What's the most fun way to add new creative touches to your living space? As followers of Laure Farion's brand PapierPapierPapier know, the answer is paper! Here are 15 stylish, joyful paper projects to decorate every room in the house. Take advantage of paper's inexpensive charms and Laure's lighthearted designs to make your spaces more stylish, more creative, and more colorful. With this book, your favorite papers, and a few basic household items like scissors and a ruler, you can add beautiful touches to the kitchen, the kids' rooms, adults' bedrooms, the office, and even the yard or balcony. Make a paper headboard for your bed and a sweet coin bank for the kids' room; create a cuckoo clock or an amazing paper houseplant. A tropical cabin nestled in a potted fern? Why not! Every craft lover will find that with these 15 basic patterns, and Laure's tips and tricks for getting the 3-D effects just the way you want them, the paper-crafting future is unlimited.
The idea of the book was central throughout the western European and the eastern Mediterranean world in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. From the beginning, the word for 'book'--sefer in Hebrew, biblia in Greek, and liber in Latin--was identified with sacred writings--the Holy Scriptures of Jews and Christians, who were known as 'people of the book'. The centrality of the book to medieval thought is reflected materially in the countless images of books that appear in the manuscripts of the era, be they in the most treasured, highly decorated, sacred texts or in devotional and secular works as well. In Penned & Painted, Lucy Freeman Sandler, one of one of the world's most respected authorities on medieval art, takes us on a personal but highly insightful exploration of some of the British Library's most precious manuscript holdings and describes the many uses and meanings of these 'books in books'. Through the fascinating face-to-face discovery of 60 manuscripts, she investigates the various types and forms of books as depicted in the era. Penned & Painted is presented in full-color throughout and includes a high number of images specially photographed for this volume.
This comprehensive guide to pop-up design and paper mechanics is a delightful introduction to the intriguing aspects of a fascinating craft. This new and accessible approach to pop-up theory and practice distills the numerous mechanisms into a logical set of 18 underlying shapes and explains the techniques for building these shapes.
A history of one of humankind's most resilient and influential technologies over the past millennium--the book. Revelatory and entertaining in equal measure, Portable Magic will charm and challenge literature lovers of all kinds as it illuminates the transformative power and eternal appeal of the written word. Stephen King once said that books are "a uniquely portable magic." Here, Emma Smith takes readers on a literary adventure that spans centuries and circles the globe to uncover the reasons behind our obsession with this captivating object. From disrupting the Western myth that the Gutenberg Press was the original printing project, to the decorative gift books that radicalized women to join the anti-slavery movement, to paperbacks being weaponized during World War II, to a book made entirely of plastic-wrapped slices of American cheese, Portable Magic explores how, when, and why books became so iconic. It's not just the content within a book that compels; it's the physical material itself, what Smith calls "bookhood" the smell, the feel of the pages, the margins to scribble in, the illustrations on the jacket, its solid heft. Every book is designed to influence our reading experience--to enchant, enrage, delight, and disturb us--and our longstanding love affair with books in turn has had direct, momentous consequences across time.
This volume presents a nuanced exploration of how illustrated magazines shaped global visual culture between 1910 and 1970. In the early to mid-twentieth century, the vast majority of printed photographs appeared in the pages of illustrated magazines. Publications such as Life, China Pictorial, Drum, Picture Post, and Ebony did more than showcase photographs; they crafted visual narratives by combining images, text, and graphics into influential cultural artifacts. These periodicals shaped public perception and mass media consensus like the Internet does today, bringing a shared visual experience to homes and newsstands around the world. The essays in this volume delve into the technologies and visual strategies behind these publications, showing how their layouts were affected by political, commercial, editorial, and artistic factors leading up to World War II. The commentaries also explore how democracy, dictatorships, colonization, and modernity at large gave rise to experimental magazine designs, turning avant-garde art and lifestyle reporting into popular formats. Featuring over 150 images, Print Matters traces how illustrated magazines evolved across countries and continents, offering new insights into their history and enduring impact on culture and society.
Robert Hunter Middleton (1898-1985) was one of the most prolific American type designers of the twentieth century. He eventually claimed twenty-six original typefaces as his own designs, eight of them issued in series. The commercial and industrial context for this achievement is described in an earlier Opifex volume, Chicago Modernism & the Ludlow Typograph, also by Paul F. Gehl.
The Designer-Craftsman Speaks presents us with something deeper - Middleton's own thoughts about the craft dimension of design. Its title reflects his conviction that the best design work was informed by centuries of craft tradition in creating letterforms and texts. In his view, typography, design, and craftsmanship were intimately related.
