Alex Fuller and Gabe Usadel follow up their The Incredible Journey that is Consciousness book with another experimentation in pure color, form and line with their new book entitled Sameness. This time restricting themselves to only 2 colors (black and red) with much more rigidness in shapes; Where Incredible Journey utilized squares, triangles and circles and variations of each, Sameness uses only rectangles switching back a forth from diagonal constructionist-style composition to straight and solid vertical and horizontal variations. The influences of De Stijl and Bauhaus as well as inspiration from Chicago’s beautiful modernist architecture is very apparent. And the whole book has less than 10 words in it! A huge selling point for someone like me who would prefer to look at pretty pictures over reading. If you are looking for a reference to help with some experimentation in form and composition, this book is a much needed addition to your library.

#1 Draw a grid system of an existing drawing and establish anchor points.
#2 Focus on those anchor points.
#3 Connect your anchor points while disassociating yourself from your original drawing. Connect them while envisioning a new one.

Not only does the book help with some free-form exploration, the production of the book is super on point including a screenprinted vellum dust jacket, a beefy text weight stock on the inside and 2 color offset printing. If this book doesn’t help you explore some new directions in your work then either you are really amazing or slightly delusional. Pick it up from the Sonnenzimmer store.

ps. don’t forget: you can now click on the images to see them bigger.

Flitting between the dimensions, this book sets out to document how 2-D skills and styles are moving into the 3-D realm and charts their slow, but irreversible conquest of space.

Whaaa!? No freaking way! Okay, if you can’t tell, I am super stoked on this book. With contributors like Friends With You, Steven Harrington, Dancemade, Thomas Allen and Chris Silva, TACTILE is truly a book that I think every artist and designer should own. The combination of sculpture, photography and print design is by far one of my favorite discoveries this year. Gots to love it. I am one of those people that dwell in the land of the unknown. This middle gray area between art and design. The same area that most of the artists in this book reside. I love it here. It’s a cosy discomfort. The only thing this makes it a little uncomfortable is trying to explain what it means to be in this gray area and why it exists.

Pick it up at ACAD.

Here are a couple other titles I recommend from this fine establishment. The explanations are pulled right from the Temporary Services site.

Prisoners’ Inventions – This project was a collaboration with Angelo, an incarcerated artist. He illustrated many incredible inventions made by prisoners to fill needs that the restrictive environment of the prison tries to supress.

Group Works : A Compilation of Quotes About Collaboration from a Variety of Sources and Practices – This publication provides a multitude of perspectives on the theme of Group Work by practitioners of artistic group practice from 1960s to the present.