Freaky fun abounds from childrens author Calef Brown’s newest book
A contemporary Dr. Seuss, Calef Brown‘s childrens books are as an exciting read for kids as they are adults. His catchy rhymes put his self-illustrated book “Flamingos on the Roof” a place on the NY Times bestselling list and his latest edition “Hallowilloween: Nefarious Silliness” is no less entertaining.
Filled with tongue twisters and short poems, Brown says “Since childhood, Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. Costumes, candy, and as an artist, the spooky color palette is a revelation—brick reds, oranges of every hue, deep blues, sour greens surrounded by overripe purples. I loved immersing myself in this eerie family of color while creating the paintings for Hallowilloween.”
Brown continues, “I wanted the poems to be funny and engaging but also have an edge and touches of darkness.” His slightly sinister take on standard Halloween creatures—ghosts, vampires and mummies—is perfectly spooky and a great read year round.
“Hallowilloween: Nefarious Silliness” sells online from Amazon and Powells for $17.
Parse hop hop’s poetry with a book of dry interpretations
While most gets what Tupac meant when he rhymed, “I ain’t guilty ’cause, even though I sell rocks/It feels good puttin’ money in your mailbox” on his hit 1999 track “Dear Mama” (a song now included in the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry if you needed anymore proof of rap’s mainstream legitimacy), some rap lyrics are just downright baffling to anyone not pursuing a linguistics degree on the phenomenon of hyper-regional slang.
The book’s chapters cover ten thematic categories; “Fashion” includes favorites like “Hockey players pagin’ me to practice on my wrist” (with so much diamond jewelry, my wrist is like an ice rink), while “Places” describes selling drugs on a particular street in Cleveland, OH with “Slang on the double nine,” and from “Insults” you get poetic gems like “Leave you kinda startled like the funk off of Fritos”—comparing an element of surprise with the unexpected pungent smell of the corn chips brand.
Great for giggling over with friends or an ideal gift for any student of lyrics, “Understand Rap” sells from Abrams and Amazon.
From Barry McGee to Save Tibet, DJ DB’s thousands of stickers in his new book
Founder of the record label Breakbeat Science and an early proponent of drum and bass, DB Burkeman (known to most as producer, promoter and DJ DB) wears many hats. Most recently, he took up the role of editor with his book “Stickers: Stuck-Up Piece of Crap: From Punk Rock to Contemporary Art.”
Created with downtown girl-in-the-know Monica LoCascio, “Stickers” proudly displays Burkeman’s collection—a mass he’s accumulated over the past 30 years—as well as essays from Shepard Fairey, Bill McMullen, JK5, Stanley Donwood, HAZE, Moby, Lance Mountain and collections from several other prominent sticker collectors and makers such as Kaws, Espo and Invader.
The encyclopedic document covers a wide swathe of contemporary culture where stickers have been involved. With 4,000 examples, stickers span the Velvet Underground’s Warhol banana sticker album cover to DIY postal stickers gracing NYC street lights.
Compiled according to genre, Stickers begins with punk rock and hardcore, goes on to skateboarding, early hip-hop, political messages and graffiti tags. Pages of actual stickers designed by Maya Hayuk, Ryan McGinness, Aiko, Todd James, Surface to Air, Barry McGee, KR and more allow you to get in on the action. DB says, “After three years of insane work and 6000 stickers all over our house, my family’s feeling about the book finally coming out is “Thank F*%&!”
The iconic Antwerp style of one of fashion’s most beloved photography duos
Almost as legendary as their subjects, creative husband-and-wife duo, Inge Grognard and Ronald Stoops are steeped in Antwerp’s fashion scene heyday of the early ’80s. With Stoops behind the lens and Gorgnard supplying the make up direction, the pair have created shoots, catwalk shows and spreads for some of the world’s biggest magazines, and indeed some of the icons of contemporary fashion.
“Inge Grognard/Ronald Stoops“, the new book from publishers Ludion, acts as an anthology of over 30 years’ collaboration between the two. Twisting the format slightly, the tome focuses on the non-commercial work, giving readers a better insight into the influences, outlook and their relationship as creative partners.
“This book starts and ends with a scream,” says Grognard, conjuring up an emblematic visualization of their work if there ever was one. “The scream symbolizes how Ronald and I communicate. To outsiders the way we work together must come across as very harsh. We tend to yell at each other a lot and discussions can easily get out of hand,” she continues.
