Designers Books

Tickle Tales is just a wonderfully fun and adventurous tale of two very lovable characters. Gabriella the Gorilla and Molly the Mouse make an unusual pair but become great friends - I just love them and so do my children.

I would recommend this book for sure!!
The illustrations are amazing too. My kids keep going back to the book over and over again!!

Eight color photos do more than display Tiffany lamps, as other titles do: they have been polled from thousands of lamps with hundreds of designs to show the differences in shade patterns and complexity. A lovely display of colors and patterns is accompanied by clear description and artistic and collector value insights. "Tiffany By Design" is an outstanding reference and a welcome addition to personal, professional, academic, and community library Antiques & Collectibles reference collections.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

An extremely lucid and entertaining manual on a subject that can be tedious. Humorously illustrated by the author, it includes a good summary of pitfalls in the design process. This book can go a long towards meeting design deadlines, while still having a life outside the design studio.

For music-heads Norwegian Kim Hiorthøy is probably best known for the cover design for the Rune Grammofon label and videos and covers for the Motorpsycho band. "Tree Weekend" is a beautiful full-colour book with photos, sketches and other graphics. Playful and highly personal indeed. Recommended.

It's now time to tell Chenille's story. After losing her husband and her newborn son, her whole focus has been spent on Garments of Praise. She tries to not let the pain of being alone get to her. Then she meets Sergio, a doctor at a hospital where she frequently visits. Their relationship begins to grow to where Chenille begins to imagine a possible future. But then his ex-girlfriend who also happens to be a former client of Chenille's comes back into the future. And then a message from Chenille's deceased husband suddenly pops up. What exactly is God trying to tell her?

This was another fun book to read. I've been waiting to read Chenille's story after reading the rest of other books in the series. I wasn't disappointed. Her relationship with Sergio is like a roller coaster ride with lots of bums and turns and drops. The scene involving the hospital and a kiss had be going me grimacing and going "Oh no". It was a fun ride though. I liked the blogs that both Chenille and her husband had. It was like reading into their own personal minds and hearts. It as very sad reading Chenille's late husband's blogs especially the one he wrote into the "future." Her response to his blog entry is equally touching. I also liked seeing how Megan transformed throughout the entire series. She's really the fifth character because she shows up throughout all the books affecting each of the main characters. I felt her transformation was genuine because with each book she would lose the cattiness and vindictiveness she had from the first book. With this book she because a completely different character one that is now likable. The only negative I saw with this book was that there wasn't as much fashion talk as there had been in the other books. Of course I realized that Chenille is more on the business side of the company than the designers but I missed hearing about it. I'm sad though that the series is over. I wish that there could be more stores about Garments of Praise because I enjoyed reading about Christian fashion designers who can compete with the secular design world. And also since the books were multi-cultural they reached out to everyone. Highly recommended.

"The War has raged for years The high-tech ammo is almost gone. High-tech equipment is failing, piece by piece, with no spares to fix it. The front lines are held by a few grim, desperate soldiers.
"The US 5th Division holds the line in Poland. Now, a Soviet encirclement has cut it off in a province ruled by ambitious warlords, local militias, and bands of marauding deserters. HQ is 200 klicks to the rear and powerless.

"Your last order sets you free...

"Good Luck. You're on your own." ...from the cover

In the mid-Eighties, a bold new role playing game was introduced. Twilight: 2000 was perfect for its time: The Reagan Era, when it seemed that conflict was always around the corner for the United States and the Soviet Union. Conflicts had flared up in numerous places during the Cold War, but Europe was always the presumed scene of Armageddon. The designers went with that assumption, but turned it on its head.

"When we first published Twilight: 2000 in 1984, we suggested that a general European war might come not from a Soviet invasion of Europe, but rather from Soviet preoccupation elsewhere [a war with China] coupled with sudden German reunification. While the prospect of German reunification appeared to be a fantasy at the time (and many critics singled it out as a particularly unrealistic aspect of the game), by the time the original second edition was published German Unification was imminent, and it has since become a reality." ...Designer's Notes

Indeed, the game was always running from its shadow. World events tortured the T2 timeline. By the time the second edition was introduced in 1990, the face of Europe had changed, and the Soviet Union was marching into history. The 2nd edition -- blessed with a much-needed re-writing of the rules -- attempted to repair the timeline. But the book had scarcely made it to the publisher, when events had already made the new timeline obsolete. This problem was permanently solved in the 2.2 edition (1993), by fixing a "departure point" from our world's history, a tactic used in the alternate history novels by Harry Turtledove and others. In 1995, as the world was going to war in the game, GDW went out of business.

Twilight: 2000 is far from obsolete. Some fascinating campaign examples show the versatility of the rules system:

A traditional Europe campaign using the 2.2 timeline

Travelling through post-holocaust America... "Howling Wilderness"

A non-WWIII game using the 2nd edition sourcebook Merc: 2000 and additional background from the Millennium's End game.

A historical campaign set during World War II or enmeshed in the Spanish Conquest of the New World.

Wayne Gralian
Wayne's World of Books / Krakow RPGs

I needed a website for my new business and found this book to be both well written and extremely useful. Before I read this book, I knew next to nothing about web sites and the internet. I certainly didn't know how to go about hiring a web designer or planning out a proper web site that has the most potential to make my business profitable. This book has taught me all that. There were a couple of sections that had information I didn't really need but all-in-all I was very pleased. The bottom line is that I followed most of the book's suggestions and I now have a very professional-looking web site that is built properly, with marketing in mind, and that has already started to get some traffic and sales!

Works with a plan in mind, a scheme which is carried through beginning with a scale drawing, and then maneuvering the pieces and elements around to achieve the style and effect desired.

Proceeds to discussion of color and lighting and window effects, then to a room-by-room decorating helps and aids. This is particualarly helpful, as focuses attention on area(s) where one is. Even addresses those odd areas as corridors and landings and ends with a nice section on the various period styles.

Director of Insight Marketing and People Peter Cheverton presents Understanding Brands, a no- nonsense guide to what brands are, what they can do for one's business, and how to use branding as an effective business strategy. Chapters discuss the numerous positive aspects of a brand: as an expression of personality, a mark of loyalty, or as evidence of a unique competitive advantage. Valuable and tested strategies for brand management are outlined, followed by a brief summary of advertising basics. Understanding Brands is an excellent basic primer which is especially recommended for small business owners and novice marketers.

First some background. I'm a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction Design at Indiana University, School of Informatics. I've been teaching interaction design and instructional design since 1973. Kees Dorst has written 175 one page essays (he calls them 'reflections') on all aspects of design. Here's a sample: Design Problems, Elements of Design, Thinking about Design, On Designers, Head Heart Hand, Design Teams, Design and Society, Design Debates, and so on. Under each of these headings are the essays. So, for example, under the topic Head Heart Hand, he has reflections titled: Involvement, Empathy, The Quality Without a Name, and Motorcycle Maintenance. Some of the essays are practical; others are philosophical. Each is profound.

My copy of the "red book" (the first edition, hard bound, with 150 reflections) is totally marked up and highlighted. Almost everywhere do I agree with his sensibilities.

I've given this book to first year master's students -- they didn't get it. The strength of the essays is fully realized by someone who has "been there" and struggled with these issues. Thus, I'd recommend this book not as a first-book on design, but for someone who has struggled with these concepts and wants to read a coherent reflection on each. In our program, we use it as a second year supplementary text.

Warning: don't read these reflections one after another as if you're reading a novel or a technical book. Each essay is to be savored like a fine piece of chocolate. Thank you, Kees, and I'm eager to read your 25 new reflections.