James Lecturer at Harvard in 1932, Art as Experience has grown to be considered internationally as the most distinguished work ever written by an American on the formal structure and characteristic effects of all the arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature.

    Sontag develops further the concept of 'transparency'. When anything can be photographed and photography has destroyed the boundaries and definitions of art, a viewer can approach a photograph freely with no expectations of discovering what it means. This collection of six lucid and invigorating essays, the most famous being "In Plato's Cave", make up a deep exploration of how the image has affected society.

    His tortured typography prompted a vocal camp of critics to accuse him of being flippant and of destroying the communicative basis of design. But now the techniques of David Carson (and those of his countless imitators) dominate advertising, design, the Web, and even motion pictures. With 35,000 copies of the original sold, this revised edition of The End of Print includes a striking new cover and first chapter that puts Carson's work in context. The rest is vintage Carson—cutting edge and explosive. The End of Print tracks his career from skateboard and surf magazines, to the landmark Beach Culture magazine and his groundbreaking grid-breaking work for Ray Gun, and finally to handling major corporate identity accounts. The End of Print marks a turning point in design that ushered in the look of today.