Organise or Die: 88 Illustrations from Rework by 37Signals

Ah, I love my RSS feed. So much useful stuff, in equal amounts to so much crap. I subscribe to about 3 cupcakes blogs (...why?) and all kinds of weird stuff, but I also subscribe to many useful design blogs, which churn up some great stuff.


At the moment I have nearly 2000 unread items on my feed.... you can see why. I may just cleanse the whole list. I'm not ever going to read all that!


Anyway, after my Organise or Die post, Sian Louise from One Last Thing got inspired and made her own To-Do list. This is highly organised of her and I approve. It's even in a pleasing shade of magenta. This is a good thing because it sounds like she's in that Easter phase of her third year... i.e, freak the fuck out, the end is nigh, omg I've got so much to do time of year. I remember it with great fondness. At the time I was in a constant state of mentalness/drunken denial. I have no idea how I got it all done. LISTS, that's how. Lists and Relentless. So so much Relentless. My degree should have been sponsored by it.


To continue with the theme, and other productivity ideas that have been put to us on my Immersion course, I found these great illustrations on my RSS feed, via Swissmiss.

There are from a new book called ReWork, by 37 Signals, which is all about streamlining the Creative business, productivity, what to do, what not to do, etc etc. You know the drill, one of those business self-help books that everyone raves about and I should probably buy. But the illustrations alone are great:

Illustration for the essay "Learning from mistakes is overrated" - This is interesting. I'm constantly being told, and have been all through art education, that making mistakes is how you learn, your best work can come from mistakes, and that sort of thing. But they're saying the opposite here. I think I should read the book to understand it completely, but I know what they're saying - sometimes mistakes aren't acceptable. We shouldn't be so brainwashed to think that they are - mistakes can cost time, and even money, and that's not good. It's ok if you learn from them, but don't expect to make mistakes, and don't think it's your right to.

 Illustration for the essay "Start making something" - This is good, and something that is being drummed into us at Immersion. Instead of procrastinating and worrying what/who you are, what you do, what you make, etc etc, just go and make something. Just go. Stop being afraid of failing and actually start something. 

"No time is no excuse" - Aha, another good one. I'm sooo guilty of this. We all are right? "I haven't got time to exercise, I haven't got time to blog every day, I haven't time to draw every day..." Well I've got time to watch Glee, and 24 and Lost, and all kinds of other things, so I pretty much do. It's more laziness. Damn.

 

"Building to flip is building to flop" - I don't understand this one so much, again I should prb read the book. I just like the hand drawn type, and that it sounds good.

 And so on. I could post them all really, they're great. And some are worth printing out and sticking next to your mac I think. One of those daily reminders.

Remember I was saying in my last post about the talk from Max Fraser, where he had loads of good tips? They were all things like this. We got sent round a hand out which rounded-up (I'm sure that's terrible grammar... round-up in past tense?.... summed up! That's better) which summed up the session, here are a few golden nuggets:

• Get on and do something - do projects for real -  have tangible experience
• Notice what you “have” rather than “don’t have”
• Look at things from different perspectives  -  things haven’t failed just because they didn’t turn out as planned -  they are just not what you expected
• Build “can do” networks including people who believe in you and your idea.
• Find your niche -  whats unique in your process? How can you collaborate, or link different interests, worlds and ideas?
• Success comes through the hard graft, bringing together the nitty gritty with the ambition. So where do you go for your inspiration fixes? What rocks your boat and will keep you going through the tough times?
• Spend time doing what you are selling, creating, writing, producing - nurture and give time to your creative practice, keep it finely tuned, and nourished
• Give “time” to “time” - it is important to slow down sometimes
• Identify, create, go for and seize opportunities…
• Nurture “Luck”
• Always follow up leads
• Make some tasks a regular part of your diary – e.g. each week email 4 new contacts while you are raising your profile, the following week phone them and try and make an appointment.

There were a lot but those are some of the good bits.


