Commercials Books

This large and heavy book is full of inspiration from our founding fathers in the design world. I had the opportunity to hear Mervyn Kurlansky speak at a design conference a few months ago, and he described how long design took before computers made things nice and easy. This book is full of work by designers who had to use "old-fashioned" ways to get their results.

I can appreciate the creative forces of those who paved the way for modern graphic design, just by turing the pages. ..., I demand quality in the content of the book itself. Master's of the 20th Century is worth every penny.

Because graphic design didn't really come of age until this past century, you will experience it's history though the full-color samples in this book.

I recommed this book to all graphic design professionals and to people who like to collect great coffee table books. Anyone who enjoys books with more pictures than words, will appreciate the beauty of this one!

This large and heavy book is full of inspiration from our founding fathers in the design world. I had the opportunity to hear Mervyn Kurlansky speak at a design conference a few months ago, and he described how long design took before computers made things nice and easy. This book is full of work by designers who had to use "old-fashioned" ways to get their results.

I can appreciate the creative forces of those who paved the way for modern graphic design, just by turing the pages. Whenever I spend more than $[money] on a book, I demand quality in the content of the book itself. Master's of the 20th Century is worth every penny.

Because graphic design didn't really come of age until this past century, you will experience it's history though the full-color samples in this book.

I recommed this book to all graphic design professionals and to people who like to collect great coffee table books. Anyone who enjoys books with more pictures than words, will appreciate the beauty of this one!

A fantastic record of 100 of the best designers of this century. All in one book, great illustrations (done only by the best) all full color and best of all a superb interactive CD rom, a big bonus for those of us who's technical skills are better than our reading ones. Highly recomended for all students of design. Suitable for professors as well as interrested readers. A must for all artists; Great and Small.

The University of Michigan Law Quadrangle is an architectural wonder of American Universities - it is perhaps one of the most outstanding group of buildings in the entire United States. This book illustrates this viewpoint by providing wonderful photographs of the law quad along with fascinating text telling the history of the buidlings. For anyone who has ever visited the Law Quadrangle, this book will reinforce the feeling of awe you get while being within it's walls.

The University of Michigan Law Quadrangle is an architecturalwonder of American Universities - it is perhaps one of the mostoutstanding group of buildings in the entire United States. This book illustrates this viewpoint by providing wonderful photographs of the law quad along with fascinating text telling the history of the buidlings. For anyone who has ever visited the Law Quadrangle, this book will reinforce the feeling of awe you get while being within it's walls.

The University of Michigan Law Quadrangle is an architectural wonder of American Universities - it is perhaps one of the most outstanding group of buildings in the entire United States. This book illustrates this viewpoint by providing wonderful photographs of the law quad along with fascinating text telling the history of the buidlings. For anyone who has ever visited the Law Quadrangle, this book will reinforce the feeling of awe you get while being within it's walls.

The artwork is original and inspiring. I love the Columbia Record covers from the olden days.

Full Disclosure: I am Art Director for the publisher, although this book was completed before I arrived. That said, this is an incredible and much-needed look into the work of one of the artists that defined the concept of record cover art. A darkly fanciful artist with explosive vision, Flora worked alongside Alex Steinweiss to conceive of what album art should be. There is no way to overstate how important his work is (then and now) and what a shame it is that it took so long to give him his due. Less restrained-in fact, more exuberant-than the revered Blue Note covers, Flora's art put a different face on jazz and classical. One just as accurate but with uninhibited joy in a shadowy world. If you enjoy the likes of the modern low-brow masters (most notably Tim Biskup) you must own this. If you want history on record cover art (which is painfully lacking on the bookshelves), you want an inspiring coffeetable read, or just want to look all hipper-than-thou, then buy it. Fantagraphics has made a beautiful collection in this book.

This book is a terrific introduction and overview of the beautiful, grotesque, familiar and yet shockingly fresh work of Jim Flora. It's pure eye candy, Flora's limited color palette illustrations are brilliantly reproduced in large scale. Essays by Irwin Chusid and others are both witty and informative. You'll come away from this book inspired and giddy.

I run a company that generates around 4 to 6 Million a year for the last seven years, and we have been thinking about the commercial industry for aproximately a year now. By shear luck, I did a search on Amazon and "Moving to Commercial Construction" was the first book that popped up. I normally do not just "buy" a book but it intrigued me.
Stephan S. Saucerman absolutely nailed it for us, in fact I thought he was talking about our company! Written in clear simple english, well laid out, and I believe to be very thorough. Mr. Saucerman has a wit about him that keeps you interested. You can tell he's a guy that came from the field, which helps tremendously. Not only did it convince me we are on the right path but I have purchased two more copies for my Project Manager and Controller to have, and read as well.
Thanks Stephan for doing a great Job, I would look forward to follow up books of any kind from you!

