A little while ago I recieved an advance copy of my first book Creative Grab Bag in the mail. These are some photos from that. Here is more information on the book and it is available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders, and Your Local Bookshops. More photos and information soon.
This book is brilliant. How to Be an Explorer of the World takes the reader on a journey by providing a collection of “explorations” which the book challenges you to do. The book is well designed using only white, black, and orange and shows you how to document the interesting things that are always around us. Keri Smith has created a very interesting book that is well worth your exploration.
I recieved this book, Over and Over, for Christmas this year and I couldn’t have been more pleased with it. I knew it was in the box when I opened it and with much anticipation I found “a catalog of hand-drawn patterns” which is exactly what this book is. It is quite a diverse collection of patterns with many different styles presented providing a wonderful viewing experience. Well done Mike Perry.
The one and only Shel Israel has announced a new book in the works entitled Twitterville. I truly enjoy the reason he chose the title of the book, it makes sense.
I call it Twitterville, because it has the feel of a small town, a place where neighbors know each other by name and reputation, help each other through a sense of community a place where the greatest influence is achieve, not by a branding budget, but the contributions made to the community.
A quick side note, I am responsible for the design and development of his blog, Global Neighbourhoods. Here, on his blog, he is asking all of us to become part of the book by offering him feedback on rough drafts, give him ideas, and provide anything else helpful. It is being published by Portfolio, an imprint of Penguin Books. I wish Shel the best of luck in his journey through his new book. He has the passion and dedication for the subject and I know he will have much success.
Like Naked Conversations, Twitterville is primarily a business book. It is filled with examples of how people in all sizes and kinds of business are using Twitter to thrive in these tough times. It explains how Twitter and social media shine some light to the exit from the current economic tunnel. These are times of enormous constraint. History shows us that constraints always lead to fundamental change. Old ways die and new ways emerge and thrive. Twitterville argues that in these tough times, certain business practices–those that have become bloated, inefficient and ineffective will fall by the wayside only to be replaced by newer, better ways. New, cheaper, faster technologies almost always replaces ones that have become frayed by modern times.
Malcolm Gladwell recently released his third book entitled Outliers. It has been added to my long list of books that I plan on consuming sometime in the future.
In this book I’m interested in people who are outliers—in men and women who, for one reason or another, are so accomplished and so extraordinary and so outside of ordinary experience that they are as puzzling to the rest of us as a cold day in August.
I think that what people have on their bookshelves can tell you a great deal about what kind of person they are. After all those are the books that they decided to buy and the ones they read, meaning they learned something or were influenced by the books. I have found some photos of bookshelves that I truly enjoy. Here is my bookshelf below.
So, I went ahead and created a Flickr Group so that everybody may add there photos and we can see each other bookshelves. Now, I do know that there are other groups out there, but this is different. This is all about taking a nice photo and being able to read the title of the books. In other groups there are angled shots of huge bookshelves and shots of individual book covers. Instead it would be great if you followed this guidelines
Please take the photo directly in front of the bookshelf. No angle shots.
Please also make sure that you are zoomed in far enough to see the titles.
If you have a huge bookshelf zoom in on your favorite section.
You may also just zoom in on the spines so that we don’t see your shelves/shelf at all.
I look forward to seeing what people contribute to the group.
Thanks and enjoy.
Picked up this book by Michael Bierut, a graphic designer at Pentagram and a founding writer of Design Observer. I was trying to choose between several books that I had picked out and in the end picked this one. I picked it because I knew who the person was who wrote it, I liked the cover and the design of the book, and there was a unique shape about it when I held it my hands. And I am glad that I did.
We stopped at Barnes & Noble today and I finally picked up Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton. I have made it through the first section which covered the history and the basics of typography. The emphasis of the book is Thinking WITH Type not just about it. Lupton writes, “This is not a book about fonts. It is a book about how to use them.” Full review coming as soon as I finish it!
During this year, I had trouble finding time to read books for my own personal pleasure. Always reading a book for English class or doing other work. So I figured this summer, I better pick up some books from Amazon and get going. Before, the first couple months of summer passed by I thought it would be a good idea to come up with a list of books, so here it is.
Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling
100 Habits of Succesful Graphic Designers
TwoFaced: The Changing Face of Portraiture
(I was going to tell you about them and show some cover pictures but my list was longer than I expected and the total amount of money they are going to cost is more too.)
The writer Kurt Vonnegut was, from what I have heard, a wonderful person who recently passed away. Glynnis Eldridge, a friend and fellow classmate of mine, knew Kurt Vonnegut through her grandparents. She has told me a story about Mr. Vonnegut that I would like to share with you.