P.S, Happy Easter! I'm up here blogging because dad and brothers have put some god-awful football match on (Everton v W.Ham... why... why... they don't support either...) but it's prob only fair because I did watch the Grand Prix for hours earlier. Good one, it was as well.


Did you get lots of nice Eggs? I hit the jackpot... Green & Black's and Lindt. Get in.

Organise or Die

Bit of an ominous Post Title there. I like to be melodramatic. In my Immersion course that I'm doing at St Martins at the moment, a lot of emphasis at the moment is being put on organisation - having lists, priorities, goals, ambitions, and a system in place to record them all so that they can be acheived. I generally use my diary and lists on random bits of paper. But I've been coming across a few things that would make the process entirely more fun, or at least a bit prettier.

First up, these genius Reminder Magnets found via Art At Heart:


Great if you keep bills/random stuff/your entire life stuck to your fridge. Time to bin those awful novelty seaside magnets and put all that important and forgotten stuff under the right magnets! I particularly like the 'fyi' and 'etc' ones the most, as they are the most ambiguous... and thus least useful I suppose, which kind of defeats the object. Whatever, I just like the thought of having a pile of stuff under the title 'etc...' They can be bought from See Jane Work, which is full of other lovely 'I will find a use for this' things like these Day of the Week pegs:


Next, also from Art At Heart (great blog btw, I recommend it), is this rather awesome All in One Wooden Desk Organiser...with iPhone charger! Nifty:

Actual wood with actual charger for actual iPhone. Nice mix of organic and technological. Made to order though... $199. Maybe not eh.

Next is one of my favourites. It's from Erin Vale Design, free printables for Blog Post topics!

Anything DIY is cool in my books. It's a downloadable PDF that you print out and then either just stack up or be a bit adventurous with it - I discovered it via Gingham Cherry and she made this ace little book using it:


Having a blog post schedule is a really good idea and something that I don't adhere to enough. Bloggers like mrYen have got it down to a T - what with his Weekend Goodness and WIP Wednesdays and all that. I don't really have that discipline yet - difficult with a full time job though. But I'm always writing down ideas for blog posts in random places so this is perfect for me, and a step in the right direction! Going to make this this weekend I think, will be nice. The only thing I find is that I have post ideas anywhere - not usually when I'm sitting in front of my computer. So should probably keep them in my bag or something. Although I usually end up noting things down on my phone. Hmmm. When I get an iphone this will all be solved. Atm my 2 year old phone is driving me crazy. Tiiiny screen =/

I saw these in Paperchase and still need to get them. Get The Hint mini sticky notes, I want to use them for bookmarking my magazines etc when I'm in the middle of reading them. And also just for sticking around the house. Or on people's faces.

More fun than actually critically important but still ace. And less than a fiver. Very needed.

On to a much more useful item; a real to-do list. With an octopus. You basically can't get any better. From Shanalogic, the octopus to-do list:

And it's printed on recycled paper! Bonus points all round. I like that it has 'Done' and 'Not yet' boxes... no pressure, like it.

A really good online tool for those who 'don't do paper' is Teux Deux - which is basically To Do in a french accent. How very high brow.


I heard of it a while back now through Swissmiss, who I believe had a part in its creation. This blog explains Teux Deux very well, (which is also where the above image is from), but is beauty is it's simplicity; it's not got loads of gadgety extra bits, it's just a simple list format, with a week to view - type in what you need to get done, and if you don't do it, it gets moved on to the next day. As soon as they do an iphone app, I'll get it. When I have an iphone. Which hopefully will be soooon =/

Last is from See Jane Work again - these cute and slightly sarcastic sticky notes for the office:

I need these a lot at the moment. Especially the 'Do This By' and then the 'Yesterday' box. And Note To Self, that's great. Seriously though, I can see these actually being quite useful around my mac area, being a fan of the overuse of post-its myself. With these I can stick my to-do lists to things like... lightswitches so I remember to do them.
"Blah Blah Blah'. We all need a pile labelled that.

