That’s the message from Austin Kleon, a young writer and artist who knows that creativity is everywhere, creativity is for everyone. A manifesto for the digital age, Steal Like an Artist is a guide whose positive message, graphic look and illustrations, exercises, and examples will put readers directly in touch with their artistic side.

    I want there to be a combination of the past juxtaposed with the modern. I use nature to symbolize the search, saving a tree, watering the earth. In this fabricated world, strange clouds of smog float by; there are holes in the sky. These mythic images mirror our world, where nature is domesticated, controlled, and destroyed. Through my work I explore technology and a poetry of existence. These can be very heavy, overly didactic issues to convey in art, so I choose to portray them through a more theatrically absurd approach.--Robert ParkeHarrison

    Style and minimalism blogger Anuschka Rees presents a fascinatingly strategic, prescriptive approach to identifying, refining, and expressing personal style and building the ideal wardrobe to match it, with style and shopping strategies that women can use every day. Including beautiful full-color fashion photography, infographics, and activities, The Curated Closet is a useful guide covering everything women need to know to fully realize their individual style and create their perfect functional and beautiful wardrobe.

    In this volume, first published in 1979, Krenov invites the reader into his workshop, where he shares his techniques and uncompromising approach to craftsmanship, along with thoughts about his work and its place in the world. Photo sequences show how Krenov composes a cabinet directly in the wood, without dimensioned drawings. He also discusses working with shop-sawn veneers, the technique of fitting curved doors, and the problems of accuracy and mistakes. The book concludes with a detailed exploration of three furniture projects: a curved showcase cabinet, a writing table with drawer, and a chess table.

    Artists' sketchbooks offer exclusive access into the creative processtheir dog-eared, paint-splattered, sometimes crumbling pages have an intimate and visceral appeal. Street Sketchbook includes never-before-seen works by new and acclaimed figures such as Banksy (UK), Alexander Purdy (US), and more, as well as sketches that have formed the basis of large public works. Ingenious throughout, these sketchbooks epitomize the audacious originality of vision that defines the street art scene today.

    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.

    Among graphic artists and commercial designers, Mucha is praised for the innovative style books that pioneered the use of Art Nouveau in commercial packaging, design, and ornament.The most important of these style books was Documents Décoratifs, published in 1901 at the height of Mucha's fame as the high priest of the Art Nouveau movement. While the artist's fame rests largely on his posters, it is in the smaller works of the style books, or design portfolios, that the refinement of his technique can best be appreciated. The present volume, carefully reproduced from an extremely rare and valuable set of originals, contains all 72 plates of the Documents Décoratifs portfolio. Included are designs for jewelry, wallpaper, stained glass, furniture, and tableware; figure and botanical studies; and a selection of Mucha's famous panneaux décoratifs. Eighteen of the plates are in full color, while the remaining 54 are reproduced in two or more color tones.In addition to numerous innovative designs for practical and decorative objects, the elegant draftsmanship and meticulous execution that characterized all of Mucha's work is evident in studies of langorous nudes, portrait sketches, delicately rendered plant and animal motifs, exquisite modeling of drapery and cloth, and the flowing, fantastic forms created as experiments in pure design. In the Foreword by Gabriel Mourey, specially translated for this edition, Mucha's own philosophy of art, and the relation of the Documents to the rest of his work, receive an appreciative and informative discussion.Hitherto available only in scattered sources, or in the libraries of wealthy collectors, the complete Documents Décoratifs is now available in this inexpensive one-volume edition. Lovers of Mucha's work, admirers of Art Nouveau, and the application of that style to the decorative arts, will want to own this fine royalty-free collection by one of the greatest masters of the technique."[Documents Décoratifs is] . . . an encyclopedic source for Mucha's style in every branch of decorative and applied art and one of the few books on design where even individual plates are sought after by collectors." — Marina Henderson, The Graphic Style of Alphonse Mucha

    A tribute to Princess Grace on the 25th anniversary of her death, this beautifully illustrated book retraces all the various facets of the Princesss life, and gives the reader the definitive, official portrait of a fine actress, great beauty, and icon of American style.

