Designers Books

This is an unbelievably beautiful book! The photos are very good quality, the information accompanying them is interesting. Also loved the chronology at the end. Very lovely and well done.

Timothy J. Samuelson, Curator of Architecture at the Chicago Historical Society, has done a marvelous job at bringing out a beautiful new edition of this classic on modernist pioneer Louis Sullivan. Samuelson has written a perceptive and entertaining introduction to the book, and given an invaluable revised list of Sullivan's work along with vastly improved illustrations. Hugh Morrison first published this groundbreaking study in 1935, and it is still the starting place for learning about Sullivan. Morrison's writing is fresh and entertaining, and moves along at times almost like a novel. More importantly, Morrison's analysis and history of Sullivan's architecture remains solid and convincing.

These pages in art and word take you to the best brands and into the future. Anyone seeking to start a company, brand a company or brand yourself needs to purchase this book. This book has been instrumental in helping me brand myself in my new endeavor. By far this is the best book on finding your own brand. And yet is more it directs you to the Lovemarks of the future.
The value of this book however goes beyond branding. When the music stops, the fun ends, and when I am overwhelmed I pick up this book and the creative spark returns. The combination of art, word and brand in these pages are more than magical. Five Stars and worth the price. I Quote Lovemarks and say you must call the designer edition "Love in the the Bank".

Excellent home plan book for anyone looking for luxurious mini-estate home plans. This book covers a wide variety of styles but mainly concentrates on homes in the 3,000 - 6,000 square foot range, with a few homes in reaching into 7,000 square feet plus. Overall, a good resource for anyone looking for ideas to help in the creation of their dream home or for someone with a general love of architecture.

Not since Shakespeare or Pirsig has a book had such a widespread impact on the collective social consciousness. This slim volume has changed the course of post-coldwar politics and forced the major superpowers to reconsider their role as spiritual guides of a new generation.

In short if you have to read a single book in your brief existence it had better be this one.

You owe it to yourself. You owe it to humanity. Pax

It is hard to do justice to the imaginative insanity of Salvador Dali, but Angela Wenzel does a pretty good job for this volume in the Adventures in Art series. "The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Salvador Dali" introduces young readers to the Surrealist artist who knew how to put himself in the limelight in ways other than his paintings. One of things that Wenzel does is that she provides some of Dali's own comments about his art, such as the 1937 painting "Sleep," where a heavy face that looks like the film director Luis Bunuel is propped by my crutches and explaining the link between the writings of Sigmund Freud on dreams and Dali's painting "The Burning Giraffe" (1936-37), where drawers are coming out of a tall woman's body. Also included are the famous melting clocks of "The Persistence of Memory" (1931), the fried eggs of "The Sublime Moment" (1938), and the multiple pictures within "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus" (1937).

What I especially like about this volume is how it looks at the origins of some of these paintings. For "The Endless Enigma" (1938) we have the original sketches of the six different paintings that Dali hid in the finished painting, while a postcrd showing an African village became a face turned on its side in "Paranoid Faces" (1931). Then there was the "Portrait of Mrs. Isabel Styler-Tas" (1945), which Dali based on Piero della Francesca's "Battista Sforza and Federico de Montefeltro" (circa 1465) by way of Giuseppe Arcimboldo's "Winter," a marvelous example of how the old becomes new in the hands of a talented artist.

Young readers will also be exposed to some prime examples of Dali's imagination with regards to other types of art beyond paintings, such as his infamous "Lobster Telephone" (1936) and the "Mae West Lips Sofa" (1937), although I miss seeing the harp covered with silverware that he made for his friend Harpo Marx. There are also some choice photographs of "Dali the superstar" engaging in the art of self-promotion. Just showing young readers examples of Dali's artwork is enough to get them interested in the artist, but Wenzel takes pain to explain how Dali created his masterpieces and what he was trying to do with some of these pieces. This is one of the more truly educational books I have seem about a great artist written for young readers.

This book has detailed step by step instructions for beautiful and unique walls and finishes. The pictures accompanying each step make it extremely easy to follow.

My husband and I followed Ms. Davis' directions to create a beautiful new texture for our bathroom walls. When people come to visit they are "wowed" by the unique look we were able to achieve. We are planning to do a second bathroom, following her tips, to achieve a different look than the first.

I highly recommend this book.

I don't know why I like this book so much, but I do.

It's a photo gallery of beautiful tables, with reasonably detailed instructions on how to make each of them. Some are very simple, others too complex for this weekend warrior, but all are fun to view and the different styles used in their construction.

Buy the book, it's worth it if for no other reason than sheer inspiration.

I am an AutoCAD user, as an architect, and a CAD teacher. I have been teaching CAD for many organisation, such Highschool, University (Politecnico di Milano), private design firms. I bought this book when I already was familiar with teaching and using CAD, anyway it gave me new perspectives for organising my work, as a CAD user as well as a CAD teacher. It doesn't give you information about AutoCAD commands (you already have to be familiar with, so if you are an AutoCAD novice wait for buying it till you have basic AutoCAD skills, then buy it!), but it gives really good points on how doing a good use of them. This is why I definitely recommend this book, to people starting organising their CAD work as weel as experienced users.

This book is loaded with hundreds of drawings and photos that show in detail how to create visually effective and convincing artwork.

The first section covers pen-lettered alphabet and construction of san-serif and roman lettering. The second section demonstrates hand-created layout techniques, principles of graphic reproduction, and typography. Section Three gives a detailed explanation of methods of basic printmaking from monoprinting and relief printing to linocutting, screenprinting, and lithography.

The last section of the book covers modelmaking. Although the book is intended primarily for architects, graphic designers, and artists, I found the model-making section to be an invaluable resource in teaching my stage design students how to create high-quality models for theatrical sets. Though computer technology has replaced many previously hand-created techniques, a beautifully executed 3-dimensional model that you can walk around, peer through, and demonstrate in real-life still inspires a special awe, synergy, and universal communication in an audience of viewers or production staff. The model-making section covers in-depth techniques for building a sturdy base, modeling the terrain and creating contours in it, sculpting surfaces, rendering the terrain with realistic finishes, using plaster of paris and papier mache, paper-folding and assembly techniques, use of card and balsa wood, modeling of trees and shrubbery, simulation of people, automobiles, and water, textured finishes, lighting techniques, and use of photos.

I highly recommend this book to those who work with these techniques.