So hopefully one or many of these items will inspire you to get yourself organised a bit. Or just laugh at the lack of organisation you currently have. Either is good. The plan for me next is to develop some kind of planning system for my life. Hopefully using the above things!

How to: Make a Self Promotional Mini Portfolio

There have been various options going round my head of how best to make this sort of thing. I really enjoy bookbinding, even though I've never actually been taught properly how to do it; it wasn't a part of my Uni course at all. But, like most things, that never stopped me. I made all my own sketchbooks in the last 2 years of my course, nothing fancy, just binding them myself when I was all done. Then, for my Seven Sins project, I made a handmade book as the outcome, of which you can see here. I followed a tutorial in Computer Arts, which you can download the PDF of here. It was definitely a trial and error thing, and a labour of love. Came out well but much too time consuming to make 20, or 50 of. Which is about how many I need, to promote myself effectively.

So after a bit of internetting, I decided upon a Concertina book. Seemed the easiest to make and the easiest to alter the contents of, from book to book; this means that I can slightly tailor the insides according to who I'm sending it to and what sort of illustration they commission. Aha.

You can buy books that teach you how to make handmade books, the simplest one I found was Handmade Books: Binding, Folding and Decorating by Heather Weston. Cheap, too. I probably will buy it at some point (I wonder if you can get it at the library..) but as I'm trying to spend as little money as possible here, I just found a tutorial off the internet and made it up as I went along.


Here's how I did it.

1. Learn how a concertina book works.
The websites that I found seemed to make it sound harder than it is. Basically, you need lots of sheets of paper, the same size, folded to make a small flap on each side to glue to the next piece, and so on, until you get one long massive piece of paper that folds together. You then need some hard board, slightly bigger than the area of the paper, to stick to each end, and end papers if you want. That's about it. You can get complicated with spines and all that, but I'm doing simples.

Taken from this website - follow it if you wish, it's not so simples.

I decided that I wanted my book to be A5, landscape - A5 is a good size for a mini portfolio, and I chose landscape because a lot of my work is landcsape; just fits the pages better.

I did a lot of experimenting with scrap paper to figure out how to fold the flaps and where they had to be:

Before I decided to go landscape.It's a lot easier to do this because you can figure out what side the flaps have to be in relation to which side of the paper is getting printed on.

So I decided that the easiest thing for this was to set up an A4 portrait sheet, with the flap folds on the right hand side, of 7mm. Then I could slice each sheet in half once printed to make my A5 landscape ones, and glue together.

2. Set up a document in Indesign/Illustrator to work from.

This is probably the most important step, so spend lots of time getting it right. I used InDesign for this as you can set up the Master pages then just add content from there, but I guess you can also use Illustrator just as easily, with separate layers for each page. Whatevs.

If you click on that image up there you'll be able to see what I did a bit more clearly. Use whatever system you find easiest; this is just one that I understand and know works. Again, experiment with it, print out some test sheets, find out if it all works ok.
Gridlines and margins obviously don't print, so I added tiny dotted lines so I knew where to fold, and where to cut, once it was printed. Image above is without margins etc. Nice.
Experiment with colours and fonts at this stage too. Before you print out 20. Just a heads up.

Once you have the format perfect, save it, and keep it forever - you can change images, add or take away pages etc, but your rules and spacing will always keep it pretty.

3. Start adding content.
This is the fun part.
Add your images and descriptive text, fiddle about with alignment, size, etc. I added a few more rules for myself at this stage, like where to align the text to, etc. It all ends up quite organic though, if you want to ignore your lovely grid, then do. It's what looks best, after all.
Choosing fonts is important - I went with 2, which could even be too many, one more decorative for my website title and one for the descriptive text. I decided a sans serif font was less conspicuous, as a lot of my work already has type in it and I wanted to be as discreet as possible. So Gill Sans saved the day.