    L. Aronson.Richard Avedon was arguably the world's most famous photographer--as artistically influential as he was commercially successful. Over six richly productive decades, he created landmark advertising campaigns, iconic fashion photographs (as the star photographer for Harper's Bazaar and then Vogue), groundbreaking books, and unforgettable portraits of everyone who was anyone. He also went on the road to find and photograph remarkable uncelebrated faces, with an eye toward constructing a grand composite picture of America.Avedon dazzled even his most dazzling subjects. He possessed a mystique so unique it was itself a kind of genius--everyone fell under his spell. But the Richard Avedon the world saw was perhaps his greatest creation: he relentlessly curated his reputation and controlled his image, managing to remain, for all his exposure, among the most private of celebrities.No one knew him better than did Norma Stevens, who for thirty years was his business partner and closest confidant. In Avedon: Something Personal--equal parts memoir, biography, and oral history, including an intimate portrait of the legendary Avedon studio--Stevens and co-author Steven M. L. Aronson masterfully trace Avedon's life from his birth to his death, in 2004, at the age of eighty-one, while at work in Texas for The New Yorker (whose first-ever staff photographer he had become in 1992).The book contains startlingly candid reminiscences by Mike Nichols, Calvin Klein, Claude Picasso, Renata Adler, Brooke Shields, David Remnick, Naomi Campbell, Twyla Tharp, Jerry Hall, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Bruce Weber, Cindy Crawford, Donatella Versace, Jann Wenner, and Isabella Rossellini, among dozens of others.Avedon: Something Personal is the confiding, compelling full story of a man who for half a century was an enormous influence on both high and popular culture, on both fashion and art--to this day he remains the only artist to have had not one but two retrospectives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during his lifetime. Not unlike Richard Avedon's own defining portraits, the book delivers the person beneath the surface, with all his contradictions and complexities, and in all his touching humanity.

    Brassaï carefully and affectionately records each of his meetings and appointments with the great artist, building along the way a work of remarkable depth, intimate perspective, and great importance to anyone who truly wishes to understand Picasso and his world.

    Incorporating sources from history, literature, magazines, and cinema, as well as her own witty anecdotes, Smith has created an engaging, informative guide to modern style.

    In this stylish primer, she tells it like it is: No one looks good in mustard, unless youre a hot dog. Matching whimsy with brutal honesty, Like I Give a Frock packs fashion illustration and musings into the prettiest package around. Kat Macleod's stunning collages bring Michi's wisdom to life.

    THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING BOOK ON THE COOLEST STREET STYLE CAPTURED BY REFINERY 29 Get set to build your best ever wardrobe featuring the hardest-working looks from around the globe with Refinery29—the world’s leading style destination—as their editors break down the essentials of the everyday chic, straight from the street. What transforms a look from on-trend to trendsetting? Editor-in-Chief Christene Barberich and Executive Creative Director Piera Gelardi deconstruct their favorite outfits to reveal what trailblazing looks like on the real-life fashion front, including: • HOW TO WEAR modern metallics, mixed prints, everyday ladylike, tomboy chic, lots of layers, and more. • CLEVER TIPS such as wearing one piece in three fresh ways, building blocks for discovering your own signature style, and updating your closet each season. • AND A ZOOM LENS on all the details and accessories that totally make the look. Featuring the fashion world’s coolest tastemakers, designers, stylists, and editors, these fearless iconoclasts challenge conventions and inspire a whole new generation of women to dress for themselves and discover their true inner style stars...just like YOU.

    It's my passion for life...my passion for passion that has made me never give up." -- Elizabeth TaylorFrom the time she appeared in National Velvet, the film that skyrocketed her to international fame at age twelve in 1944, until her death in 2011, Elizabeth Taylor's beauty, allure, and personal strength captivated the world. In a career that spanned more than sixty years, she brought her raw talent and magnetism to bear in now-classic films such as Father of the Bride, Suddenly, Last Summer, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Giant, Cleopatra, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Off screen, she lived just as passionately. That intensity brought her enormous joy and pain -- and notoriety, whether it was from her vast collections of extraordinary fine jewelry and art to her battles with addiction and ill health, from her internationally recognized humanitarian efforts on behalf of AIDS to her scandalous love affairs and seven highly scrutinized marriages.This anthology -- illustrated with more than 30 gorgeous images of the star throughout her career and personal life -- reveals the candor and honesty with which the actress led her extraordinary life. Here are Elizabeth's first-person reflections on her childhood, career, love and marriages, motherhood, beauty, aging, extravagances, charity, and sense of self. Whether witty or poignant, these words are always demonstrative of her generous, unapologetic, and fiercely determined nature, reflecting the essence of a great star and legendary modern woman.

    Long considered the survey of modern art, this engrossing and liberally illustrated text traces the development of trends and influences in painting, sculpture, photography and architecture from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Retaining its comprehensive nature and chronological approach, it now comes thoroughly reworked by Michael Bird, an experienced art history editor and writer, with refreshing new analyses, a considerably expanded picture program, and a more absorbing and unified narrative.