The latest crowdsourced gem for the book crowd comes to us from Bibliobath. Thanks to Wing Weng and Jasper Jansen, a Dutch-Chinese couple based in Amsterdam, we finally have the waterproof book! They have 4 titles ready to go; a selection of short stories by Mark Twain, one of the selected poetry by W. B. Yeats, an edition of Shakespeare's Macbeth and a special Kickstarter-only edition of the Chinese classic The Art of War. The campaign just launched and the goal is to raise about $10,000 in the next month. Among the rewards are a couple geared...
New book chronicles the glory days of airline visuals
Once upon a time flying wasn't such a hassle. At its height the airline industry was the bees knees of postwar culture. From the mid-forties to the the mid-seventies flying was the way to go. The world got smaller as new opportunities and possibilities connected the four corners of the globe. It was also a time of some stunning graphic design. The posters and printed detritus that accompanied the golden age of air travel mark a high-spot in the history of advertising and corporate design. It is the graphic side of these times that M. C. Hühne chronicles in Airline Visual Identity...
Harlin Quist: The coolest publisher of children’s books you never heard of
Harlin Quist just might be the coolest publisher of children's books you never heard of. The brainchild of Harlin Bloomquist, Quist published over sixty children's books between 1966-1984. They featured some of the finest European and American authors and illustrators of the day and helped establish the careers of many young artists. They are unmistakable in design and offered an original, fresh look in childrens' book publishing. Quist had a background in theater and then worked in publishing, first as an editor at Crowell-Collier, then at Dell, where he worked on the first picture paperback books before going out on his own. Here is what some of the...
Straight from the baby’s mouth
From the time when her son was 11 months old until he turned 18 months Lenka Clayton extracted 64 objects from his mouth. 63 of them are represented in this brilliant visual catalog, 63 Objects Taken from My Son's Mouth. The one item not included is a sachet of rat poison that her son put in his mouth at 11 months. That object was flushed down the toilet while mom was in a panic. Details: 63 Objects Taken from My Son's Mouth, 2014. Designed by MASS MoCA's Director of Design; Brett Yasko, with color photographs by Tom Little. Letterpress cover...
Dick Bruna: A sampling of covers
He is best known for creating Miffy, the world's most famous rabbit. Yes, that's right, the world's most famous rabbit, Not Peter, not Roger... Miffy. He has published over 200 Miffy books to date with almost 90 million sold. The Miffy brand rakes in over $150 million a year. But Miffy is just a slice of the Dick Bruna pie. Bruna is also a titan of Dutch modernist graphic design and has designed and illustrated over 2,000 book covers! You see his father was a publisher and he got to work designing covers and promotional material for the company. Here is a sampling of his amazing...