Zenspirations Dangle Designs


Joanne Fink - 2013
    Zenspirations dangles are a unique form of patterning...and although they look complicated, they are actually easy to create. If you enjoyed Joanne's first book, Zenspirations Paterns & Lettering then you'll love Zenspiration Dangle Designs.

The Wayfinding Handbook: Information Design for Public Places


David Gibson - 2009
    Whether we find ourselves in a museum, hospital, airport, mall, or street in an unfamiliar city, we depend on systems of visual, audible, and tactile cues not only to lead the way, but also to keep us safe. They are the fundamental questions of wayfindinga process that encompasses both the experience of choosing a path within a built environment and the set of design elements that aid in such a decision. A decade ago, the professional practice of wayfinding design simply involved devising sign systems. Today, the field is much broader and continues to expand to address technological developmentskinetic media, GPS systems, web connectivity, smart materialsas well as cultural changes in areas such as branding and environmental awareness. Similarly, a cross-disciplinary familiarity with graphic, architectural, landscape, interior, industrial, and information design has become an essential requirement of twenty-first-century wayfinding design.The Wayfinding Handbook is an exciting new volume in our acclaimed Design Briefs series. Professional wayfinding designer David Gibson draws on more than thirty years of experience collaborating with architects, planners, developers, managers, and civic leaders to offer an insider's view of this rapidly evolving discipline. Using real-life examples, Gibson illustrates the way type, color, mapmaking, dimensional forms, material selection, and new media are used to create effective wayfinding systems.The Wayfinding Handbook is a complete guide to the discipline, from planning and design to practical considerations, such as setting up teams and managing projects. "Other Voices" sidebars, presentedthroughout the book, reveal the opinions of experts who plan, manage, and shape wayfinding projects. A comprehensive bibliography and gallery of resources round out what is likely to become the go-to resource for students, professionals, or anyone charged with designing people-friendly, universally accessible environments.

Designing Disney


John Hench - 2003
    His principles of theme park design, character design, and use of color made him a legendary figure, not only for Disney fans but also for students and aficionados of architecture, engineering, and design.Designing Disney reveals the magic behind John's great discoveries and documents his groundbreaking in several key areas: "Design Philosophy" examines the values, attitudes, aesthetics, and logic that went into the original concepts for Disney theme parks. In "The Art of the Show" and "The Art of Color," Hench reveals the essence of what makes the parks work so well. And in "The Art of Character," he lets the reader in on the how and why of the Disney characters' inherent popularity-their timeless human traits, archetypal shape and gestures that suggest these qualities graphically, and their emotional resonance in our lives.

Acrylic Painting for Dummies


Colette Pitcher - 2009
    Following a simple step-by-step approach, Acrylic Painting For Dummies provides hands-on instruction and easy-to-follow exercises in acrylic painting techniques and styles, making the medium accessible to would-be artists at all levels. Featuring large-scale projects at the end of most chapters and ample additional opportunities for readers to paint along, this friendly guide will help anyone discover the artist within.

Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park


Jeff Kurtti - 2007
    Using his innate talent for combining disparate skills and personalities, he assembled a creative team that blended imagination with engineering. Walt called this group his "Imagineers."Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park introduces a core group of the originators of Disneyland and the other Disney parks. It explores their individual relationships with Walt and each other, their creative breakthroughs and failures, and their rivalries and professional politics. This candid narrative of their lives and contributions to a very special form of entertainment illustrates why, half a century later, their work continues to be vital and important to millions of people every day, and all over the world.Lavishly illustrated throughout with rare and never-before-seen artwork and photographs, Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Park will further enrich the reader's appreciation of the exceptional talent behind Disneyland's creation and ongoing evolution.

The Elements of Typographic Style


Robert Bringhurst - 1992
    Combining practical, theoretical, and historical, this book is a must for graphic artists, editors, or anyone working with the printed page using digital or traditional methods.Having established itself as a standard in its field The Elements of Typographic Style is house manual at most American university presses, a standard university text, and a reference work in studios of designers around the world. It has been translated into italian and greek, and dutch.

Your Idea Starts Here: 77 Mind-Expanding Ways to Unleash Your Creativity


Carolyn Eckert - 2016
    In Your Idea Starts Here, graphic designer Carolyn Eckert offers 77 specific questions, techniques, and exercises — cleverly combined with fascinating infographics and other visuals — to jump-start creative thinking.  Don’t know what you want your project to be? Make a list of things you don’t want it to be. Wondering where to start? Say one word that relates to your idea and invite a friend to say another word that relates to yours. See where five or ten rounds take you. Work within a time limit, look in unexpected places, think tiny, do the opposite, shuffle your papers, and explore your creativity to the fullest! There’s something here to inspire and strengthen every smart idea, all in an innovative little book that makes a perfect gift for anyone, including yourself.

How to Draw Cool Stuff: Holidays, Seasons and Events


Catherine V. Holmes - 2017
    From the Chinese New Year to April Fools' Day, Father's Day to Halloween, Christmas and New Year’s Eve - this book covers over 100 fun days, holidays, seasons and events, and offers simple lessons that will teach you how to draw like a pro and get you in the spirit of whichever season it may be! The third book in the How To Draw Cool Stuff series, this exciting new title will teach you how to create simple illustrations using basic shapes and a drawing technique that simplifies the process of drawing, all while helping you construct height, width and depth in your work. It will guide you through the creative thought process and provide plenty of ideas to get you started. The lessons in this book will also teach you how to think like an artist and remind you that you are only limited by your imagination!

