Book By Its Cover

Brian Wildsmith’s Circus

julia — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 12:44:55 +0000

I saw pictures of this book on one of my favorite blogs Pikaland and quickly knew I needed to track down a copy, which wasn’t too difficult. It’s copyright date is 1970 and it’s full of beautiful, full-spread illustrations of the circus. I have a weak spot for circus themed artwork because it always has tons of color, patterns, costuming and animals. These illustrations have all that created with a very painterly look of loose brush strokes and what looks like crayon resist. The texture is incredible. You can find this book online on ebay or used book shops. I think I paid a whole two bucks for mine- plus shipping.

Sketchbook Series: Frank Viva

julia — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:16:46 +0000

You may have noticed a new advertiser on our little sidebar called Whigby. If you click on their ad you will find a myriad of fun paper products including witty cards, adorable gift wrap, art posters and other goodies. The company was started by Frank Viva and Todd Temporale who also run a design agency in Toronto called Viva & Co. Frank happens to be an exceptional illustrator, and recently did a very sweet cover for The New Yorker. I asked Frank if he would share his sketchbooks, so we could get a taste of his process of working on such prestigious projects. Besides keeping regular sketchbooks and moleskins, Frank has just made himself a new sketchbook for planning more covers for The New Yorker. He printed a blank New Yorker cover, complete with the logo, at half size on bunch of sketch paper and Cerlox bound the pages into a book at Kinkos. This way he can make little mock covers and easily sketch to fit into their format. Below he’s shared two rejected comps for covers about the Oscars. Besides working on editorial projects, Frank is working on his first children’s book called Along a Long Road which will be coming out later this year from HarperCollins. Big thanks to Frank for participating in our series. We’ll be keeping up with his work here in the future.

Russian Textiles: Printed Cloth for the bazaars of central asia

julia — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:13:05 +0000

Looking for some inspiration for making some new pattern designs I came across this book. I am very attracted to the traditional looking floral, ikat and paisley designs. And most of the designs are dominated by the color red. Flipping through the book gives you a sea of spectacular bold color and intricate patterning. From the introduction I learned that in the beginning, 1870s, the patterns were used mostly for the lining of robes, and around a decade later, they started appearing more on the outside of the robes. Sometimes three or four different patterns were sewn in blocks across the garments front and sleeves creating beautiful juxtapositions of designs. Get a copy of this book here
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Type: A Visual History of Typefaces and Graphic Styles, Vol. 1

julia — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:30:46 +0000

I bought this book for a friend and then decided I needed a copy for myself. Not unlike The Handy Book of Artistic Printing which I posted about a little while back, this book is full of gorgeous examples of decorative typefaces and printer’s ornaments. This massive first volume, they are coming out with a second volume, has so much inspiring type design you might drool while turning the pages. The best part is the book comes with a keycard with a code, which gains you access to over 1000 high res scans of the specimens found in the book- such a great perk to having the printed version. Get a copy here

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I LEGO N.Y.

julia — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 21:07:47 +0000

I am a big fan of Christoph Niemann’s incredibly imaginative illustrated blog Abstract City on The New York Time’s website. Every time he posts something new I find myself amazed at his cleverness and sending a link sharing it with everyone I know. Now one of my favorite series, I LEGO N.Y., has been turned into a small board book. Using simple LEGO sculptures and handwritten commentary, Christoph can make me laugh out loud. This is a PERFECT gift for a New Yorker, ex-New Yorker or New York lover. Get a copy here.
Ps. My second favorite of Christoph’s posts is Bio-Diversity- not to be missed!

The Exquisite Book: A Peek at the back cover!

julia — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:03:56 +0000

If you missed the last post announcing our book coming out this Fall with Chronicle Books, you should probably read that first, right here.

The homepage image is a tiny detail from Jordin Isip’s page (left) connecting to Paul Hornschemeier’s page (right). I love how Paul continued Jordin’s string and flipped the background colors for his following page.

Last week we got to see a proof of our Exquisite Book. A proof is the closest version to your actual book as possible. It’s as if they just print one book. You make a proof so that you can have a final look at everything and make sure it’s exactly how you want. Usually this is past the point of changing any major edits because text plates have already been made. You use a proof to make final color adjustments and other production tweaks.