4. Print out your pages and start folding.
Start off with printing enough for just one book first, ok. You just don't know if something's gone tits up and you have to reconfigure your creation. Once you've made one from start to finish perfectly, then you can get into assembly line mode and make as many as you need.
So here are all my lovely pages. I figured out while doing this that when assembling single pages like this, your first page's flap needs folding up, the second one needs folding down, and so on. The flap sticks to the underside of the next page, so you'll see why.
Eventually they were all stuck together in a several foot long book of joy. I just used pritt stick (other types of glue stick are available) but a more permanent choice would be double sided tape.

Next I added coloured end pages to each end - just so the hard board has something interesting to stick to. I chose blue because... I like blue.


What the book looks like as you turn each page over.

The front page, with the blue end papers. My hand looks strangely tanned. It's not. I'm as white as a sheet =/
The back, which I'm going to add something to; more later.

It's already pretty lovely, but won't withstand any kind of manual handling.

5. Make it sturdy.
You need some kind of hard board or mounting board for this. These days you can get mounting board in all kinds of colours, which would be a fine choice. I however, wanted to go for the more rustic, grey board look, for reasons you shall find out.

Cut your board so that it's about 1cm larger than your paper on every side. This means that it's all protected inside and has an attractive overhang.

Don't stick the hard board to it yet - we need to decorate it.

This is the back of my portfolio. Before sticking the end paper down, I made 4 slits to hold one of my postcards. This is just so that the recipient has something to stick on their desk/wall too - the dangers of a mini book like this is they get looked at, then put in a drawer. Postcards are more likely to be left in a place where they'll get looked at.

6. Design your cover.
You can do this anyway you like. Draw on it, screenprint it, stamp it. I'm banning glitter though. No no.
What I have decided is to use tracing paper as an overlay onto the card. That way, you can still see the natural colour of the board, but with a layer of plastic-ness. It's a nice juxtaposition, and you can print straight on to tracing paper, if you've got an inkjet printer.

I designed a simple pattern for the front, and decided to just go with my name. I could have done 'Rachel Lewis, Illustrator' or 'portfolio' or something, but I think you need something striking and uncomplicated. This fits in with the rest of my identity (speech bubble, colours).
Cut the corners of the tracing paper and fold round the back of the board - stick down. Don't stick the front, just the underside - that way there's a slight separation from the board and the tracing paper, which I think gives a nice feel.

7. Attach the hard board to the book.
Stick your end papers to the board with something better than glue stick - double sided tape is best, or industrial strength glue. Don't glue your hand to your face.

8. Admire your handiwork.



The one thing to remember about a concertina book is that it will all just fall out into one big line if you're not careful. You can fold it like a book but if you drop one end it'll just concertina out. Of course. So you might decide to seal the pages together, if you feel that's an issue. Make sure you include all your contact details somewhere in or on the book - in my case, I used my business card stamp to stamp the reverse. I'm also going to experiment with paper luggage tags too, as a 'to and from' thing.

9. Make as many as you need and send the bad boys out to prospective clients.
This particular one was made to leave behind at a recent interview I had, at AMV.BBDO. I'm buying more hard board tomorrow and spending this week making ones to send out. Having spare ones at hand to take to interviews/portfolio meetings is a good idea I think. And remember what I said, you can customise each book with different examples of your work in relation to who you are sending it to.

Good luck! And if you make this, please leave a comment telling me how you went with it! :D

Shock horror, my 100th post!

Yay! What a momentous occasion. Although, considering I started this blog on the 16th May 2007 (that's over 2 years ago, completely missed that milestone), 100 posts is pretty terrible going, really. Which would account for my lack of followers and 100s of comments.

However, I am taking this post as a starting point for this blog being bigger and better than it is now. My lack of posting recently is down to a few things - 1) working long hours at my recent placement and never wanting to get in front of another screen at 9pm after looking at one all day and 2) said screen is in fact attached to my ridiculously slow, full up, sad, sorry, vista-based windows laptop that I hate with a passion (don'tdiepleaselaptopIloveyoureally). It takes 15 minutes to start up for god's sake, what a joke. And Firefox has randomly decided to just not open, at all now. So I'm using IE. Which I hate.