The approach must work though, with a clear tension running through the narratives of the resulting imagery. It’s this same emotional pressure which runs through the book itself, seizing the viewer as they navigate through the fragile, beautiful and the brutal.
As far as elevating the importance of taking in outside influences into ones creative work, the title “Inge Grognard/Ronald Stoops” reinforces just how tightly-knit the Antwerp fashion scene was during its formative years. Stylists, designers, photographers and graphic artists all fed into each other to create that now-recognizable Antwerp style, its progression captured perfectly in this fine title.
If it wasn’t made obvious by the near-weekly links we post to the writing of the Chicago Tribune‘s resident architecture critic, Blair Kamin, we’re big fans. While it’s always great to read his column and blog for the paper, it’s all the better when he has his own material to talk about and heads out on a press tour. His new book has just been released, Terror and Wonder: Architecture in the Tumultuous Age, which looks back at the business of building since 2001, ranging from terrorist attacks, an engineering disaster in the wake of a hurricane, and the booms and busts in construction and real estate. We’re eager to grab a copy and dig in. In the interim, he’s an interview with Kamin from the Tribune and here’s a bit from his appearance on Marketplace earlier this week:
…there were a lot of predictions made right after 9/11 that proved untrue. The skyscraper certainly didn’t succumb to the terrorist attacks. In fact, the world went on the greatest skyscraper building boom in its history — with more skyscrapers, with more formal invention being built than in any time in human history.
The larger point here is that this building boom in large cities gave us what I call “urbanization without urbanity.” Where there was an incredible surge of building, but there was also a cityscape that wasn’t necessarily humane.
From how to pick a fresh vegetable to how to properly inflate a popover, McGee applies the science lessons learned in his earlier book to every aspect of the culinary world in a simple, straightforward style.
As a result, the 24-chapter, 524-page tome makes a practical guide to the cooking experience with info that both novices and advanced home chefs will find useful. Topics cover maximizing safety (don’t serve fresh oysters at a party), types of appliances (burners waste a lot of energy), making cheese fondue (white wine remedies thickening) and so much more.
Due out 1 November 2010, “Keys to Good Cooking” will sell from Penguin Press, but you can pre-order it from Amazon.
Painting, jazz and poetry in a trialogue between David Breskin, Nels Cline and Ed Ruscha
“Dirty Baby,” a music project joining guitarist and composer Nels Cline (of Wilco fame) and poet David Breskin, “recontextualizes” American artist Ed Ruscha’s “censor strips” (artworks that depict the black marks used to censor documents). The resulting album and art book represents an aural and visual conversation between the three men and a load of talented musicians.
Dirty Baby the album drops 12 October 2010, but people in L.A. will be treated to a spectacular release party on 7 October 2010 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as part of the Angel City Jazz Festival. Cline will perform, Breskin will recite poems Ruscha will project images, and after the concert all three will sign the beautifully-packaged “Dirty Baby” CD and art book of the same name (published by Prestel).
The book, the size and shape of an LP, pairs gorgeous reproductions of Ruscha’s images with Breskin’s ghazals (a tightly-structured, ancient Arabic form) and includes the four-CD set, two of which are the slow, twangy Jazz improvisations by Cline. (You can order the book from Amazon or Prestel.)
The L.A. show will be held at LACMA’s Bing Theater, and while admission to the event is free it’s highly recommended to RSVP to info [at] angelcityjazz [dot] com.
One of the most oft-played tunes on the UnBeige jukebox is David Bowie‘s “The Laughing Gnome”—”Space Oddity,” too, but that goes without saying—and so we are eagerly anticipating the rock star’s book. Entitled Bowie: Object, it’s expected to be the the subject of much dealmaking at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which kicks off Wednesday with “guest of honour” Argentina (we’re not sure exactly what that entails for Argentina, but it sounds like fun!). Bowie’s agent, the neither laughing nor gnomelike Andrew Wylie, told Publishers Weekly that Bowie: Object will be the first in a series of books in which Bowie explores his creative process by featuring 100 things from his “archive.” And with archive in quotes, you just know it’s going to be good! The devoted (and highly informed) fans over at BowieNet report that the book will be designed by London-based Barnbrook and will be available in a number of different colors, probably sometime next year. Expect plenty of photos, all annotated with “insightful, witty and personal text written by Bowie himself.”
