1 comments about Claude Monet: The Magician of Colour (Adventures in Art).

1. I believe everyone should enjoy this wonderful book , full of wonderful illustrations and details about the beautiful art of impressionism. Few words can describe the artistry and talent of this book, and I believe it should be a classic experienced and read by all.

No comments about Imagined Battles: Reflections of War in European Art.

5 comments about Indie Fonts 2: A Compendium of Digital Type from Independent Foundries.

1. I bought this book from Amazon thinking that I'd have better luck than the Oct. 2005 shopper... Boy was I wrong! Not only is the book all broken in/cover torn & scratched... the CD IS MISSING!!! That's part of the reason I bought this book. I purchased this book "brand new" from Amazon (triple-checked my receipt to confirm).
   
   The book itself is great, but please do yourself a favor and DO NOT buy this book from Amazon--you'll be thoroughly disappointed.



2. this item was described as brand new in plastic wrap, which is why i purchased it as a gift for a friend. not only was this item CLEARLY used, it was falling apart. the book was shipped to me with a broken spine, the paper sover had marks all over it and there was NO plastic wrap protecting the item. i am very upset with the service i received, and will NOT be shopping with amazon again!



3. This is an unusual volume; you get a book with 408 pages of various resources, organized by font foundry. You can sample the work of each foundry and get an idea of their product line.
   
   Best of all, the front of the book has in index in alphabetical order showing each font. So you can locate a font you like and then look it up for additional information.
   
   You can also find the AIGA's guide to the Use of Fonts, important for understanding copyright in using fonts in your work.
   
   The bonus CD has 33 fully-licensed fonts. Not all of them are unique--you can find some of these gratis on the web, but the collection is handy for those who can't get enough fonts. I only found a few of these really worth having.
   
   American Spirit
   Charaille
   Lovesick
   Nightmare
   Scrawm
   Sunspots
   Transponder
   Fridayluck
   Patching Compound
   Snipple
   Schnookems
   Black Widow
   Sparkly (Fontdiner.com, a fave of mine)
   Loungy (also fontdiner.com)
   Bowl-o-rama
   Eric sans and sans italic
   Sinsation
   P22 typewrites
   Cusp Three Opp
   PRR Sinel
   Faceplate sans A and C gauge
   Atomic Suck
   Stunner Leather Jackts
   Screwtop regular and negative
   TX Manifesto
   Cyphor7
   Strenuous 3D
   
   My faves are of course from fontdiner.com--the best retro fonts out there, I think.



4. Wow! "Indie Fonts" is indeed a quality book both in the information it provides and the workmanship afforded in the making of the book itself. Few publishers take pride in making such a quality product as this...like the bookbinders of yesteryear. You can see the workmanship as soon as you lay eyes on it. You can feel the wokmanship the moment you pick it up. A work of Art! Highly recommended. Enjoy!



5. The book's hardback permanence and $$$ ($$$ from Chank, that scoundrel) list price make it more of a reference than a catalog. Bound in stunning red cloth, Indie Fonts' exterior brings to mind the solid albums of ATF and Linotype. With class and substance, this volume lends credence to each firm it represents.

   Up front is a style index with a one-line showing for each font and page number referring to the corresponding full specimen.

   Generally well-planned specimen pages organized in foundry sections make up the bulk of the content. Each foundry created its own section page with a company bio and ordering information. Each shop also designed its own specimens based on Grieshaber's templates, resulting in showings of slightly varying quality. On the whole, the type is given ample room for full character sets, although things get a bit tight for foundries with more fonts to show. Text faces are often shown in paragraph form with a tiny column measure. It would be nice to see how they perform in more extensive settings. The font name, designer and year of design are listed in the sidebar. Some foundries opted to include notes on the font's use or origin in this margin and those specimens are better for it.

   Trailing the foundry sections is a glossary, a reading list, and a handy character reference chart. Also included is the AIGA's guide to the Use of Fonts which covers some font copyright and ethical use concepts misunderstood by most designers. A simple index of font names and designers rounds out the book.

   Tucked into the inside back cover is a CD of 33 "Bonus Fonts" which are fully licensed for immediate use. Some are true commercial goodies and add value to the book, others are available for free elsewhere, and a few are pure poop.

   Not Seen on TV

   Any collection of independent typography is subject to a wide variety of style and quality. In no other book can one find the classic work of regal Matthew Carter directly followed by the irreverant fonts of Chank. Indie Fonts proudly hails both the king and the court jester. But the unexpected is what makes the volume so valuable. Much of this type has never been used by a magazine or multi-national corporation. These are fonts not seen on TV. These are mass-culture virgins. To a designer struggling to make an impact in a world over-saturated with the same old look, this stuff is gold.

   Most of the typefaces in Indie Fonts were already unveiled by their respective foundries in those previously mentioned corners of the web, but there are a few that will be new, even to surfing typoholics. Fresh Fountain fonts made their debut in Indie Fonts before the redesigned web site went live. Peter Bilak's multi-descendered Fedra Serif (still in preview form at Typotheque) is displayed beautifully in one of the more thorough specimens of the book. Without a website or distributor, much of Matthew Carter's Carter & Cone library (Fenway, Big Figgins, ITC Galliard CC, Ionic #1, Sammy Roman, and Wilson Greek) is on display here for the first time, as far as I know. And It's a relief to see all of the Test Pilot Collective in one accessible place, their website still repelling hopeful visitors after years of being AWOL.

   Worth a Spot on the Shelf

   Indie Fonts isn't quite on par with the master of all specimen books, FontShop's FontBook. But it's more of a companion to the catalogs of the large distributors than it is a replacement. In the end, those who rely only on the big boys are overlooking a valuable set of typefaces - many of which are effectively set into motion by this very worthy tool.

No comments about Broken Threads: The Destruction of the Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria.

No comments about Water-Works: The Architecture and Engineering of the New York City Water Supply.

No comments about Modernism and Abstraction (Further Treasures from the Smithsonian Museum).

1 comments about The Architecture of Baltimore: An Illustrated History.

1. If you're intersted in the development of East Coast architecture, this is an invaluable tool, particularly if you're familiar with the City of the Chesapeake Bay.

No comments about The Muses (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics).

No comments about Arts of the Pacific Islands.

1 comments about Italian American Odyssey: Life line--filo della vita: Through Ellis Island and Beyond.

1. Written by acclaimed artist and educator B. Amore, An Italian American Odyssey: Through Ellis Island and Beyond is not just a single person's memoir - it is the collective memoir of seven generations of an Italian-American family, chronicling the story of their journey to America. Full color photographs and collages are displayed on almost every other page of the English-language first half of the compendium; the second half presents an Italian translation of the English text, though without the photographs. The text is not a single continuous text, but rather an eclectic selection of vignettes, first-person testimonies, letters, insights, diaries, and much more. An Italian American Odyssey is a treasure to be savored a few pages at a time or all at once, and a wondrous window into the difficult yet often rewarding task of adapting to new challenges.