Excuses, excuses.

So, I finished my placement at Open yesterday. Which was really sad - didn't want to leave, I really enjoy it there, the work was always varied, it was tough and hard work but at the same time fun and a great environment to work in. (Yesterday I was drawing on the walls, that's not something you do every day.) So hopefully one day I'll get the chance to work with them again, we'll see.

This now means that I am unemployed once again. This has good and bad points, thus:

Good:

• I have more spare time on my hands to start illustration projects, and draw more, and generally create stuff.
• Which means I'll have time to publish said stuff on my website/blog/twitter, and also promote my work more to people I want to work with, and get involved in various projects.
• I can focus on redesigning this blog (which is in desperate need), my website and also my twitter page which is tres dull.
• I don't have to get up at 5,45am for a while (although I didn't actually mind that).
• I can go out on tuesday nights! Oh em gee.
• In fact, I can go out any night, any time, anywhere, I can even bugger off to Paris if I so choose. Because for some random reason, I really want to do that. Like, right now. Paris. Now. Let's go.

Bad:

• Being jobless kinda sucks, I do actually need a reason to get out of bed.
• I have 0 money coming in and with an overdraft as big as mine, and a student loan, and no savings, and no car, I feel pretty worried about that.
• I can't afford to rent anywhere so I'm having to move back to my parent's house in Bedfordshire. This is fine, our house is lovely, except I have very few friends down there. No social life makes Rachel sad in the face.
• No money means no new clothes. No new anything.

And so, I need a plan of action.

1. This starts first of all with buying a Mac. Because with no working computer (yes I'm talking to you, useless laptop) and no photoshop/illustrator, I can't exactly DO anything. I can't even scan a drawing in right now. So like, my illustration career won't exactly get very far if I can't actually illustrate. I think I have just about enough money to cover this, but then I will be well and truly broke.
2. Does anyone know if I can buy a Mac on 0% interest? That would be great right about now.
3. Once I'm back home and unpacked, I can start applying for jobs in and around Birmingham. Which isn't so simple if you're in Bedfordshire. Also, I'll start looking at London properly, as I live only 30 miles away and it's easy to get to.
4. Although, I have plans to move in with my friend up here in the Midlands. If I get a job in London, that's not so good. But needs must. And she doesn't have a job yet either.
5. Simultaneously as all of this, I need to be constantly drawing and illustrating and designing cool stuff to put out there.
6. I then need to make a big list of all the magazines/companies/studios/art directors I want to send my lovely postcards to, and send them out. And expect not to hear anything back, such is the way of the world.
7. I then need to think of cooler self promotional ideas and do that instead.
8. Get some kind of job so I'm not in a pit of despair and I can come back to the Midlands. Ideally this would be in the field of what I want to do, i.e at a design studio or agency, designing, illustrating, thinking conceptually, generating brilliant ideas, you know being awesome. But I also would be fine working in Retail. Honestly. (fashion, only, mind. Paperchase at a push) because I also quite like the idea of Visual Merchandising. I need to look at this further though. I had an interview at Urban Outfitters the other day and I would actually love to work there. I'm not holding out much hope though, apparently they were interviewing 60 people. Omg. I love recessions!
9. Buy Lotus Elise.
10. Hopefully get a few editorial illustration commissions, this is my big major short term goal.
11. Chill out a bit, I haven't had a holiday in over a year so maybe I should just.... relax. If there is such a thing in this current situation.

As you can gather, that's not the greatest formulated plan. I'm at this point where I could go so many ways. Do I just want to try going freelance illustrating, with a standard side job to get me through? Do I want to work as a designer/illustrator in a studio?Do I want to get more into marketing and branding and explore that side of me? Do I want to be a Visual Merchandiser? Should I just get married and be a housewife? (ew. shudders.) Do I want to stay in the Midlands, or go to the bright lights of London, which is nearer home and where I want to be eventually anyway?Should I just run off to New York and start a new life there because I secretly yearn to do that?

