No comments about The Sharpest Point: Animation at the End of Cinema.

1 comments about Storyboard Design Course: Principles, Practice, and Techniques.

1. If you are a novice artist approaching storyboarding for the first time, or a long-run professional, you will benefit greatly from this book.
   Giuseppe's international experience and intuitions flow from this book to the reader with humor and elegance. I enjoyed very much reading this book, and my skills and knowledge of storyboarding increased. I also added an interesting point of view to my approach to film making.
   I warmly reccomend this book to anybody who works in storyboarding, but also to film-makers and communication professionals.
   thumbs up for Giuseppe

5 comments about Cutting Edge Photo Cropping for Scrapbooks.

1. I didn't think that Memory Makers would be able to top the original book, "Memory Makers Creative Photo Cropping for Scrapbooks", but they did with this book! Instead of presenting the first book with some slight modifications, Memory Makers generated all new cropping ideas and examples. Both of these books will be of value to anyone who scrapbooks. I guarantee that this is not the same old scrapbook publication.



2. So many wonderful and useful cropping ideas. I've tried them and my scrapbook pages are too good to be true. These unusual crops truly made my pages a work of art.



3. What an awesome book for a remarkably awesome price



4. This is a book provides new ideas for cropping to enhance your scrapbooks. The page descriptions are clear and easy to understand. This is a good book for the intermediate scrapbooker.



5. As always with these kinds of books - another great read and guide for scrapbookers!

1 comments about Cover Art By: New Music Graphics.

1. There are other wonderfully inspiring album cover showcases, but none that so intimately describe the relationships of designers with indie labels - many of whom also carry the mantle of label proprietor. [Finally I feel like I'm not a complete freak after all]. And what covers! As much as stefan sagmeister will always be the artist who took design for that most hated packaging standard - the CD - to a new level, (as well as being the designer who most challenges us to render with humanity) - here he is absent and this feels like a generation that is moving on. A variety of genres is transversed from electronic through to art music but a common ethos shines through. Unswervingly, the inescapable question is asked of each designer: "How do you feel ahout downloads?".. to which there are a variety of responses and emotions. None of which made me any less excited about this, the worst paid, and most rewarding gig there is.

1 comments about Wiener Werkstatte: 1903-1932 (Special Edition).

1. Another in Taschen's fine line of art books, clear, sharp, color illustrations; an extaordinary value.

1 comments about Decorative Arts 70's (Klotz).

1. Decorative Arts 1970's is a presentation of "[t]he fascinating history of design traced by [the] Deorative Art Yearbook (Yearbook)...printed in a somewhat revised form." Divided into 8 sections: Architecture and Interiors; Furniture; Textiles and Wallpapers; Glass; Lighting; Silver and Tableware; and Ceramics, this book offers a plethora of color and b&w images, along with somewhat limited text, which is written in English, French and German.

   The book is dominated by the Architecture section, which is filled with mostly b&w (some color) photos, floorplans and useful information about the structure, the architect and the interior design. The remaining sections, all much smaller, offer examples of the pieces, their designers, measurments, materials, distributors and countries of origin. The overall layouts of these sections, while pleasing to eye, are presented in a very confuseing manner. The description of each item is numbered, but instead of numbering each photo, a "key" is offered (in a different spot on each page), which maps out the number of each photo. Furthermore, the book goes for pages at a time without page-numbers, rendering the index difficult to use.

   Overall, the book presents many interesting pieces of 70's design and includes works by all the usual suspects, along with some unusual ones. I would have liked to have seen sections devoted to plastics (some of which can be found in the furniture section) and electronics (completely missing in action), but overall I am not complaining. If you are a fan of books such as "Italy: The New Domestic Landscape" and "L'utopie du Tout Plastique" you are likely to enjoy this one as well!

3 comments about Tiffany Colored Gems.

1. As always, John Loring does a smash-up job with his new book on the colored gems of Tiffany. Gorgeous photos,great history and a perfect accompanment to "Tiffany Pearls".
   Highly recommended for the jeweler or jewelry fanatic.
   Aurea Jewels



2. Very good book, but not as great as Loring's other book "Tiffany Diamonds."
   A little heavy on Paloma Picasso's jewelry, but she did do some great stuff for Tiffany.