Siteless: 1001 Building Forms


François Blanciak - 2008
    Others may think of it as the last architectural treatise, for it provides a discursive container for ideas that would otherwise be lost. Whatever genre it belongs to, SITELESS is a new kind of architecture book that seems to have come out of nowhere. Its author, a young French architect practicing in Tokyo, admits he "didn't do this out of reverence toward architecture, but rather out of a profound boredom with the discipline, as a sort of compulsive reaction." What would happen if architects liberated their minds from the constraints of site, program, and budget? he asks. The result is a book that is saturated with forms, and as free of words as any architecture book the MIT Press has ever published.The 1001 building forms in SITELESS include structural parasites, chain link towers, ball bearing floors, corrugated corners, exponential balconies, radial facades, crawling frames, forensic housing--and other architectural ideas that may require construction techniques not yet developed and a relation to gravity not yet achieved. SITELESS presents an open-ended compendium of visual ideas for the architectural imagination to draw from. The forms, drawn freehand (to avoid software-specific shapes) but from a constant viewing angle, are presented twelve to a page, with no scale, order, or end to the series. After setting down 1001 forms in siteless conditions and embryonic stages, Blanciak takes one of the forms and performs a "scale test," showing what happens when one of these fantastic ideas is subjected to the actual constraints of a site in central Tokyo. The book ends by illustrating the potential of these shapes to morph into actual building proportions.

Type Idea Index: The Designer's Ultimate Tool for Choosing and Using Fonts Creatively


Jim Krause - 2006
    If you are looking for new ways of employing type in your works of art and design (or new twists to apply to your current typographic techniques), check out Type Idea Index. You'll find yourself face-to-face with 650+ custom-created, idea-sparking examples of typography and type-intensive design. For maximum user-friendliness, these samples are organized according to the theme they express (Energy, Elegance, Order, Rebellion) and the sort of real-world application they relate to (initials, monograms, logos, headlines, paragraphs).Expand your knowledge of type and brainstorm for ideas every time you design with letters and words.Type Idea Index "is the sixth installment in the best-selling, globally popular Index series by Jim Krause."

Paisley Designs


Marty Noble - 2008
    Colorists will enjoy hours of creative pleasure with this all-original gallery of paisley designs — 30 full-page illustrations swirling with gorgeous organic themes.

Inside the Business of Illustration


Steven Heller - 2004
    Using an entertaining, running narrative format to look at key concerns every illustrator must face today, this book covers finding one's unique style and establishing a balance between art and commerce; tackling issues of authorship and promotion; and more. In-depth perspectives are offered by illustrators, art directors, and art buyers from various industries and professional levels on such issues as quality, price negotiation, and illustrator-client relationships.• Includes an afterword by Milton Glaser, well-known designer/illustrator• From the authors of The Education of an Illustrator (1-58115-075-x)

Thinking with Type


Ellen Lupton - 2004
    What type of font to use? How big? How should those letters, words, and paragraphs be aligned, spaced, ordered, shaped, and otherwise manipulated? In this groundbreaking new primer, leading design educator and historian Ellen Lupton provides clear and concise guidance for anyone learning or brushing up on their typographic skills. Thinking with Type is divided into three sections: letter, text, and grid. Each section begins with an easy-to-grasp essay that reviews historical, technological, and theoretical concepts, and is then followed by a set of practical exercises that bring the material covered to life. Sections conclude with examples of work by leading practitioners that demonstrate creative possibilities (along with some classic no-no's to avoid).

Creating Textured Landscapes with Pen, Ink & Watercolor


Claudia Nice - 2007
    Beloved artist and teacher Claudia Nice leads you on an inspired journey through the great outdoors. With paints in hand, she shares with you her best techniques for creating landscapes that come alive with richness, depth and textured detail.Read this guide and start painting right away. As you follow engaging, step-by-step demonstrations and exercises, you'll learn to recreate the textural elements of a range of terrains and landscapes. Chapters include:Creative clouds and skiesMajestic mountains, hills and mesasTexturing trees, trunks and foliageRugged rocks and gritty gravelTransparent textures for rivers, falls and lakesFlowers of the fieldIn a special section, Claudia covers basic texturing techniques with mini demos using lines, dots, bruising, scribbling, spattering, blotting, printing, stamping and more. From paints and pens to sponges, leaves and facial tissue, you'll explore all kinds of fun and inventive ways to create amazing textures.And to help you put it all together, Claudia includes her masterful advice for creating compositions using reference photos, field sketches and your own creative license. Each demonstration features a large image of the completed landscape, so you can see exactly how Claudia's methods work - from start to finish.

How to Be an Artist


Jerry Saltz - 2020
    . . . This book is for the artist or non-artist, for the person who gets plain English, for the person who understands that practical talk can coax out the mystical messages that lie underneath." —Steve Martin Art has the power to change our lives. For many, becoming an artist is a lifelong dream. But how to make it happen? In How to Be an Artist, Jerry Saltz, one of the art world’s most celebrated and passionate voices, offers an indispensable handbook for creative people of all kinds. From the first sparks of inspiration—and how to pursue them without giving in to self-doubt—Saltz offers invaluable insight into what really matters to emerging artists: originality, persistence, a balance between knowledge and intuition, and that most precious of qualities, self-belief. Brimming with rules, prompts, and practical tips, How to Be an Artist gives artists new ways to break through creative blocks, get the most from materials, navigate career challenges, and above all find joy in the work.Teeming with full-color artwork from visionaries ancient and modern, this beautiful and useful book will help artists of all kinds—painters, photographers, writers, performers—realize their dreams.