Steven Heller’s latest tome, Iron Fists: Branding the 20th-century Totalitarian State, is an intense read. As an object, the book is an impressive chunk wrapped in black striped plastic, with the vibrant colors of propaganda peeking through the stripes from the inside cover. Yet the book structure and narrative are highly accessible.

Part coffee table artifact / part required design history reading, the book is a must for anyone interested in branding. (more…)

Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring, the new novel come graphic design experiment by Zach Plague (aka: Zach Dodson) is equal parts both. It is what you get when a writer, who becomes a graphic designer, is also his own publisher. As with any auteur, his total control means one thing, he can break all the rules. Because no one is there to stop him. So this is what he does. (more…)

Nothing about this book looks like an art book. The somewhat colorless cover, the MIT imprint, the marked lack of giant, colorful images. At very first glance, you know that editor Oliver Grau, an Image Science professor and Cultural Studies dean, means business.

Media Art Histories is a more academic look at a subject normally approached with thin, glossy coffee table books and broad, superficial language. Grau’s compilation offers takes from over a dozen professionals on the history and acceptance of digital media as an art form. (more…)

By Karen Morrill-McClure

Where to start in a review of a book that’s over 900 pages long? Hard to say.

Maybe I should start with what I was looking for. I’m not a complete beginner with PHP, I’ve been using it on my sites for several years now and I’m starting to write more complicated web applications using both PHP and MySQL. I’ve mostly used online resources to learn about PHP and MySQL. I have one old resource book, a 2001 PHP and MySQL Web Development manual from SAMS. (more…)

In this design primer, Lupton and Phillips represent graphic design basics for 2008 with profundity and clarity. The text reconsiders principles from the Bauhaus legacy, but in tune with current digital tools and culture. The approach is systematic, rigorous and brimming with postmodern inspirational examples from professionals and students. Finally! I’ve been waiting for the celebratory return of formal language to design dialogue. (more…)

Building Findable Websites
Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond by Aarron Walter

I just read the excellent book, Building Findable Websites, and it truly is the book I’ve been searching for over the last couple of years. I’ve been interested in search engines and how they work for a long time and I’ve been dismayed with the emphasis on Search Engine Optimization over other methods of building findability. This book serves as a great introduction to findability and is chock full of how-to’s and how-not-to’s. (more…)

Back in February, amidst the feline army, I curled up to finally finish reading Lucienne Roberts’ book GOOD: An Introduction to Ethics in Graphic Design.” This is possibly the only book I have found and read that directly discusses ethics in Contemporary Graphic Design. Gathering a selection of opinions, from the likes of Ken Garland, Thomas Matthews, Deborah Szebeko, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Daniel Eatock, the book starts at the beginning of ‘Early Civilisation’ (p.21), and later discusses aspects of History, Philosophy (p.34), Law (p.44) and Politics (p.58). In conclusion the book presents a series of discussions with a collection of credible designers (p.113-192) - ultimately asking what it means to be a “good” designer. (more…)

Figure drawing is as much a science as it is an art. In art schools, students spend hour upon hour sketching live models. Eventually, most develop an acute sense of the anatomical details that give the human body its shape. Students also learn how these features interact with light and shadow and affect contour and form.

In Complete Anatomy and Figure Drawing, author and fine artist John Raynes shares his thoughts on the “art class” method, but first, he spends a great deal of time on human anatomy itself.

The book begins with a detailed examination of the human skeleton. The scientific names of each part are provided. I think that’s extremely valuable. Gorgeous graphite, colored pencil, and watercolor drawings cover every page, and each topic is contextualized. For example, you will probably never need to draw a pelvic bone, but you must understand how its shape and structure balances the human body if you want to draw realistic figures. Some of the skeletal drawings even include an outline that shows where the skin would be. This gives you a sense of how the interior structures affect the overall form.

Though the drawings are both technical and lovely, I would have liked to see some photos as well. That way, I could have (more…)

A recent post on BoingBoing, (Everyone’s favorite blog other than this one.), introduced me to a new magazine called ILLO. I guess I’m a little late to the party, as issue #1 debuted months ago and issue #2 is already in the works. Still, I’m sure glad I discovered this new magazine.

ILLO is all about illustrators and modern illustration, but it’s unlike most of the other magazines that cover these topics. ILLO’s focus isn’t digital illustration or the latest software. Instead, it delves into the creative minds, and sometimes the strange worlds, of today’s illustrators. It seeks to understand what inspires their work, and looks at how these individuals turned a love of drawing into a career in commercial/creative illustration.

That said, ILLO won’t disappoint those with just a casual interest in illustration or contemporary art. Graphic designers, vinyl toy collectors, tattoo artists, and magazine publishers will all find something to enjoy as they flick through the magazine’s colorful pages. I definitely wouldn’t call ILLO a trend magazine because most of the artists it features are not easily categorized. They come from unique backgrounds and their work is often informed by very personal ideas. These folks don’t follow trends, they define them.

If you’re still not sure that all this is worth $10 an issue, I recommend you check out the ILLO’s website. ILLO is one of just a few periodicals that offer sneak previews online, and the thumbnails from issue #1 will give you a good sense of the magazine’s overall look and feel. (more…)

Art supply stores are both inspiring and intimidating. Within every brush and tube of paint lies great potential, and yet, unless you’re able to skillfully wield these tools, you may quickly be discouraged.

Margaret Krug’s An Artist’s Handbook: Materials and Techniques wants to make the art supply store an exciting and encouraging place to be. It’s a surprisingly comprehensive little volume, in which a wide range of dry (drawing) and wet (painting) media are explored. Readers new to the fine arts will quickly discover that there is more in the artist’s toolbox than just paint and paintbrushes; Have you ever heard of Bologna chalk, or used a crow-quill pen?

The book contains the elements you’d hope to find in a guide to art materials. The descriptions of paints, pencils, chalks and pastels, and surfaces are abundant, and even unusual supplies that you may have been afraid to try, like egg tempera, are covered. These descriptions, and the logical arrangement of the chapters, make the book a handy reference, but really, it’s the content associated with the various materials that makes An Artist’s Handbook unique.

Each section is replete with inspiring historical examples, and high-quality photographs, by Pamelia Markwood, show the materials in action. Techniques associated with many of the supplies are clearly explained. These tutorials will help beginners get started (more…)