Should I just get over this cold first, and figure out how the hell I'm going to get this suitcase on the train?

Answers on a postcard please.

For now, I'm fully intending to blog way more frequently, about way more interesting things other than myself, and a full redesign will appear as soon as I own a shiny iMac. Donations welcome.

Lots of love to my current followers and commenters, you make me happy when I know I'm not talking into the ether.

Thames & Hudson 20: An ongoing post of my humble thoughts and opinions

I found out about this a few weeks back and completely forgot to blog about it, so I'm doing it now. I always spend my money on art books and I don't think that's a bad thing. I won £100 of Amazon vouchers last year and that was immense; got so many good books. However, I want to keep adding to my collection so I'm going to have a look at the books mentioned here and see if I want any. Or all. All would be nice. Seeing as they're a set. Ha.

To celebrate 60 years of Thames & Hudson, they have created a collection of 20 books, each with special edition covers, that encapsulate the range of books that they publish. From their website:

"Thames & Hudson was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their passion and mission for T&H was that its books should reveal the world of art to the general public, to create a ‘museum without walls’ and to make accessible to a broad, non-specialist reading public, at prices it could afford, the research and the findings of top scholars and academics. "

Which is pretty much exactly what they've done. They always publish really interesting books and I'm excited about this collection, they've picked some great books and some that I haven't heard of, and it's making me itch to 'complete the set' as it were. All of these have been previously released in 'normal mode' but they've just decided to give them all a unifying cover design so they function as a set. I'll post all the titles in the range, probably tell you if i'm interested in it, go check it out in the library soon-ish, update with a lil' review, then tell you if I buy it. Right now I can't comment on the design/layout as I haven't seen most of them so that'll get mentioned too.

So this is what I'm calling a 'live' post - definitely leave comments as I go along guys, if you've got any of these books, would be nice to have a little collective of opinions. I'll blog on the main page whenever I have anything new to say on this post.

That sounds like a plan. A very long plan. Er.... Let's have a look....

1. Henry Moore's Sheep Sketchbook.
Apparently, Henry Moore liked to draw sheep. Well, why not, I say. If you're really into Henry Moore then this will probably be quite a nice purchase, reproductions of artist's sketchbooks usually are quite interesting and insightful. Probably not one that I'll rush to buy though. I'll see if it's in the library (I'll bet it is) and see what it's like. Amazon link.


2. Concepts of Modern Art by Nikos Stangos
I quite like having books like this - something to dip in and out of and refer to every so often. I'm quite a fan of some (not all) modern art movements and find the theories and concepts behind them really interesting. (See my Futurism post) so I'll definitely check this one out. Amazon link.


3. The Shock of The New: Art and the Century of Change by Robert Hughes
For some reason there's no link to this on the Thames & Hudson website - there's 2 and then there's 4. Look. So you'll just get the Amazon link. Reading the reviews on there, this seems like a really good book - I'll definitely buy this one I think. I lack 'general art' books, as I'd call this. Amazon link.


4. Colour and Culture by John Gage
This is basically a big book on colour theory. While interesting and actually quite relevant to my work, I never really read much on colour theory during my course. Possibly should have. I just find the idea a bit dull... I'll have a flick through this, and unless it's amazing I doubt I'll be rushing to get it. I may be proven wrong; I might suddenly love the whole idea of colour theory. Who knows. Let's find out. Amazon link.

5. The Book of Kells: An Illustrated Introduction to the Manuscript

This doesn't really interest me at all to be honest. Maybe it's the religous aspect to it, or the fact that I don't love medieval art. I recognise how important manuscripts have been in shaping books and art in general, but to be honest, this just doesn't float my boat. It's probably nice to flick through, and I'm sure some people would love this kind of thing, but I don't. Amazon link.


