library58(digitalliteracy) It started innocently enough. While visiting the Rem Koolhaas-designed, Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library Danae Fallier began snapping photos of the iconic building and the books. When looking at the photographs she took that day she noticed that the text on the book spines had blurred and were no longer visible. It was then that her library series was born. The almost natural abstraction that appeared in those Seattle photographs motivated her to to start digitally manipulating a new group of library images. The photos in the library series are completely constructed. Gone is any text and added are...
Isabel Barbuzza’s Bookworks
Color Reading Color Reading detail Isabel Barbuzza was born and raised in Argentina and is currently an associate professor at the School of Art and Art History in the University of Iowa. Her interest lies "in the relationships between space, place, objects and materials in contemporary society and how through perception, thought and language we facilitate engaging with the physical world." Her work runs the gamut from artists books to sculpture to installation. Enjoy! Disasters of War based on Goya's "Disaster of War" - love poem blackened out with white numbers indicated disasters of war since Goya's time. The binding...
Paddington Bear Invades London
A run of first edition of Paddington In 1956 Michael Bond, a BBC cameraman, bought a small toy bear left alone on a shelf in a department store in London for his wife Brenda. He named it Paddington after the train station closest to his home. In 1958 Williams Collins published the first Paddington book, A Bear Called Paddington, illustrated by Peggy Fortnum. To date 150 titles have been published ranging from the original novels to board books for babies. Over 35 million books have been sold and Paddington has been translated into over 40 languages. Now comes Paddington the movie and to celebrate its...
Folio Society focused on emerging from the darkness
They have been in business for 65 years and have almost 2,000 titles under their belt. They produce some of the most beautiful and well-made books on the planet. They work with the leading illustrators in the world. Yet the Folio Society remains far from a household name. Why? Their business model stinks. They operated exclusively as a membership book club and didn't spend any energy actively promoting their titles until two years ago! Focusing on high-quality production values centered on packaging, typography, and illustration should not automatically negate attention to distribution, marketing and building brand awareness. It is the age...
A visual tour of Halloween in America during the first half of the 20th century
Children dressed up in costumes for Halloween. from the Daily Reflector (Greenville, N.C.), 1950's What better way to wrap up American Archives month then with a Halloween stroll through the Digital Public Library of America. From turn of the century Hallow'een postcards through photos from the 1950's we get a taste of Halloween in America during the first half of the 20th century. From the small town to the segregated South to the Japanese American internment camps of WWII Halloween offered an opportunity to shed the daily trials and tribulations and have some fun. Enjoy! A little boy examines a Halloween display of two jack o'lanterns and...