-Michael Watson
Martin Brothers Development Inc.

Great book!!! Very very informative, very easy to read. This book has been the source of a wealth of information for me on how to make the HUGE transition from home building to comercial.

In Moving To Commercial Construction, commercial construction estimator and project manager Stephen Saucerman draws upon his many years of experience and expertise to present a complete introduction and instruction guide for those seeking to move from residential to commercial construction -- along with all the forms needed to keep track of commercial work. A "user friendly" text is augmented with an accompanying CD-ROM and detailed guidelines for deciding the size and scope of the intended commercial business; using networks, services and organizations to find work; understanding the complexities of the commercial bid process; organizing subcontracting and supplier bids; compiling an accurate estimate and presenting a bid; getting through the submittal and shop drawing process; working with owners, architects, subcontractors, suppliers, and employees; controlling business and construction overhead costs; marketing tools, trade shows; customer presentations and advertising; and dealing with local and governmental requirements affecting a commercial construction business. For anyone considering transforming their operation into a full fledged commercial construction company, Stephen Saucerman's Moving To Commercial Construction is an essential reference.

This book is full of beautiful psychedelic art. The CD that comes with it is awesome. Definitely something I'll hold onto for the rest of my life!!

This is quite a great book. I haven't been able to find a book dedicated to the "mood music" from the 60's, and this book fills the void! The CD that comes with the book is also excellent. If you are a Stereolab and/or Broadcast fan, you won't be disappointed, as a lot of the album designs for the two bands reference to these great record covers. Also, this book shows you a link between the past and present-day music that is influenced directy by the library music.

Designed for mass consumption, library records often featured pastiches of the popular styles of the day. This resulted in bitter-drinking, suit-wearing pianists with a family to support making far-out psychedelic rock and big band jazzers laying down avant-garde electronic futurism.
As is often the case with pastiche, the library records ended up being far weirder and, paradoxically, more creative and original than the styles they were copying. With an invisable audience and none of the usual pressures like reviews and sales to worry about, top session men like Alan Hawkshaw, jazz-classical pioneer Basil Kirchin, and a pre-Led Zepplin Jimmy Page could let rip with music for a chase scene - usually under a pseudonym - before heading off to the pub for lunch.
As CDs took over from vinyl in the eighties music libraries cleared out their old stock, releasing them onto the private collectors' market and revealing a fact previously unknown to all bar a few musicians: these albums had fantastic covers.
With no famous names to go on a striking images was the only way of catching the attention of potential clients, hence such classics as `Musique Idiote' by Roger Roger and `Feelings' by Italian easy jazz maestro Stefano Terrosi.
`Ah yes, `Feelings'... good hip hop break on that one. Goes for £1,000 on eBay,' reflects Jonny Trunk, a hopeless library addict who has collaborated with the London design agency Fuel to produce `The Music Library', a collection of 325 of the greatest album covers never seen. `There's a big collecting cult around library records now. Some of it is simply down to it's rarity, but the beautiful covers and strangeness of the music has a lot to do with it too.'
Founder member of the Specials Jerry Dammers puts it's appeal down to the way it `seems to get every musical genre just wrong enough to make it sound twisted and different - ie, great.' Record library albums are pure pop art - and best of all, they're free from any pop stars that might let you down.

MY LADY DOMINO

Once upon a time, Adele Russell had been the belle of the ball, engaged to David Latimer, with Society's doors thrown open to welcome her. But then, life intervened: David had to make a sudden trip to India, with no time to advise Adele that he still loved her and would return. The letter went astray, and the betrothal was broken.

As if that wasn't enough of a blow, four years later, her father died in disgrace, leaving her nearly destitute and forced to find employment A friend who was a haberdasher was pleased to employ Adele, but her new life style bore little resemblance to the one she had expected to be leading.

Set in Bath, the story is light-hearted yet serious, a reminder to all of us that life can change in the blink of an eye. In spite of hardships, wonderful villains and other traumatic events, all comes right in the end.

A COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE

An unexpected inheritance can open-or close-doors. When Caroline Lexham found herself to be the new owner of an elegant London mansion, she knew it would take a major effort to maintain both herself and her new abode. So, she turned it into a first-class (five-star?) hotel. Her chance to shine in Society's light is a celebratory banquet honoring the Duke of Wellington in the spring of 1818.

It's hardly to be wondered at that a cousin takes exception to this plan, as do several rivals, but Caroline will not easily give up her dream. When Harry Seymour appears on the scene, she knows she's made the right choice.