6. The Body: Photoworks of the Human Form by William A. Ewing
I don't actually own any photography books - I should do, I'm sure. This one sounds fairly interesting - different photographers through the ages depicting the body in various ways and meanings. Could be cool. I'll let you know.

7. Derek Jarman's Garden
I definitely want to take a good look at this one. The premise sounds awesome: "It is a fitting memorial to a brilliant and greatly loved artist and film maker who, against all odds, made a breathtakingly beautiful garden in the most inhospitable of places – the flat, bleak, often desolate expanse of shingle overlooked by the Dungeness nuclear power station." What an amazing concept. I love the idea of new things growing from death and desolation, this book documents the growing process of the garden and I bet it's fascinating. Actually my mum would probably like this, she's very much into gardening. Actually, gardening has suddenly got really 'cool' recently - even the fash pack are doing it - which amuses me slightly. It's not exactly a bad thing though, us young, trendy people should be interested in nature and plants and growing your own vegetables and pretty things. This is a tangent. Back to the books.


8. The Renaissance Complete by Margaret Aston
All about the Renaissance, basically. Can't really say a lot until I have a look. I'm not rushing out the buy it though - the renaissance was arguably the most important period in history for art and culture but I'm not sure if I could take a whole book of it.

9. Sensation: Young British Artists from The Saatchi Collection
This could be good. I don't know a lot about the exhibition this book is centered around, which was called 'Sensations' and ran in the early ninties; showcased artists like Tracy Emin, Damien Hirst, Rachel Whiteread, all of who are terribly famous now. But as I was probably about 6 when this exhibition was running I'm sure I can be excused. I'll reserve judgement because I have strong feelings about some 'modern art' but then love others. Tracy Emin's tent I though was actually quite good. The unmade bed though, oh dear. Apparently this exhibiton was quite important to British art so this book should hopefully educate me a bit. Innit.

10. The Complete Zaha Hadid
So this is the first book that I've found inside spread images on Amazon. I'm not hugely into architecture - too technically and maths based for me. So I can't imagine I'll look much at this really. From what I can see, her building designs look quite interesting, but yeah. It's architecture. I'm not really an architecture girl unless I'm looking at some kind of Georgian/Victorian features. The most I can say is 'Ooo I like that, that's nice'. I stick to 2D designs.


11. Lives of the Great Modern Artists by Edward Lucie-Smith
This on the other hand, looks great; I love reading about the background of artists that inspire me. Hopefully it's more than just a collection of run of the mill biographies - a bit of a deeper insight into the way that these 'great modern artists' think and operate would be really tasty.


12. William Blake: The Complete Illuminated Books
Ah, good ol' Will B. He's a bit of a staple of my humble literary/artistic state school education. Definitely worth a look, this one. "This edition, produced together with The William Blake Trust, contains all the pages of Blake’s twenty or so illuminated books reproduced in true size, an appendix with all Blake’s text set in type and an introduction by the noted Blake scholar, David Bindman." Nice one.

13. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the lost techniques of the Old Masters by David Hockney
Quite an interesting premise this one, I can't really explain it better than this: "Secret Knowledge created an international sensation when it was published in 2001. David Hockney’s enthralling story of how some of the great works of Western art were created with the help of mirrors and lenses and how the optical look came to dominate painting attracted major media attention around the world and generated intense debate in the fields of science and art history." I'll have a look at this one excitedly; in fact it might even go on my 'to buy' list. (Which is extensive). It sounds a fascinating read, I don't know a lot about the old Masters aside from who they are and their most famous pieces of work. Everyone knows they are geniuses... uncovering exactly how they produced the stunning artworks that they did, especially with David Hockney doing it, sounds awesome.