(This story was written by Glynnis Eldridge)
Jimmy Breslin (”JB”) and Kurt Vonnegut were good friends. JB, my friend Glynnis’ step-grandfather, and his wife, Ronnie [Eldridge], were having a dinner party one night that both Mr. Vonnegut and my friend attended. Glynnis was probably not much older than seven and didn’t recognize that the people mingling in her grandparent’s pent house apartment were celebrities. So Glynnis didn’t try to talk to any of them because she thought that they were just old farts. She thought that she had better things to do like play the piano and eat asparagus, rather than talk to someone who claimed to be famous. And so she settled herself in between the fat cushions on one half of a pair of matching armchairs.
On the table next to her she had a tall glass of ginger ale and on her lap she had a plate of asparagus. Someone sat down on the chair next to her. He looked old; he had gray curly hair not only on top of his head but also underneath his nose. Some people came over to talk to him for a little while and then Glynnis’ foot fell asleep. Her pink, white, and red plaid dress fell just above the knee of her ripped black tights. Her shoes were patent leather Mary Janes with silver lining on the clasps. She sat comfortably with her legs overlapping “Indian style,” and with the dirty bottoms of her shiny shoes pressed against her thighs.
When her feet’s sleeping sensation struck her, Glynnis winced and bit down on a piece of a crushed ice cube. She crinkled her nose and squeezed her eyes closed, and then the man with the gray curly hair looked over in her direction and smiled. He excused himself from the conversation he had been having with the other famous people in the room, and smiled down in the direction of the black Mary Janes dangling off of the end of the armchair.
“Are they sleeping?” the curly haired man asked in between glances at the shiny shoes, and sips of some beverage that Glynnis assumed was ginger ale. Glynnis didn’t say anything, but instead gave him an exaggerated nod of the head. Yes. Her feet were very much asleep. She picked up her glass of ginger ale.
“My feet fall asleep sometimes too,” he continued, “not long ago I ran into a little boy about your age who also liked ginger ale. Do you know what he said?”
Glynnis grinned and shook her head, “No”.
“Well, he told me that his feet feel like ginger ale when they fall asleep,” he gulped down the last of the liquid in his glass, “How about that?”
Ronnie called everyone into the mirror walled dining room for desert. Pies and cakes and pastries and cookies and ice cream and plates of fruit and bottles of wine covered the entire table. Maybe it is necessary to say that celebrities do eat (by the way), but what was much more scrumptious than any desert treat on that pent house apartment’s dining room table, were the experiences that took place, and the stories they made. The curly haired man with the hair under his nose was named Kurt Vonnegut. He was brilliant.
(The story is Copyrighted 2007 by Glynnis Eldridge. All Rights Reserved)
This is the title of a book that was on my Christmas list. And I am very happy to inform you, is no longer on that list because I received it from Santa Claus yesterday morning. This is a wonderful book that is all about “Giving Yourself Permission to be the Artist You Truly Are” (That is the secondary title). The book is written and illustrated by the talented Danny Gregory. Danny Gregory is the author of several book and has worked as the creative director on many “award-winning global advertising campaigns”.
The book starts with an introduction to creativity, teaches you about drawing and illustrated journaling and then moves on to talk about connecting with reality, creating your identity as a “creative” and what’s next for you in the creative world. I am moving rapidly through the book and I am having trouble deciding whether to keep reading the book or put it down and get by sketchbook. I have, of course, put it down in order to draw in my sketchbook. The book is written so well that you really feel like you know Danny Gregory quite well. This is a wonderful book and I recommend it to everyone.
You can buy the book on Amazon. And you can read his blog and see his website here. Also I would like to thank Dr. Keith Robinson for recomending the book to me through one of his blog posts.
(I was having trouble with the links, so if they dont work it’s www.dannygregory.com and www.dkeithrobinson.com)
…and I am proud of it. I judge books by their cover because it is the first thing I see. If I see a nice book cover design then I pick up the book. Sometime I find out that its not about a subject that I am not interested in and sometimes it leads to finding a really great book. Where do I not judge books by their covers? Online. If I am shopping on Amazon, chance are that I am not judgeing a book by its cover as much as I would in a store. Instead I am reading reviews on the book and looking inside at the table of contents and other excerpts. If you want me to pick up our book, then you should design a sweet cover for it.
I just ordered three new books from Amazon.
All Marketers Are Liars
I could not put this book down. This book is about telling authentic stories that fit in with our world view and which we tell other people about. Seth Godin did a wonderful job with this book and many others that he has written.
The Long Tail
It all started with an article in Wired Magazine which then turned into this book. The book is about having endless choices and “selling less of more”. The book says that the hit is dead because we now have so many more choices and that anyone can be a producer. This is a well done book by Chris Anderson.
Getting Things Done
I had read about this book on some blogs and decided I needed to get. The title tells you exactly what the book is about. Its about being more productive, with less stress. David Allen has been teaching Getting Things Done to corporate executives for years and now you can get all his techniques.
