Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts

Bernard Maybeck Architect of Elegance Review

Bernard Maybeck Architect of Elegance
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Bernard Maybeck Architect of Elegance ReviewThis large format tome is truly magnificent and pays glowing tribute due to this most important visionary architect. The author, Mark Wilson and photographer, Joel Pulatti have given a warm insight to Maybeck's life and times. It even answers the century old question, did Maybeck ever meet Frank Lloyd Wright?Bernard Maybeck Architect of Elegance Overview
The work of Bernard Maybeck has influenced generations of architects. His landmark buildings include the Palace of Fine Arts and First Church of Christ, Scientist. His emphasis on an open use of natural materials marks him as a pioneer in sustainable architecture, or "green design." Maybeck's work achieves that delicate balance between historicism and modernism, and his buildings are still in use throughout several states on the West Coast and the Midwest. This book includes more than two dozen Maybeck buildings that have never been photographed in color in any other book, as well as several of his buildings that were never documented before.

Architect of Elegance not only encompasses his most memorable works but also includes letters and drawings from the family archives never before seen by the general public. The foreward is written by Maybeck's granddaugther, Cherry Maybeck Nittler. Author Mark Wilson's 22-year friendship with Bernard Maybeck's daughter-in-law, Jacomena Maybeck, gave him unique insights into the life and work of one of America's most important architects.

Mark Anthony Wilson has a BA in History and an MA in History and Media. He teaches Art andArchitecture at UC-Berkeley Extension and Santa Rosa Junior College. His articles have appeared inU.S. newspapers, and he has authored Julia Morgan: Architect of Beauty (Gibbs Smith, 2007). He hasbeen writing and teaching about Bernard Maybeck for 35 years.

Celebrating one of San Francisco/Berkeley's most iconic architects.


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Fingerprint: The Art of Using Hand-Made Elements in Graphic Design Review

Fingerprint: The Art of Using Hand-Made Elements in Graphic Design
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Fingerprint: The Art of Using Hand-Made Elements in Graphic Design ReviewSimply put, this book is an inspirational visual feast. If you're longing to incorporate the handmade in your work or are simply looking for something to kickstart your creative juices, FINGERPRINT is the perfect addition to your design library. Forget the slick and the mass-produced and dive headfirst into pages full of beautiful photography, innovative design, and an accessible layout.
Put together by Chen Design Associates, an award-winning San Francisco firm, and published under the HOW Books label, FINGERPRINT makes a good first impression with a simple but tactile cover that invites you to pick the book up and turn it over in your hands before cracking it open. The book has a good weight, as do the pages, though the paper finish seems to be prone to marking against hard edges. Inside, the text is divided into an Introduction, Foreword, seven chapters (Lettering, Illustration, Mixed Messages, Grand Finale, Objet D'Art, Indelible Impressions, and (a very brief) Gallery), and a Directory of Contributors which includes the contact information for the designers and firms featured within. Scattered throughout the text are five essays from a variety of designers including Jim Sherraden of Hatch Show Print and Martin Venezky. Some of these are more interesting than others (Ross MacDonald's "Hollywood Handmade" provides insight into the business of creating authentic design-related props for television and film), but all are worth reading.
The design of the book itself is excellent and conveys FINGERPRINT's concept without going overboard. The type is restrained and there is a clear hierarchy within the descriptions on each page, but don't think for a moment that it's boring. On the contrary, due to interesting typefaces and structure, the descriptions in FINGERPRINT are some of the most readable of any design book save for one failing: on some pages where the displayed works are vertical, the descriptions rotate 90 degrees counter-clockwise, necessitating a rotation of the book as well if you want to read the text. However, this is a small qualm when weighed against the book's many well-executed details.
The work itself - the real meat of FINGERPRINT - is generally outstanding. One might think that a majority of "handmade" design would feel the same, but the pieces showcased in the book display a range of aesthetics and execution, and there's something to be learned from almost every one. Almost all of the descriptions include the materials used for the designs, so it's possible to get an idea of the effort that goes into each piece and perhaps even provides a jumping-off point for those interested in exploring a similar style. (And in some cases the design transcends the media so much so that you'll be left scratching your head, saying "They did that with WHAT?")
There's a good representation of formats within FINGERPRINT. Featured designs range from stationery suites to posters to promotional mailers to packaging and beyond, so there's something for everyone. And the nature of the work is such that you'll find yourself thumbing through the pages again and again just to notice a plethora of new details to digest.
FINGERPRINT is more than just eye candy, though - it's motivation. Inspiration. If you don't like getting your hands dirty, then maybe this book isn't for you. But if you love the hands-on approach, your fingers will be itching to pick up a pen or a pencil and just draw (or paint, or collage, or...) after you've skimmed through the book. See, absorb, and incorporate. Go create some fresh design.
Prior to picking FINGERPRINT up at the store, I'd neither heard nor seen anything about it and figured it was simply an overlooked design gem. But it won't be a secret much longer because the newest issue of HOW (naturally, given the book's publisher) has a feature on it and includes some of the pieces from the book. Handmade is back, and it's beautiful. Do yourself and your brain a favor and pick this book up!Fingerprint: The Art of Using Hand-Made Elements in Graphic Design OverviewA new approach to design is gaining momentum as more and more designers seek to combine the power of the computer with the personal qualities of handmade elements. "Fingerprint" offers insight into this fusion of the digital and the hand-wrought, with dozens of examples of some of the best work in the industry, including design that includes hand-lettering elements and design that incorporates collage. Featuring essays from some of the design community's leading thinkers, this book is an indispensable look at the future of design.

