Blog

Category: News

The Future of Publishing?

by Dan
News / March 17, 2010

This video from UK publisher Dorling Kindersley is rather wonderful (make sure you watch until the end):

---

Calligraffiti

by Dan
Art & Photography / March 17, 2010

If, like me, you're interested in graffiti, street art, hand-drawn lettering and calligraphy, then you might well get a kick out of this video of Niels Shoe Meulman preparing his Calligraffiti show in Amsterdam. The video was directed by Marco Grambia & Sven Super with music by Musicmusic:

Here are some books on street art available from Raincoast that you might be interested in:

Guerilla Art

Sebastian Peiter and Goetz Werner

Guerilla Art features interviews with graffiti-inspired street art pioneers Futura Ramm:ell:zee and Blek le Rat in which they discuss their own work, how street art was born out of the days of subway train graffiti spraypainting and tagging and how the new movement of street artists are doing things differently.

Rackgaki

Ryo Sanada and Suridh Hassan

Rackgaki covers the graffiti scene in Japan and showcases the creativity within this new and relatively unexplored form of contemporary Japanese art and illustrates the work of the major artists or writers working in Japan today.

 

 

Stickerbomb and Stickerbomb 2

Studio Rarekwai

Stickers are an essential part of the street art movement. Inexpensive and easy to produce, they act as a kind of informal business card for some graffiti writers, and a quick and effective promotional tool for many artists and illustrators.

The Stickerbomb books are collectable, fully-peelable sticker books featuring illustration, graffiti, and graphics. Both are filled with amazing collections of over 250 specially commissioned stickers by artists, illustrators, and graffiti writers from around the world.

 

 

Street Sketchbook: Inside the Journals of International Street and Graffiti Artists

Tristan Manco

From the leading authority on the graffiti and street art scenes, Street Sketchbook provides an exclusive look at the private sketchbooks of 65 international street artists, including Canadian artists TurfOne (Montreal), Royal (Ottawa), Luke Ramsey (Victoria) and Labrona (Ottawa).

 

Subway Art: 25th Anniversary Edition

Martha Cooper and Henry Chalfant

The 25th Anniversary Edition of the seminal Subway Art is a large-scale, deluxe format hardcover, with 70 additional photographs and a fresh introduction and afterword. A book for collectors and the curious, it illustrates the passion, creativity, and resourcefulness of unlikely kids inventing an art form destined to spread worldwide and spawn the present-day street art movement.

(Calligraffiti video via Thinking Type on Twitter)

---

Natural Houses

by Dan
Architecture + Environment / March 17, 2010

For architects Arthur Andersson and Chris Wise, the fundamental elements that give buildings meaning are found in nature and Natural Houses: The Residential Architecture of Andersson-Wise presents seven exquisitely crafted homes by this Austin, Texas-based firm.

Filling everyday activities with poetry and awe, their designs address both pragmatic needs and the psychological yearning for refuge and contemplation, centering and escape, joy and comfort. 

Here's a sneak preview of the work featured in the book:

---

Graphic Design: A User’s Manual

by Dan
Design & Typography / March 16, 2010

Graphic Design: A User's Manual by Adrian Shaughnessy guides students, new designers, and pros through the complexities of current graphic design practice and thinking.

Set out in an A-Z style and written in a  conversational way, it provides useful advice on the stuff that designers face in real life every single day.

The book was recently reviewed by Liam Crean (a real life designer at Embloc!) at the awesome FormFiftyFive design blog:

It wasn’t love at first sight. I mean I liked the way it was presented, the mono-spaced type, alphabetically organised topics and the super-simple colour-plan, but I was expecting a more diversely populated reference manual—more like a design dictionary. Look up ‘invoices’, get a list of best practices. Look-up ‘bleed’, find some hard and fast rules. Look-up ‘book cover design’, get a winning formula. But this is not a how-to guide as such, nor is it conventional in the way it’s written. However those are the exact reasons why I’m really starting to like it. It’s a conversational directory of experiences, ideas and discussion themes. Instead of telling you what’s best and what isn’t, it draws on the vast and enviable experience of the author to describe those daily situations you find yourself in and offers another point of view... It’s a bit like consulting your favourite tutor, a helpful creative director, or the artworker at your preferred printer.

And, here's a neat video of author Adrian Shaughnessy (who also wrote the super useful How to be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul) talking about why he wrote the book:

---

Cartographies of Time

by Dan
Art & Photography + Design & Typography / March 16, 2010

How do you draw time? What does history look like?

Cartographies of Time by Anthony Grafton and Daniel Rosenberg is a fascinating history of visual representations of time in Europe and the United States from 1450 to the present. Beautifully illustrated, the book features a wide variety of timelines and maps from medieval manuscripts and contemporary websites.

Here are a few of the incredible images from the book:

There is a short review of Cartographies of Time at Book Forum.

---

Market Day Reviewed at The Torontoist

by Dan
Graphica / March 16, 2010

In James Sturm's new hisotrical graphic novel, Market Day, Mendleman, a proud artisan, has his life turned upside when he can no longer sell his expensive quality rugs.

