Book By Its Cover

Sweet Ride

julia — Tue, 13 May 2008 15:52:08 +0000

This pretty zine full of old-timey bicycle riders came in the mail recently. Artist Christopher Koelle was really inspired by old photographs and postcards- so inspired that he made a collection of 27 gorgeous drawings based off them with fun handdrawn sayings and titles. This zine is a limited edition of 500 and a perfect gift for a bicycle lover. Pick up a copy right here.

Guest Blog on Design*Sponge

julia — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:40:18 +0000

This week check me out over at design*sponge where I’m guest blogging about my work, some friends homes, my favorite artists and cool new products. Today I did a tutorial about making a repeat pattern and about Jess Rosenkranz’s great ‘office samplers’.

What it is

julia — Mon, 12 May 2008 14:32:33 +0000

You may have noticed a new ad popped up on the blog of the cover of the new Lynda Barry book I am about to review. The book is available now from Drawn and Quarterly and you should get your hands on one as soon as possible. It’s gorgeous. Between auto-biographical comics are these incredible collages that ask questions that will confuse your creative brain like- “What is an image?” or “Can we imagine something that we can’t remember?” Lynda’s comic-drawn self says “The thing I call ‘my mind’ seems to be kind of a landlord that doesn’t really know its tenants.” Through these pages, filled to the brim with funny drawings, comic anecdotes from her past and collaged bits of books, stamps and childhood writing, Lynda explores herself as an artist and challenges you to do the same. The back of the book even has some activities you can try to get your imaginative ideas flowing like making a word bag - you collect a bunch of words and pick blindly from the bag to spark a thought. When I look up Lynda Barry on Wikipedia, it calls her “one of the most successful non-mainstream American cartoonists” because of her weekly comic strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek and her numerous publications. Her book The Good Times are Killing Me was even made into a play. Check out more about Lynda on a fan-made site here and pick up a copy of this book right here.

Sketchbook Series: Mike Lowery

julia — Fri, 09 May 2008 19:08:47 +0000

Mike Lowery’s goal is to draw or write something in his journal every single day. If he misses a day, he said he has to do at least two pages. He’s been filling moleskins for the past three years with his adorable characters, fun drawings and little comics as you can see from the images below. Mike recently joined the Lilla Rogers team- an agency known for it’s eclectic talented illustrators (We at Also are actually working on a revamp of their site right now). Mike is also a graphic design and illustration teacher at an art college in DC. He lives just outside the city with his wife Rachel and his “ridiculously awesome daughter, Allister”. Check out Mike’s site to see more of his work- he posts entries from his journal almost every day. And be sure to catch his weekly comic in the dcist Thanks Mike!

Brooklyn Modern

julia — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:46:32 +0000

I don’t usually tend to buy books on interior design but this one was too close to home to ignore. It’s all about nicely modern designed homes of Brooklyn- which is where I reside (in my tiny over-crowded, lofted one bedroom). I’ve even been in Lena Corwin’s gorgeous brownstone which is featured in the book. I can’t get over how much space some of these people have- they must be multi-millionaires. Any room with a built in bookshelf I think is amazing because that’s all I really want- the piles are really adding up around here. Some of the apartments in this book are so empty- there’s so much space- but where’s all their stuff? I could never have a living room with only one super fancy chair I was afraid to spill coffee on. It’s always a thrill for me to walk around my neighborhood at night so I can get little peeks into all the apartments I could only dream about living in and I’m always interested in checking out design*sponge’s sneak peeks into homes (Grace from design*sponge has an essay in the book–i’ll be guest blogging at d*s next week btw!). So if you’re like me you would appreciate flipping through this book and sighing, imagining how many books you could fill that empty space with.

Bottomless Bellybutton

julia — Wed, 07 May 2008 17:27:06 +0000

It’s not so often that I get that -can’t put it down- feeling from a graphic novel. For some reason this one had me up until two in the morning finishing it. I had just spent a while with my own family, so I easily related to the plot. This story is about the Loony family who gets together on the occasion of their parents, who after forty years, decide they are getting a divorce. I really like how the book begins with charts and little snippets of childhood moments to give you a little background of the family history before plunging you into the present time at a dinner table drama. The characters were really well described, interesting and very realistic. The rest of the book follows each of them separately in their most intimate moments- we even see them taking showers. There’s David the eldest son who is having a really hard time with his parents decision- maybe because he seems to be having problems in his own marriage to Aki. Claire is the second oldest- a single mom to Jill- her teenage daughter who is worried she looks like man. And then the youngest, Frank who is a struggling filmmaker who meets a lady friend and has a quick romance. He is the only character who has a frog face- because that’s how he imagines himself. Although the book is over 700 pages, everything is taking place in just six days. Besides a real engaging story, the design of the book is really nice with two different cover variations to pick from. The book is available for pre-order right here. Check out more from Dash Shaw here.

Cities of the World

julia — Tue, 06 May 2008 13:18:10 +0000

My boyfriend found this book in the Centre Canadien d’ Architecture bookstore after we went to see a small exhibit Harriet Russell had done there (more about that later). He was like- check this out- with a big smile on his face because he knew he had found me something amazing. South African artist Titus Matiyane makes these incredible detailed panoramas of cities. Every single building is drawn in, every tiny house, tons of tiny trees. The book has seven of these panoramas and you’ll be shocked looking at the last photo below because it shows how long and huge these panoramas are. There are some photos from an exhibition of his where the panoramas just wrap around the walls of the gallery- oh to see them in person- sigh. The colors he choses are so powerful- florescent orange for each tiny rooftop, a variety of green and orangy washes for the grass, ink for the lines. Then the titles of the cities are in block letters at the top of each drawing with their flag or some sort of information about the city. I can look at these drawings forever. There’s also two really interesting essays about Titus and how his fascination with the growth and transformation of cities around him led him to create these insane works. You can get a copy of this book here.

Zhong Guo Jin Dai Qi Kan, Zhuang zheng yi shu gai lan

julia — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:02:51 +0000

My two Also partners, Matt and Jenny, recently took a trip adventure to China and brought me back two amazingly beautiful big paperbound design books. This one seems to be about print design- advertisments, book covers, brochures from 1900 to 1950. It’s all in Chinese so if anyone can help translate the title- which I’m not even sure is the title- let us know. There’s something about the texture of the paper in this book- close to soft newsprint paper- that makes it so nice to touch. It’s interesting to see the many design choices in page layout where their characters can read vertically or horizontally. I love when the characters are stylized- scripty looking or big and bold with a drop shadow. There’s also a lot of funny cartoonish illustrations, traditional looking patterns and photos of gorgeous women mixed in to the designs. Apparently Matt and Jenny who don’t speak any Chinese had to just keep pulling books off of shelves to see what they were since they couldn’t read titles or subject sections. Luckily they happened across this one. Thanks guys! If you are interested in the book- here’s the publisher. I couldn’t get the English to work on their site so here’s also the isbn 978-7-5013-3530-5/K- 1543

Unknown (Scandinavian textile and patterns)

Dave Cuzner — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:29:39 +0000

Today is the last post from fantastic guest blogger Dave Cuzner of grain edit. Thank you so much Dave for such an interesting week of books! To continue reading about Dave’s great finds don’t forget to visit him on his own design blog, one of my personal favorites, right here.

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.

Dick Bruna-Boekomslagen

Dave Cuzner — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:44:04 +0000

Find out more about guest blogger Dave Cuzner of grain edit by clicking the link above.

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.