There is a lot of action in this story, and just enough romance to keep things interesting. How neat to have these two books in one volume. Adele and Caroline would have been great friends, had they ever met. Each of them is true to her own self, while forging ahead in ways new to the times in which they lived, yet never exceeding the boundaries established by society. And in the end, their dreams come true.

As usual in any book by Sandra Heath, the settings, the costumes, the characters, the events depicted are all true to the Regency era. This one provides double the pleasure. Hooray!

Ah, sigh...such a pleasure to read excellent Multi-POV that lets all the characters of the book come to life. US has this enforced single Point of View thing going the last 10 years. That is fine for those who like it. Guess what not all of us do. I love knowing all the characters in the book and find that missing so much in American writers today. Heath is British and the comforting Brit style of POV usage made me smile. Heath has this down to a pat and it's so enjoyable to read this wonderful style again.

These are two excellent Heath books in one! My Lady Domino finds Miss Adele Russell living in reduced circumstances. She was once the only daughter of a rich Bath banker and engaged to the devilishly handsome David Latimer, Earl of Blaisdon. The evil Duke Bellingham conspired with her father's clerk to rob the bank blind. When her father was ready to expose them, the secretary set a fire and killed her father, destroying her home. Adele was left to deal with the scandal when her father was accused to stealing the money. No one ever stopped to ask where it went. No one listened when she tried to expose the men who killed her father. Especially absent from supporting her in this time of troubles as her fiancé. David Latimer barely had the courtesy to send a dear john note before decamping Bath.

Broken hearted, Adele now lives with her former governess. The governess runs a fashionable store in bath and Adele works there as a clerk. Life goes along well, it rather dull until news that David Latimer has returned. Adele is distress everyone is saying he is going to marry the daughter of the Duke of Bellingham.

As the night of the masquerade at the Bellingham manor arrives, Adele takes the risk. She alters her mother's gown and slips into the mansion, just to live in the manner she once had. David Latimer dances with her, but he doesn't recognize her as his former love. Hurt, she dances with the son of the Duke, which sets off a chain of events that nearly destroys all their lives.

It's a skillfully woven tale, that touches the heart and done with a beautiful use of multiple-POV. Wish American readers would once again embrace this beautiful style. It's just so "full", instead of paint-by-numbers it's a masterpiece of light and shadow.

In the second full book, A Commercial Enterprise, it's about choices within oneself. Caroline Hexham's father was the black sheep of the Hexham family. He was a good man who married for love. As such, Caroline has been shunned by the powerful Hexham family her whole life. She is tried of life as a country mouse, so when her uncle dies, and his solicitor requests Caroline's presence in London, she jumps at the chance. On the journey she travels with Sir Henry Seymour, an aid and spymaster under Wellington.

Caroline is attracted to the handsome man, but has a lot on her plate at the moment. In a fit, her uncle gave the family manor in London to Caroline as long as she meets several stipulations. It's obvious to Caroline, he is being used as a prod against her cousin, but she seizes the chance to turn it into a thriving hotel for the elite.

There is romance abound, a temperamental French cook and a plot to assassinate Wellington. All done with Heaths charm and detailed style.

Two wonderful books for the price of one! A great treat.

This is the first book I've read by the author and I really enjoyed them both. My favorite was My Lady Domino which I didn't want to put down. A Commercial Enterprise was good too but I would probably rate it a 4 instead of a 5. I'm excited to read more books from Heath.

This book is very adorable and follows the movie well. If you like the movie you will like the book.

This book contains the entire storyline of the movie in both text and illustration and hits all the key events with perfect focus. The 'illustrations' are taken directly from the movie but are very crisp and high quality - not like some books that have poor quality movie stills. Our kids love this movie, have a home made soot-sprite mobile in their bedroom, and are crazy about this book. This is a really nice quality hard cover book and is much better than the comic book version in my opinion. Price is very cheap for what you get.

The book pretty much follows the story of the movie and is full of movie photos. It's a bit long for a childs book, but my kid loves it and we read it every night.

So if you're kids love the movie and want to see it over and over again, buy and read them the book instead.

A rich variety of houses, some grander than the others, but all well-to-do peoples dwellings. Some of the manors featured aren't very well known even in Sweden, but they certainly deserve their place here. The few I do miss are featured in "The Swedish Room" e.i. Lay-out-wise it is by now perhaps a little dated, but the auther knows his subject very well and the accompaning photos are mostly marvellous. When a Swede writes on Swedish interiors the result is accurate as this book shows.

This is another great book for Swedish decorative detail .A great asset in the decorative artist`s Library.A good source for Bolander`s beautiful wall murals. Great photography with excellent detail shots .A beautiful and knowledgable book. I am a decorative artist specializing in custom painted furniture for decorators and designers and have found this book to be a great resource and very helpful in my work.