Dave Howard has reviewed the book for the Books@Torontoist website:

Sturm’s style is economic and simple... But what is drawn is very expressive. [It] has evolved to use body language and objects to convey the characters’ feelings: Mendleman’s hat, the way it sits way high up at the back of his crown; the folds of a leather boot on a merchant’s table; the different caricature drawings of minor characters, with pushed-in noses, long faces, round eyes as dots, all very simple, but evocative. The economic use of colour stands out. There is a fantastical atmosphere – despite the starkness of the drawing style, there is a sense of the unreal.

James Sturm will be attending TCAF May 8th and 9th at the Toronto Reference Library.

Read a preview of Market Day here (PDF).

---

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls Book Trailer!

by Danielle
Fiction + Film / March 15, 2010

How cool is this? Quirk has done it again. Here is the much anticipated book trailer for PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: DAWN OF THE DREADFULS!!

Here are some photos from the makers of the movie

Can't get enough? Here's the one from SENSE AND SENSIBILITY AND SEA MONSTERS

---

Doug Wright 2010 Finalists

by Dan
Graphica / March 15, 2010

The 15 finalists for this year’s Doug Wright Awards were announced on Friday in Toronto.

Founded in 2004 to celebrate the finest in English-language comics and graphic novels in Canada, The Doug Wright Awards are now some of the most important awards for comics in North America.

Selecting work released in 2009, this year’s nominees were chosen by a panel that included comics historian and author Jeet Heer, filmmaker Jerry Ciccoritti, cartoonist Chester Brown, Walrus comics blogger Sean Rogers, and writer and Sequential.ca publisher Bryan Munn.

The 2010 finalists represent "the finest, most thought-provoking work produced by Canada’s vibrant comics community." 

The Doug Wright Awards finalists for Best Book are:

• Back + Forth by Marta Chudolinska (The Porcupine's Quill)
• George Sprott: (1894-1975) by Seth (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Hot Potatoe by Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Kaspar by Diane Obomsawin (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Red: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Douglas and McIntyre)

The finalists for Best Emerging Talent are:

• Adam Bourret, I’m Crazy
• Michael DeForge, Lose #1 (Koyama Press), Cold Heat Special #7 (Picturebox)
• Pascal Girard, Nicolas (Drawn and Quarterly)
• John Martz It's Snowing Outside. We Should Go For a Walk.
• Sully, The Hipless Boy (Conundrum Press)

The finalists for the 2010 Pigskin Peters Award (for unconventional, “nominally-narrative” comics) are:

• Bébête Simon Bossé (L’Oie de Cravan)
• Dirty Dishes by Amy Lockhart (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Hot Potatoe by Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly)
• Never Learn Anything From History by Kate Beaton
• The Collected Doug Wright Volume One by Doug Wright (Drawn and Quarterly)

The winners will be chosen by a jury that has in the past included cartoonists, writers, actors, directors, musicians and politicians. The 2010 Doug Wright Awards ceremony will take place on Sat. May 8, at 7 pm at the Toronto Reference Library as part of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival.

(And while I am obviously cheering for all things D+Q, YAY! KATE BEATON!)

---

Celebrate St. Patrick’s Day ... Without Green Beer!

by Siobhan
Food & Drink / March 12, 2010

Ireland is fast emerging as one of the world's hottest culinary destinations. It makes sense: the country is filled with amazing artisanal bakers, farmers, cheesemakers, and more. Add to that a gorgeous landscape and some of the friendliest people on Earth -- and you can see why the whole world wants to raise a glass of Guiness to the Emerald Isle every year on March 17th.

So for St. Patrick's Day this year, why not ditch the green beer, and celebrate in true Irish style?

The Country Cooking of Ireland is a beautiful big cookbook, which will be sure to inspire you to put away the green food colouring for good. And OK, you're still allowed to wear your "Kiss me, I'm Irish!" apron while cooking. :)

FineCooking.com has excerpted a few recipes for you to sample:

• Irish Stew
• Colcannon
• Dingle Pies (pictured here)

There's a recipe for Corned Beef with Parsley Sauce on the Chronicle Books blog.

The Chicago Tribute also posted a recipe for something I'd never even heard of (or thought possible!): leek and oatmeal soup.

According to the author, Colman Andrews, the recipe he included in The Country Cooking of Ireland is "a modern version of the famous soup, also called brotchan (or brochan or brothchan) roy, or ‘the king's soup,' that is said to have been the favorite dish of Ireland's celebrated sixth-century spiritual and literary icon, St. Columkille. It is … quite possibly the oldest traditional Irish dish for which it is possible to reconstruct a recipe." Sounds intriguing!

---

Passionate about food? Win a Moleskine Passions Recipe Journal from Foodista.com!

by Siobhan
Contests + Food & Drink + Gift & Stationery / March 11, 2010

What was your favourite thing your grandma baked for you as a child? Does your dad make brilliant BBQ? Does your best friend make a mean guacamole?

Moleskine and Foodista.com want you to share your favourite recipes passed down from friends and family. In the spirit of sharing, they're giving away a set of Moleskine notebooks, including the new Moleskine Passions Recipe Journal.

For all the details and to enter the contest, visit Foodista.com

 

P.S. Also be sure to check out the other titles in the Moleskine Passions series - and watch the fun video trailers for each book!

---

Page 1 of 79 pages  1 2 3 >  Last »