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Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design Review

Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design
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Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design ReviewUndecorate. Provocative title. Does it mean to go minimal and spartan and dispose of all the the trappings of interior design and decorating?
On the contrary, it means infusing your home with personality, color dense and/or neutral, and mixing it up with high and low things of every age, vintage, antique, and contemporary.
The book is filled with real people who just happen to have a super real grasp for decorating. Even though the book plays down the professional decorator or designer, all of the homes have owners who are in a creative profession, sometimes as design professionals, decorators, stylists, artists of every type, and writers. But rather than eschew typical rules and regulations of creating home decor, these folks embrace the unique and beautiful.
The title includes: "The No Rules Approach To Interior Design", that kind of implies that doing what each home owner did was just throw it together without thought to what good design means. This is so not true! No rules does not mean no talent, or no educated eye editing and arranging these spaces. Each home is meticulous in it's details, even though the process unfolded in a natural, no rules, organic manner. It would be great to have anyone of these creative home owners come over and help do up your home.
Common threads unite all of these spaces. You will see collections, color, antlers, art work, books, typography as art, pattern, hide rugs, mid century modern, modern and vintage textiles, French antiques, and naturally and artfully edited spaces that look lived in and inviting. And there's a sense of fun and whimsy and wit in these rooms too.
All of this makes the book user friendly. The reader feels that this kind of undecorating is within their reach.
Add to that Christiane Lemieaux's (with Rumaan Alam) heartfelt, honest, and expert writing and you have a book to look at and to read. The photographs by Melanie Acevedo capture a true clear light that makes each page luscious.
With chapter titles like: "The Imperfectionists", "The Career Opportunists", "Decorators Without Borders", (and more), it makes you wonder how your own decor might be defined and described.
If you loved the defunct and much loved Domino, and are a fan of Lonny, love to read decor and design blogs, you will love this book. Undecorate elevates and takes their editorial viewpoint a few steps further.
If you'd like a breath of fresh air, and a finger on the pulse of how people decorate now, and will continue to do so for many years to come, get this book. Gone are the days of theme decorating like "Tuscan", "French Country", and even "Eclectic". Here is the new mix based on real life and the enjoyment that comes from living it in your home, and sharing it with all who live there and enter your door.
The book is not ageist either. Christiane includes photos of the home owners, and both younger and older alike have that certain style sizzle and pizazz.
Christiane and company traveled the country seeking out these homes, many of them found via decor and design blogs, truly the paradigm for anyone interested in decorating and design. She got to know the people whose homes she writes about, and the book is so genuine, more so than most decor books churned out.
In short, now that I have gone on so long: Buy this book.Undecorate: The No-Rules Approach to Interior Design OverviewJettison the old rulebooks about home décor and "undecorate" your space. As the founder and creative director of DwellStudio—which is famous for its brightly colored, graphic textile designs for home furnishings—designer Christiane Lemieux challenges tradition in a quintessentially American way, championing a fresh, unconventional approach to creating a beautiful and comfortable home. Lemieux emboldens readers to push aside stuffy, professionally-designed décor, showing them instead how to infuse their own personality into their home. Undecorate profiles twenty homes from all over the country, revealing their owners' love of imperfection and penchant for surprise and unusual juxtapositions while inspiring readers to follow their own whimsy and practicalities in their personal spaces. An anglophile creates an English manor in Hollywood, mixing British flea-market finds with midcentury furniture. A car fanatic turns a vintage Airstream trailer into a master bedroom and situates it in the middle of a vast industrial loft in downtown Chicago. A couple transforms a log house in Nashville, Tennessee, by blending their modern and eclectic styles with the home's rustic charm. Though the designs differ widely, the spaces all express an open-minded attitude. Some homes embrace their contexts, while others transcend them. All are shaped by instinct and imagination and share innovative ideas that readers can use to organically and elegantly create their home to match their lifestyle and tastes. Lemieux gets to the essence of the homeowners' distinctive styles, pinpointing the transformative ideas, thoughtful details, and useful solutions that make each home memorable. With more than 200 full-color photographs, Undecorate will both inspire and guide homeowners to a new outlook on home design.