14. The Mind in the Cave: Consciousness and the Origins of Art by David Lewis-Williams
Cave painting, many would say, is the first example of illustration in human history. I'd tend to agree with that. Illustration is essentially either story telling or depicting an idea, which is what cave paintings generally did - before letterforms and written language were developed. So this could be a useful one for me, it definitely makes me curious.

15. Wonders of World Architecture by Neil Parkyn
Well, it's an architecture book, and as previously mentioned, I don't dig this. I'm sure it'll be pretty to look at with some breathtaking feats of engineering and the like, but, you know, I'm just not that interested =/ As all the other books in this series though, I'll give it the once over when I find it. It might be awesome, who am I to judge? I feel a bit guilty for not getting over excited about building design. I don't do 3D, ok.

16. Manolo Blahnik Drawings by Anna Wintour
This on the other hand, is first on my list. I love Manolo Blahnik shoes... of course I don't own any but they are definitely some of my favourite elaborant shoe designs and his drawings are just amazing. So fluid, and dramatic, and just uber everything. Maximalism at it's best. As most people know I do love a bit of high fashion and couture (from afar) and fashion illustration is so exciting to me. It's strange because I don't actually do much fashion illustration even though fashion is really important to me =/ Probably something to do with the fact I still can't draw figures as well as I should. Sort it out Rach. Oh, and the foreword is written by Anna Wintour, who is a fashion legend. She's who they based Devil Wears Prada on. Awesome.

17. Sneakers: The Complete Collectors' Guide by Unorthodox Style
If you're into 'sneakers' (or trainers, as we like to call them over here) then this looks pretty sweet. I'll bet it's fun to look at even if you're not obsessed with casual footwear. I'll give this more than 2 minutes of my time for sure, but probably wouldn't buy it. I'm more of a heels girl. See no.16.

18. Factory Records: The Complete Graphic Album
Even the title of this makes me wee a bit. This book looks immense. Everyone knows how awesome and influential Factory Records were in the 80's (was it 80's? I'm pretty sure), and this book is full of album covers, poster designs, everything visually tasty from the legendary record label. This is also high on my list - I'm a sucker for music design of every kind and can't believe I never knew about this book until now.

19. The Proms: A New History
Er. I'd be lying if I said I'd ever watched the proms. Not really one for me, this book. I'll give it a browse but it's probably aimed at someone who is a bit more interested than I am. Oh how uncultured of me.

20. Street Sketchbook by Tristan Manco
Hurrah! The one book I own in this collection :) I can actually tell you my actual opinions about it now, actually. The author, Tristan Manco, did a lecture at my Uni, Wolverhampton a while back, I mention it here, really interesting; he's actually a graduate of my Uni so isn't that cool. He's a bit obsessed with graffiti and street art and has become a bit of an authority on it, going all over the world and talking to the artists who make it happen. The main reason why I love this book is because it has rounded corners - it feels like an oversized moleskine. Which is a bit exciting to a strange person like me. And the cover feels nice. Haha. But honestly, this is a great book because it's split into two halves - one half is 'street', images of the graffiti in situ, and the other half is 'sketchbook', all the sketches and initial doodlings and ideas from these artists, which is my favourite half. I love seeing sketchbooks from any kind of artist, but graffiti artists in particular because there's no preconceptions, (and often no observational drawings) just purely what comes out of their heads. It's a great book and I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in visual communications, not just graffiti art.

What an epic post!

(All the images are just copied and pasted off Amazon btw, I don't own them.)

Lastly, I can't round up without featuring the Limited Edition cover design. I think it's brilliant, really subtle but ties all 20 books together so well. The idea of having this semi-transparent layer over the top of the original covers, with the number of the book in black bold - looks really good. I love how all of the numbers are there, faded out in grey, then just the ones that are needed are picked out; they never move from book to book, it's just the correct numbers that are picked out in black. And it doesn't feel like it interfers with the original cover too much - repeating the title over the top in the same type and positioning on every book helps bring the series together visually, and it makes it easier to read which is a bonus. Nice one, I can't really fault it. I want to see one in real life now. Off I go...