Most of Middleton's writings were occasional. This anthology offers the only substantial collection of his prose to date, including unpublished pieces - notes, memoranda, talks, lectures, drafts - and finally gives a voice to this influential designer half a century after the last of his typefaces appeared.
Accompanied by more than one hundred images, many not previously seen outside the archives of the Newberry Library - advertisements, historical material, type specimens, photographs, and examples of Middleton's own work.
Includes a personal reminiscence by Raymond Stanley Nelson, punchcutter and typefounder, to whom Middleton was friend and early mentor.
111 images, color throughout. Includes an Index.
A history of libraries and the people who built them, from the ancient world to the digital age
"Engaging [and] ambitious" (The Washington Post) The history of the library is rich, varied, and stuffed full of incident. In The Library, historians Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen introduce us to the antiquarians and philanthropists who shaped the world's great collections, trace the rise and fall of literary tastes, and reveal the high crimes and misdemeanors committed in pursuit of rare manuscripts. In doing so, they reveal that while collections themselves are fragile, often falling into ruin within a few decades, the idea of the library has been remarkably resilient as each generation makes--and remakes--the institution anew. "The Library proves that truth is more intriguing than fiction...Full of charismatic individuals and astonishing facts."―The Times (London)
This fascinating and bizarre collection compiles the most unusual, obscure books from the far reaches of the human imagination throughout history.
From the author of the critically acclaimed bestsellers The Phantom Atlas and The Sky Atlas comes a unique and beautifully illustrated journey through the history of literature. The Madman's Library delves into its darkest territories to hunt down the oddest books and manuscripts ever written, uncovering the intriguing stories behind their creation.
Books written in blood and books that kill, books of the insane and books that hoaxed the globe, books invisible to the naked eye and books so long they could destroy the Universe, books worn into battle and books of code and cypher whose secrets remain undiscovered. Spell books, alchemist scrolls, wearable books, edible books, books to summon demons, books written by ghosts, and more all come together in the most curiously strange library imaginable. From the Qur'an written in the blood of Saddam Hussein, to the gorgeously decorated fifteenth-century lawsuit filed by the Devil against Jesus, to the most enormous book ever created, The Madman's Library features many long-forgotten, eccentric, and extraordinary volumes gathered from around the world and features hundreds of remarkable images and entertaining facts and stories to discover.MUST-HAVE FOR BOOKLOVERS: Anyone who appreciates a good read will love delving into this weird world of books and adding this collection to their own bookshelf.
DISCOVER SOMETHING TRULY UNIQUE: The Madman's Library will let you in on the secret and obscure histories of the strangest books ever made. EXPERT AUTHOR: Edward Brooke-Hitching is the son of an antiquarian book dealer, a lifelong rare book collector, and a master of taking visual deep dives into unusual historical subjects, such as the maps of imaginary geography in The Phantom Atlas or ancient pathways through the stars in The Sky Atlas.Perfect for:
Illuminated with illustrations, an exploration of medieval manuscript production that offers insight into both the early history of the book and life in the Middle Ages. This book takes the reader on an immersive journey through medieval manuscript production in the Latin Christian world. Each chapter opens with a lively vignette by a medieval narrator--including a parchment maker, scribe, and illuminator--introducing various aspects of manuscript production. Sara J. Charles poses the question "What actually is a scriptorium?" and explores the development of the medieval scriptorium from its early Christian beginnings through to its eventual decline and the growth of the printing press. With the written word at the very heart of the Christian monastic movement, we see the immense amount of labor, planning, and networks needed to produce each manuscript. By tapping into these processes and procedures, The Medieval Scriptorium helps us to experience medieval life through the lens of a manuscript maker.
An exploration of a significant art: type designing.
The twentieth century saw many developments in printing techniques and how fonts were made. Beginning with cold metal type at the start of the century, the industry moved to hot metal type, phototypesetting, and finally digitization. In each phase, certain type designers excelled in harnessing the latest techniques to create beautiful, innovative, and functional new fonts.
Against a background story of the evolution of technology, the role of the designer, the rise of the advertising agency, and the changing function of the printer, this book explores thirty-eight key type designers, how they worked, the fonts they designed, and their lasting influence on typography. Here, you will find Frederic Goudy and Edward Johnston, Stanley Morison and Roger Excoffon, Hermann Zapf and Adrian Frutiger, and renowned contemporary designers Neville Brody and Carol Twombly, plus many more.
Taken together, the work and working lives of these extraordinary designers chart the radical changes in typography during the twentieth century.