In other book news, Amazon has launched the beta version of a Kindle plugin for Adobe InDesign. (Your grandmother won’t understand a word of that last sentence.) Free to download, the tool makes it easier to make books and such available for Amazon’s e-reader by converting InDesign files directly into Kindle books. Among its features are the ability to maintain font styling information, export images in the book to the Kindle version, and add a cover page, links within the book, as well as bullets and numbering. Go forth and digitize here.
New book pays tribute to 25 years of the best sound and package design of the 7-inch
Assigning themselves with the heavy task of sifting through a whopping 15,000 indie records from the last 25 years to find the most interesting albums, editors Brian Roettinger, Mike Treff and Diego Hadis of “Touchable Sound: A Collection of 7-inch Records From the USA,” narrowed the selection down into the 300 that fill this 412-page compendium, available tomorrow from Soundscreen Design.
Organized by region, “Touchable Sound” is interlaced with chapter dividers and essays printed on various stock paper, giving the book its unique feel and look. Among the discerning criteria for inclusion in the book was how the record was made (e.g. screen-printed, handmade or sewn) and the impact of the final result. The editors also considered the history behind the making of a record, such as was the case of Black Dice’s Peace in the Valley, in which Three One G label head Justin Pearson (who also is part of the San Diego-based band The Locust) exchanged six months of work at Kinko’s to pay off his debt for printing a 64-page art book that came with the record.
While most of the bands and records might not be immediately recognized by casual listeners of the indie rock and punk genres, a few other groups’ names do stand out. The Melvins land a few pages, most notably with the screen-printed jacket for the band’s Starve Already record and a five-fold, offset-printed jacket of its 666 7-inch.
A more unconventional creation comes from the Long Beach, CA-based band Le Shok, whose S&M has an aptly-placed hole in the jacket so that it can be played directly in a record player, and loses quality each time the record is played.
The sun is shining in Dublin on this the first day of design festival Offset‘s three days of scheduled talks and events taking place at the city’s brand new Grand Canal Theatre. First to take the stage: Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook…
Sadly my enthusiasm for sunshine is lacking today due to a terrible night’s sleep at my hotel where, ironically, design disaster dictates that all the room doors slam shut – meaning whenever a guest arrives back to their room of an evening (which they did until about 4.30am last night) a door slams.
But, I’m up, and I’ve been at the wonky-looking Grand Canal Theatre since kick off at 10am…
First talk of the day was given by Adrian Shaughnessy and Tony Brook of Unit Editions and – by the looks of things – sleep deprivation isn’t an issue for anyone else: the auditorium was packed.
Shaughnessy started by talking about his experience working at Intro with Julian House on a number of great projects – from record sleeves for Primal Scream (“they talk about drugs like a wine connoisseur talks about wine – they really know their drugs”) and Stereolab and, perhaps more importantly, on various publications. He then talked about “becoming an editor” and learning to curate content whilst editor of VROOM magazine.
Brook then spoke about the philosophy for Unit Editions – about the pair’s desire to take the lessons they’ve learned about working with other publishers and create books “by designers, for designers”. He listed books that the pair identified as benchmarks for the kind of thing they wanted to publish. Books on the list included Typography Today by Helmut Schmid; the 8vo book, On The Outside, published by Lars Müller, and books by FUEL.
“I collect posters,” Brook told the assembled. “It’s a bit like alcoholics anonymous. I collect posters and I’ve got it bad.” The point he was making is that loving design is a really important aspect of what he and Shaughnessy are doing at Unit. Despite setting up a publishing company in the age of the internet, Shaughnessy insisted that “designers still have an engrained love of books, of the object” and, also insisted that most publishers just don’t think like designers, hence his and Brook’s desire to publish the kind of books they know their audience will appreciate and treasure.
They then went on to show that through creating a great website and letting design blogs know about what they’re up to – they can offer their books exclusively for sale through their own website and not bother with Amazon or other outlets.
They also told us about their Research papers – newsprint publications focusing on design projects they find fascinating. They showed spreads from Folkways – the first of these papers published by Unit Editions – which collected record sleeve designs created by Ronald Clyne, a designer and ethnic sculpture collector who created a huge number of sleeves for esoteric US label, Folkways, in the 60s and 70s. “All this stuff is online, but nowhere is it curated,” explained Shaugnessy, “so in a way we’re reclaiming this stuff from the internet.”
