I wish I could tell you the name of this book, better yet I wish I could read this book. All the text is in Japanese. I’d like to know where their pulling some of these patterns from. This book reminds me of a book published by PIE titled Vintage Fabric from the states. That book focused on modern textiles from The U.S while this book appears to focus on fabrics from Scandinavian countries. I’m not a big fan of the flowery stuff or the tablecloths with illustrations of dancing elves shoveling donut holes. However I really dig the
abstract line work of Astrid Sampe and the organic leafy shapes that appear often in Stig Lindberg’s designs. The back of the book includes a small list of Scandinavian modern shops in Japan where you can spend lots of your low valued US dollar.

Its hard to believe this is the work of the same illustrator that produced Miffy. Before Dick Bruna first introduced Miffy in 1955 and continuing after, Bruna designed book covers for his father’s publishing company, A. W. Bruna & Zoon. He produced over 2,000 covers for Bruna and Zoon. This book is a small introduction to this work. Most of the covers featured come from detective stories, hence all the images of pipe smoking characters in overcoats.

Bruna has a deceptively simple style, often using thick bold shapes and a limited palette of colors for each work. I’m such a sucker for this stuff. I could look it all day. Cool points to the designer for his/ her decision to limit it to 1 book cover per page, this way each cover is reproduced almost to exact size.

Makes me want to cut out the pages and frame them on my wall. Holla if you love the bruna!

You can purchase books, toys and t-shirts at the Dick Bruna store.

It doesn’t get much better then this, guys driving around tires and cows spewing out waterfalls of Yoplait goodness. Just look at the cow in the poster above, see how happy he is to supply his human friends with yummy yogurt. I wish I could have a cow like that in my backyard. This poster is very similar to another poster in the book which he created for Monsavon soap. It features an illustration of a cow with its udder directly supplying the “milk soap” with milk; a wonderful image to have running through your head as you are washing your face.

The book is filled with his cleverly crafted visual puns. This is a testament to his wonderful sense of humor which was prevalent in the over 600 posters he produced during his lifetime. Just a small fraction of those 600 are presented within Savignac L’Affiche de A a Z but they are consistently good.. I’d be lucky if, I could create 1 poster that was half as good as anything he did.

Out of the 5 books I’m presenting this week, this is my favorite. Alain Gree was a highly prolific illustrator for childrens’ literature in France. During the 1960s and 1970s, he illustrated over 300 books. Among the 300 were the Achille et Bergamote series which he produced for the Casterman publishing house. The collection features over 25 titles on different topics like energy, trains, cities or in this case the forest. In each one the main characters, Achille et Bergamote ( in the english version its Sally and Billy), travel though new environments and detail the things they find along the way.

In La Foret, Achille et Bergamote hang out with some pink cardigan loving lumberjacks, build a cool fort, discover birds and tap some sap from a tree. The book is filled with eye candy and his illustration style in some ways is similar to the work of Alice and Martin Provensen. Its interesting to note, that Gree claims the Provenses had a big influence on him. If you like what you see above, check out the Alain Gree website and then go nuts like the rest of us trying to track down all his work.

Let me start off by saying, This book is big! Small children could hide in this thing. It’s nice to see Tim’s work on a slightly larger scale then I’m used to. I haven’t been able to see his work in person yet, so this is big as it gets for me. The wonderful selection of paintings contained inside this book are from an exhibition he produced for the Iguapop Gallery in Spain. In addition to his paintings, I really like his lettering. I dig all those stylized serifs that look like little tree trunks. Speaking of his serifs, I heard House Industries is releasing a collection of typefaces based on his lettering.

Getting back to the book, the pages inside the cover are filled with peach colored images of muskets, ribbons with hand grenades and Uzis shooting black roses at giant black axes. While this is going on, a steamboat merrily chugs through. The peach color reminds me of the ink they use on blacklite posters. I thought for a second, the pages might glow in the dark, so I turned off the lights. No luck though.

If you’re a Tim Biskup fan this is a great book to add to the collection. You should be able to find a copy here.