This book is a treasure of neoclassicism in Sweden. It is supported by sensible (not gushy interior design talk) text and is logically sequenced.

The pictures and additional material is excellent; although the lighting in some of the photographs is less than perfect.

This is an inspirational reference for the topic.

In the 20 page written intro to Bob Thall's book of photographs, the author discusses the introduction of the new suburban areas surrounding large cities, specifically the ones surrounding Chicago, and even more specifically Schaumburg, Illinois. His description is admittedly subjective, but that doesn't make it negative. He addresses the pros and cons of both city life and suburban life, and details the way that his photographs will illutrate his points.

The photographs themselves are stunning simply because they are of such typical subruban non-descript businesses, streets, homes, and parks. What is interesting is how new everything looks, and yet 8 years later, I wonder what it looks like. Thall considers what these neighborhoods will look like 20 years from their construction dates, considering they are built with such cheap material, and almost a decade later, we're close to finding out. It would be interesting to see a follow-up book about the same area, just to see how much can change in such a short amount of time in a rapidly growing suburban area.

For anyone interested in the suburbs and the small cities full of strip-malls and housing developments that arise around major cities, this book is an excellent reference point.

Schaumburg, Illinois (incorporated 1956) is now on the map thanks to Bob Thall's excellent photos taken during the growth of the town in the Nineties. Divided into four chapters dealing with the landscape: corporate, commercial, domestic and natural, the photos carry on the deadpan format of Adams, Baltz, Gohlke and others associated with the New Topographics style.

Despite appearing rather anonymous because there are no people in the photos Schaumburg does look a very reasonable place to live and Thall mentions in his short opening essay that many of the houses and corporate offices overlook small lakes and ponds, created by the developers to control flooding, this water obviously encourages wildlife. As is usual with suburbs/edge cities/New Villages, critics will assume that the inhabitants can't possibly be happy living in such an environment but I bet they are. Probably the best folks-at-home-in-the-suburbs book is Bill Owens stunning 'Suburbia' (ISBN 1881270408) photographed in Livermore, San Francisco.

The sixty-five photos in 'The New American Village' are well presented (in 265dpi) in the standard art-photo landscape format though there is the usual photobook annoyance of having to turn to a page in the back to read each photo's caption. Unfortunately the captions say no more than place and date yet the images frequently, it seems to me, deserve more of an explanation than just resting on the page.

Incidentally, it is worth looking down at Schaumburg on Google Earth, you will see a place that has matured over the years since Thall took his photos and especially look at the space between houses, the curved streets, the position of corporate and retail units in relation to domestic housing. A pretty good place to live!

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Thall is a photographer and his photographs are marvelous: lucid, lovely, tonally rich, beautifully constructed. What's astonishing, though, is the way he has applied his sensibility to the least-liked spaces that increasingly dominate America and the globe: the "edge cities" of prefab warehouses for outsourced products, of instant townhouse communities (really trailer courts stacked upright) of malls and corporate "campuses." Most writing about this new American landscape excoriates it or, more rarely, argues that it's the landscape we want (ignoring that "we" aren't the architects, the patrons, or the developers). Thall seeks simply to look, to see what's remarkable, and then to communicate it, in pictures that embody the complex history of our newly decentralized human habitations. On the cover is a picture of two shocking office towers shot from a parking garage. Only one car is there: a beat-up Toyota station wagon perched impudently at off-angle to the resolute order of the rest of the space. That must be Thall's car; certainly it's the embodiment of the position he takes when he makes these pictures.

If you don't have the first Civic Art, originally published in the twenties, you ought to buy it immediately. Having said that, this book is reiterates many of the same ideas, principles, and messages of the first Civc Art, but from a perspective including all of the developements (and learning from all of the problems) introduced into urban design in the last 80 years. It should be in the library of every architect and of those interested in architecture and urban design. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

The New Civic Art is simply the best reference book available on the art and science of urban planning. Its encyclopedic nature provides an invaluable reference for those practicing in the field or those simply interested in the underlying principles and their application to communities and cities across the country. While providing minimal "textbook" style narrative, the book is arranged in a series of 2,000+ entries illustrating the core theories of new urbanism and its historical predecessors. Each entry is accompanied by a concise description and context upon which to view the example. Needless to say, one could spend a lifetime working through and analyzing the content of this massive volume. And on the other hand, it's a very pleasurable book to simply flip through and enjoy the tremendous variety of perspectives represented.

This book beautifully builds upon the foundation of Hegeman & Peets' Civic Art. Andres Duany is a master at organizing elements of urban design and town planning into this sort of encyclopedia that is easily understood and usable by planners and designers.