It was the late 1960's. Robert Crumb was an aspiring artist living in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Fransisco when he was asked by Janis Joplin to design the cover for Cheap Thrills, the first major studio album of her band Big Brother And The Holding Company. The album would eventually reach number 1 on the Billboard charts exposing the world to the counterculture visuals of R. Crumb.And so began the album cover career of R. Crumb.Now, some 40+ years later, W.W. Norton has released a monograph featuring all of R. Crumb's record cover art. From his work for...
Build Your Own Bookmobile
"Fun for schools, librarians, kids, adults, and bibliophiles -- because you CAN'T make this on an iPad or a Kindle!" is how Bob Staake refers to his 3-D crafty bookmobile. You simply print it out, fold at tabs, apply a little glue and whammo you're up and running. No library card required.
Charles Van Sandwyk gets singing
Ever wonder what one of the greatest book illustrators of our generation does during his spare time?Well, he sings and tells stories. Backed by the Brandywine Boys, Charles Van Sandwyck has released his first CD. Quality Time: Charles Van Sandwyk + the Brandywine Boys sing, play + tell stories. The 6 song time-themed debut features Keith Lowe on acoustic base, Steve Dawson on guitar, ukulele, weissenborn and dobro and Chris Gestrin on pump organ and saloon piano.A tri-fold insert features an introduction to the project by Keith Lowe and an original illustration by Van Sandwyk and of course, the cover...
E-Books in the Round: Google’s Digital Bookcase
The digital designers at Google have come up with a new way to browse Google Books. The challenge - designing a 21st century virtual bookcase to display e-books. They "imagined something that looks like the shelves in your living room, but is also capable of showcasing the huge number of titles available online—many more than fit on a traditional shelf." And what they came up with is a bookcase that's an infinite 3D helix. That you can spin side-to-side and up and down with your mouse. The shelf holds 3D models of more than 10,000 titles from Google Books.The books...
Bill O’Reilly gets burned
At a remote location in Afghanistan a Commander ordered a soldier to burn 20 copies of Bill O'Reilly's book Pinheads and Patriots.As one of the soldiers involved summed it up:Some jerk sent us two boxes of this awful book (SPOILER ALERT: George Washington — Patriot; George Soros — Pinhead) instead of anything soldiers at a remote outpost in Afghanistan might need, like, say, food or soap. Just burned the whole lot of them on my Commander's orders. Acknowledging "people’s squeamishness about setting books ablaze." the soldier went on to reiterate that they were stationed in an "extraordinarily remote location" and...