Spread from Folkways. Read our blog post about it from March this year (when it was published) here
The pair then gave the assembled a sneaky peek at their forthcoming Research paper, ThreeSix, which will look at the creation of a modular typeface by Hamish Muir – with an essay by Wim Crouwel. Plus a preview of their soon to launch revamped website, and a look at images from their forthcoming book, Supergraphics which will look at this kind of work:
…and which will feature an essay by CR’s very own Mark Sinclair. Watch this space: uniteditions.com
I also sat in on this morning’s talk by Dublin-based studio Image Now‘s Aiden Grennelle – who gave an insightful overview of his journey as a designer, kicking off with his fascination and respect for designers like Josef Müller Brockman and Otl Aicher. He shared a great story about realising, whilst up an A-frame ladder painting the ceiling of his studio, that being several feet above the floor was the best place to be in the space – and consequently commissioning two umpires chairs for his studio from the manufacturers in England that provide the likes of Wimbledon with umpire chairs.
Grennelle candidly likened his early approach to design to UK band Spaceman 3’s motto, “taking drugs to make music to take drugs to”. He showed some of the colourful club flyers he was designing as a result – and then recalled the time he couldn’t prepare a poster for print for a client because he was recovering from a particularly heavy bout of raving. His friend, on request, duly sorted the file and sent it over, print-ready but, because he didn’t know the surname of the chap whose name was to appear on the poster, put in a surname so silly he felt sure that Grennelle would spot it on the file and change it before sending it to print. Grennelle was so hungover / broken that he didn’t spot what needed to be done and – relieved that his chum had sorted the poster – simply sent it off to print. This is how the poster ended up reading:
Cue much laughter. Grennelle then steered his talk towards talking about work completed since joining Image Now in 2000. Among the work he showed was some great work for Dublin Bus which included creating maps and timetables for the service
…and also for Eircom and for Dublin’s James Joyce Centre in Dublin – sharing stories about how each project developed.
Grennelle’s speech culminated in talking about a poster he created for Blanka’s Exhibition in Mono – which is both a homage to Josef Müller Brockman as well as a graphic representation of George Foreman and Mohammed Ali’s classic Rumble In The Jungle boxing fight in Zaire in 1974. I was slightly surprised that Grennelle mentioned my name at this point as the person who recommended that Blanka get him involved in the project. I own a copy of the poster and had completely forgotten that I had pointed Blanka in the direction of Image Now and Aiden. Totally made my day to “learn” of my role in the story of a poster I’ve loved since first seeing it.
The poster sees each of the fight’s eight 3 minute rounds (180 seconds) converted into overlapping semicircular (180 degrees) graphic slabs – enabling each degree of each 180 degree semicircle to represent a second of the particular round it signifies. Each connecting punch and all of the action is noted in the appropriate place, thus charting the whole fight, blow for blow.
I also sat in on Philip Hunt of Studio AKA (above) talking about the studio’s work. Hunt introduced the work of Studio AKA and explained how the 30 strong company balance commercial work with self-funded films – all in the name of developing the skills of its small but talented roster of animation directors. He showed work by Studio AKA directors Marc Craste, Steve Small and Grant Orchard, talking openly about dealing with clients, collaborating with clever creatives at ad agencies and the joy of producing great work. As well as the work that gets commissioned and included on the company’s reel, he also readily admits there’s a “drawer of shame” in which various projects are filed – he even showed a few projects from said drawer…
Towards the end of his allotted time, Hunt spoke of the processes involved in his adaptation of illustrator and author Oliver Jeffers’ Lost and Found story. The resulting film (still shown above) was first screened on Channel 4 in December 2008, but Hunt spoke of how he worked with Jeffers in adapting the design of the characters and the world they inhabit, and also how his own children’s behaviour influenced some of his directorial decisions. Here’s the trailer for the film which he played:
To find out more about Lost and Found, we blogged about it just before it was shown on TV back in December 2008. Read that post here.
Right, I’m going to pack up the laptop and head back to the venue to catch the talk by London’s POKE studio and also the following talk by Wired creative director Scott Dadich who I hope will talk about the development of the Wired iPad app and the magazine’s philosophy in regard to – to coin a phrase uttered by Adrian Shaughnessy earlier today – publishing in the digital age. More from Dublin soon!
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