Designer Book Shelf #6

This week on Designers Book Shelf I got a lot of reading suggestions for you. Every Tuesday I will be posting new suggestions of books for designers and everyone that loves design and art in general. Check out what I have for you this week and stay tuned for more next week.

If you interested in sending your book suggestions, leave a comment or email abduzeedo@gmail.com with the subject Designers Book Shelf. Special Thanks to Nijssen Sander for sending out these book suggestions.

The Elements of Typographic Style

by Robert Bringhurst (Author)

Price: $19.77

Amazon Review

This lovely, well-written book is concerned foremost with creating beautiful typography and is essential for professionals who regularly work with typographic designs. Author Robert Bringhurst writes about designing with the correct typeface; striving for rhythm, proportion, and harmony; choosing and combining type; designing pages; using section heads, subheads, footnotes, and tables; applying kerning and other type adjustments to improve legibility; and adding special characters, including punctuation and diacritical marks. The Elements of Typographic Style teaches the history of and the artistic and practical perspectives on a variety of type families that are available in Europe and America today. The last section of the book classifies and displays many type families, offers a glossary of typography terms, and lists type designers and type foundries. The book briefly mentions digital typography, but otherwise ignores it, focusing instead on general typography and page- and type-design issues. Its examples include text in a variety of languages--including English, Russian, German, and Greek--which is particularly helpful if your work has a multinational focus. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Review

(from Amazon) This book should be required reading for every graphic designer, book designer, typographer and certainly anyone directly or indirectly responsible for unleashing the current wave of awful typography on an unsuspecting public. Bringhurst covers everything from the basics of type styles to advanced kerning principles to the finer points of page proportions, all in a succint yet engaging way. Bringhurst does an excellent job of laying out a series of rules and guidelines, while making it clear that these are a starting point, a foundation for good type design, not a set of limitations. He is a poet as well as a typographer, and his eloquence pays tribute to the field as no one else has. The book features a good deal on the evolution of typography and includes great side-by-side comparisons of typefaces to illustrate specific points. He also deals extensively with punctuation marks, diacritics and the duty/joy of designing type with languages other than English in mind. I find myself returning again and again to the section on the subtleties of page proportions. He also achieves the nearly impossible balance of singing the praises of the old masters while not being afraid of the best of what's new and experimental.

The Book of Bunny Suicides

by Andy Riley (Author)

Price: $8.00

User Review

I love this book because of one single statement, how much can you do with one given fact, how does the bunny kill itself?

Customer Review

(from Amazon) The best thing about _The Book of Bunny Suicides_ is that there's actually not that much gore involved. Oh, sure, there are plenty of decapitated, disemboweled, liquefied, and otherwise visibly deceased bunnies in evidence. And don't get me wrong: that's funny too. Yet Riley is clearly among that rare but blessed breed of humorists who recognize that the anticipation can be even funnier than the payoff. And so, right after he shows us three bunnies impaled upon a light saber, he shows us two more bunnies calmly sunning themselves on the beach as Noah's Ark prepares to depart. On the downside, Disney may never hire Riley again once it gets a load of _The Book of Bunny Suicides_. On the upside, he's already proven that this would be Disney's loss rather than his.

Kustom Graphics: Hot Rods, Burlesque and Rock 'n' Roll

by Julian Balme

Price: $29.16

Book Description

Many Kustom Kulture artists are now crossing over scenes, creating graphics for hot rods one day, burlesque events the next, and dreaming up flyers for a new crop of indie rock bands—all part of an explosive international graphics movement. This overview of the best artists in this subculture includes work from California, the Midwest, the East Coast, Mexico, Japan, the UK, Germany, Scandinavia, France, and Germany. This roundup of Ed Roth and Von Dutch-influenced artists presents a mass of work impossible to beat for sheer visual inventiveness, vibe, and color. Author Julian Balme is a writer and art director for numerous Kustom Kulture magazines, creator of the famous London Calling cover for The Clash, a passionate racer of hot rods, and one of the foremost commentators on Kustom Kulture and Kustom Graphics.

Customer Review

(from Amazon) I think this book is absolutely great. Tons and tons of pictures. All high quality art for this type of genre. I purchased this book because I really dig Rockin' Jelly Bean's work but there are lots of great artists represented in this book. I highly recommend this book whether or not you're into hotrods, tattoos, and rock & roll type stuff. It's well put together and a great book to add to your book collection.

Fadings: Graffiti to Design, Illustration and More

by Siggi Schlee

Price: $22.31

Book Description

Graffiti, with its unique aesthetics and unconventional values, has had an increasing influence on several areas of visual communication for a very long time. Fadings presents the work of 24 graffiti artists whose commercial success has been based on their graffiti experience, including 123Klan, Flying Fortress, Viagrafik, Hixsept, and Atalier. To give the reader an understanding of each artist’s creative process, the book presents a selection of projects from briefing stage through development of the creative concept to final execution. Fadings is split into three sections: the first, From the Scene, presents a detailed profile of each artist (five to eight pages each); the second, Into the Scene, presents interviews with art directors and companies who use graffiti as a commercial visual language; the third, Clash, features work by innovative, upcoming artists from the scene. INCLUDES A CD-ROM WITH FONTS, ANIMATION, MOVIES AND THE FADINGS "SOUNDTRACK"

Customer Review

(from Amazon) I really liked this book. It showed how artists kinda grow up from graffiti to graphic design, that it's more proffesional. It had some great pictures. Every artist has a job description of what they do etc. Its in german and english, so you all should know. I got what i expected from it. Alot of the artist include CMPONE,123 KLAN, TYPEHOLICS, BACKYARD 10 ETC. It gives you alot of great ideas also of course. The cd that it comes with is alright the "so called soundrack" that they speak of is only one song that i think is really horrible. It has some cool fonts, and wallpapers too. This is a must for a you graff heads.