3. This is an excellent book for people who love gemstone jewelery. The introduction provides a great historical recap of some notable gemstones. Then there are sections arranged by the color of the gemstones (ie. Purple: Amethyst & Kunzite and Blue: Saphires, Aquamarine,etc.). Each section provides some of the most beautiful photographs and drawings of modern and antique gemstone jewelry. All photos and drawings are in brilliant color and clear, crisp detail. There is also a glossary with the definitions and description of the gemstones. The Gem Index provides the Moh's harness scale of each gem. I highly recommend this book if you love jewelry. It is a great coffee table book / eye candy book / wish book / jewelry reference book.

5 comments about Design By Numbers.

1. The guy describing this book as a tutorial is dead on...
   Perhaps this merging of art and technology stuff was revolutionary several years ago, but in 2002 I feel that this book has been quickly out dated. It is way too basic and lengthy, more like a book you glance through than one that you read. For a straight 'artist' with no mathematical abilities, maybe it will be helpful but for a design professional with a brain, it seems almost insulting.
   Check it out of the library if you are curious, but save your money...



2. I like this book a lot, but the thing I like best has nothing to do with programming --- It's the attention to typographic detail.

   Beautiful grey/black combinations, meticulous rags, tiny illustrations and a very interesting grid make this the best looking book with sample code I've ever seen.

   It's a book about method, so if it's Maeda's work you want to see, I assume his next book is the one you want.

   It is a beautifully made basic primer which articulates the virtues of a new technology for design-- it has a proud place on my shelf next to 'Grid Systems' by Josef Mueller-Brockmann and 'Typography' by Emil Ruder.




3. This is both a book and an interactive tutorial in computer programming for artists and designers. While it is now common for printed books to include CD-ROMs, this one has instead its own website where free software, called DBN (Design By Numbers), can be accessed, downloaded, and used by anyone with a JAVA-enabled browser. Using the book and website in combination, it is the intention of the author (who heads the Aesthetics and Computation group at MIT) that designers, even those who are "mathematically challenged," might quickly acquire "the skills necessary to write computer programs that are themselves visual expressions," and, as a consequence, "come to appreciate the computer's unique role in the future of the arts and design." Unfortunately, the layout of the book is so unexceptional (particularly the dust jacket, which might have been used in a powerful way) that it is unlikely to convert any graphic designers, who create far more complex forms intuitively, with little or no knowledge of programming. As a result, it may only reach those who need it least, meaning those who are already straddling the line between art and mathematics, between graphic design and computer programming. (Copyright by Roy R. Behrens from Ballast Quarterly Review, Vol. 14, No. 4, Summer 1999.)



4. how do you teach a child to play an instrument? how do you instill a sense of rhythm and tone -- expressiveness? maeda's instrument is the computer, and he is a viruoso. in "design by numbers," maeda introduces us to his instrument the same way a piano teacher teaches a student to play -- through a series of exercises and drills designed to both build skill and reveal the awesome power of the medium.

   jimi hendrix once said that he and keith emerson played the same instrument -- the speakers. they just used a different "axe." for digital artists, maeda's techniques are as revolutionary as the electric guitar or synthesizer.

   parents often feel compelled to teach their children certain skills - to swim, to ride a bike, throw a ball, to play an instrument. with "numbers" maeda adds a new skill that list - true computer literacy for artists who otherwise see the computer as an intimidating means to an end.




5. Not meant to teach a useful programming language, as the last reviewer seems to have expected, but a critical innovation in the way design is taught. Design by Numbers is meant to teach digital designers the language their tools already speak, but which students rarely learn. There's compromises for both programmers and deisgners here--and that it's slow in your browser is certainly not an important one--but this book offers insights for both camps. It's also quite attractive and contains more information than you'd expect on a quick flip through.

2 comments about The Golden Age of Advertising - The 70s (Taschen 25).

1. Julie scoffed at the purchased, and then was seen absorbed in the book laughing and smiling and waht not.



2. As the preface to this book points out, print advertising in the 70s was ugly and uninspired. The book does an excellent job of presenting a variety of ugly advertisements, for ugly products, that support this assertion.
   
   I recommend this book to anyone who is curious what advertising looked like 30 years ago, or if you want to see if advertising from the 70s was as bad as you remember (it is!).

1 comments about Mosaic and Tessellated Patterns: How to Create Them, with 32 Plates to Color (Dover Pictorial Archive Series).

1. The book introduces the basic types of tessellations and presents many examples. Note that the book title say "32 plates _to_ color" and not "32 color plates". The "look inside" feature shows already colored tessellations, but they are not in the book. It's not a problem, but don't expect to get color plates. This book is more geometric in its approach than "Principles of Pattern Design" by Proctor (isbn 0-486-26349-5) and may complement it nicely.