Books

In the 60s two foreign design magazines were passed around America as though they were underground or samizdat publications. One was Graphis from Switzerland, the other was Projekt from Poland. Let's focus on the latter. It was a revelation to learn about the artistic intelligence of the Polish poster artists, illustrators and designers. They led [...]

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The pencil is still the designer's best friend. This collection of instructive pencil sketches for book covers and jackets reveals just how important precision was the to the designer of 1930 Germany. Through thumbnail sketches ideas are brought to the surface and then refined until the final. Aesthetic and style preferences aside, this lesson in [...]

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Lavish graphic design histories are emerging all over the world. The latest to crop up is Linha do tempo do design gráfico no Brasil, written by Chico Homem de Melo and edited and designed by Elaine Ramos, the art director of Editora Cosacnaify, (with a preface by me). This is an ambitious in depth history [...]

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I picked up this book years ago because I was astounded by its naïve “design” and its raw unadulterated (hardly PC) presentation of a GI’s view of the Vietnam War.  I also haven’t seen many cartoon-books done by or about Vietnam GI’s. I wouldn’t go as far as comparing it to Bill Mauldin’s “Up Front” [...]

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What is the role of the printed word and image in collectively inciting societies to brand certain members and groups as evil, and to convince the citizenry to condone—if not incite—murder? During a recent visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, I was reeducated in the power of branding—especially as applied [...]

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Chris Capuozzo's latest comic, CrazyGon 2, "contemplates materials in the world around us and gets super-psyched! Fruit stickers, scribbles, weird ads, weirder illustrations, collages, children’s art, shoe boxes, SKU labels, etc.—in 80 pages, this global inventory of art spans about 40 years and features the work of our favorite creative people, along with a selection [...]

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Baby's First Book is, asserts the publisher, filled with the most common objects in a baby's world. "Notice how a baby always responds to the one familiar thing in a picture." Well, that makes sense. "The baby needs to learn about things as they are, and simple, accurate pictures to help him." This black and [...]

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My blog Blue Pencil has become infamous for no-holds-barred critiques of books. This is not a Blue Pencil takedown. Instead, this is a welcome opportunity to praise a book that is exemplary in nearly all respects. The book in question is Characters: Cultural Stories Revealed through Typography by Stephen Banham (Port Melbourne: Thames & Hudson [...]

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Comics artist and illustrator Peter Kuper has been chronicling life in New York City for over 30 years. His new book, “Drawn to New York,” captures this. Today marks its U.S. debut exclusively as an e-book, published by Bemis Balkind. “Drawn to New York" depicts a climb to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge; homelessness [...]

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"I'm in heaven" is the best way to express the feeling that this graphic design "historian" experienced when he opened a lost and found, never-before-seen collection of vintage graphic design. That is the case with Against All Odds: Polish Graphic Design 1919-1949 by Piotr Rypson, who writes about a critical period in Polish (and Eastern [...]

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