I mentioned before that our book has an extremely unique format. Thanks to Chronicle for working so hard to help us figure it out. When you first open the book, there are ten regular bound pages that hold our introduction, Dave Egger’s forward, and “Twenty Questions” with artists from the book. Then the next section is ten accordions that all fold out 12 pages long. These have all the artist’s connecting artwork on them plus an opener and closer done by us that connects each section the the next. The last section is ten or so more pages of artists’ biographies. If you followed the horizon line from the cover of the book, it connects through every page of the entire book- connecting all the way to the back cover- meaning it connects full circle with itself!

Here is a sneak peek of the back of the book (it’s a photo of our proof). Inside the mound, lists all of the artists who appear in the book, in order of their appearance. You may notice that we don’t have a bar code, price, summary, or any of that other info that you usually see on a back cover. This is because our book is getting shrink wrapped. Luckily, we are putting in a separate piece of paper inside the wrap with all that boring stuff. That meant we had free range to do almost whatever we wanted on the back of the book. We felt like this was a good place to show off the full list of amazing talent who have contributed.

Stay tuned for more posts about our book in the coming weeks…

Papa Tatuado

julia — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 21:42:08 +0000

This beautiful book came courtesy of a wonderful bookstore in Zaragoza, Spain called Liberia Antigona. They are followers of BBIC and thought I would appreciate this book as much as they do. They were right! The illustrations are magical and nostalgic and although I can’t read the text, it is supposed to be great (according to all the reviews I’ve translated from the internet.) It took me a little while to piece together from different sites what the story is about. Correct me if I’m wrong-they didn’t send along anything with the book explaining the story. It seems the father has been away for a while but returns to his son. He has many tattoos and as he talks about where they have come from, a story of his past emerges- something to do with him being part of the circus. I marvel at these illustrations which take these classic tattoos: sparrows, skulls, roses and sexy ladies, and make them come alive as the characters in the story. I love the idea of using these iconic graphics for storytelling. Both the plot idea and the way the illustrations were executed seem really genius. The illustrator Sergio Mora also did an incredible job of making these drawings seem old with washed out vintage palettes and stained and cracked backgrounds in an almost fleshy color. They are charming with just enough kitsch: like something I wouldn’t mind cutting out of this book to hang on my wall. You should get a copy of this book by contacting Libreria Antigona at libreria.antigona@gmail.com.

Whitey on the moon

julia — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 14:14:25 +0000

This handmade book binds the first ten of thirty six images artist Joey Parlett created based on photography of various NASA missions. The drawings are pretty incredible- all created with teeny tiny hatchmarks in ink. Composed like a wordless comic each drawing fits in a box and can be read in a series. Joey uses this technique to his advantage- as he draws different pieces of an astronauts body in each square, it gives the feeling of weightlessness. Other times it’s quite jarring between sequential images giving a different, more chaotic feel. My favorite spread shows the moons surface. What looks crazy abstract drawings can also be recognized as the beautiful crater filled texture of the moon. You can get a copy of this book here.

ADC Young Guns 7

julia — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:05:44 +0000

Tomorrow and Friday I will be at the Art Directors Club as part of the interactive jury for the 89th Annual Awards. I’ve been lucky enough to be a judge at a few different competitions but none as prestigious as this one. I am really looking forward to meeting the other judges and picking the best work. One of the ADC’s most popular awards aside from their yearly annual competition is the Young Guns competition. Each year this award recognizes the 50 best designers/illustrators under 30 from around the world. Aside from getting an award cube, the ADC puts out a moleskine full of the Young Gun winner’s work. Each designer gets a few pages that give you a taste of their style. I love that this little book holds so many young talents I want to learn more about. It’s like a little directory of the freshest out there. You can get this limited edition book or any past ones (ALSO’s work is in the YG6 book!) right here.

Zarafa

julia — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:37:42 +0000

This German children’s book tells the tale of the first giraffe that came to France. I love how the book is tall and narrow letting the giraffe neck stretch up the pages. The book has a nice old fashioned look to it with sketchy pen and watercolor illustrations and Roman numerals for the page numbers. The author, Adam Jaromir, sent this overseas to me but unfortunately I can’t read any of the story besides this sample on the publishers site. So happy to be sharing a book from this part of the world! Get more info on how to get one right here (or the matching wine set!)