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American Art Deco: Modernistic Architecture and Regionalism Review

American Art Deco: Modernistic Architecture and Regionalism
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American Art Deco: Modernistic Architecture and Regionalism ReviewArchitectural photographer Carla Breeze has focussed her camera on the best seventy-five Art Deco buildings across the Nation and produced a glorious book of color photos that perfectly captures the style. I really liked this book because she concentrates on the architectural detail of each building (with 450 photos) and in many cases, when this detail is on the outside, it is just not viewable from the ground.
The introduction has an interesting eighteen-page photo section dealing with materials: metal, concrete, terra cotta, mosaic, glass, wood and stone. I found this very useful when looking at the images. Each building starts on the spread (though some have more pages) with a street address and some background text and captions for the photos. The elegant layout does not interfere with the wonderful buildings (a tip of the hat to book designer Robert Wiser). Could anyone take a better photo of the stunning Niagara Mohawk Power headquarters in Syracuse on page seventy-three, I doubt it.
To complement this lovely book have a look at Rediscovering Art Deco USA: A Nationwide Tour of Architectural Delights by Barbara Capitman, Michael Kinerk and Dennis Wilhelm, a methodical nationwide survey, though it concentrates on commercial buildings rather than houses. If you are Deco spotting on the road leave a space in the glove compartment for David Gebhard's excellent The National Trust Guide to Art Deco in America (Preservation Press) if it's not in this book then most likely it's not worth looking at.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.American Art Deco: Modernistic Architecture and Regionalism Overview
A lavishly illustrated survey of American Art Deco architecture.
Art deco architecture flourished in large cities and small towns throughout America in the 1920s and 1930s. Many of the best examples office buildings, movie theaters, hotels, and churches are still in use. Deco architects, artists, and designers drew on European styles but were most committed to a style that grew organically, as they saw it, from their native soil. Two themes bound Deco buildings and their decorative schemes together: a regional pride that tied buildings to their specific locales and functions, and a growing national symbolism that asserted the buildings' identity as uniquely, independently American. American Art Deco features description sand over 500 color photographs of seventy-five lavish and innovatively designed buildings across the country that have been preserved both outside and in, giving the full scope of this beloved, exciting style.

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The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard Review

The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard
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The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard ReviewModernism in architecture is so closely identified with a handful of hero figures (like Walter Gropius and Mies van der Rohe) that we often forget that the real story behind its development is a complex and contentious one. In this wonderful and much-needed book, Anthony Alofsin deftly illustrates that the arrival of European architects in the U.S. in the 1930s cast a shadow over emerging progressive trends in American architectural design and education. At Harvard in particular, this led to an amnesia that convinced students and professors alike that it was Gropius who brought modern ideas to the Graduate School of Design when he began teaching there in 1937. "The Struggle for Modernism" shows clearly, though, that the kernels of these modern ideas were present in the Harvard design programs from their beginnings in 1900. It was not from the Bauhaus that Harvard developed its interdisciplinary approach to design that insisted on collaboration amongst architects, landscape architects, and city planners. Instead, it was Americans like Herbert Langford Warren, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., George Harold Edgell, and, most importantly, Joseph Hudnut who over decades created the influential and rigorous design programs. This is a fascinating and most welcome book that sheds much new light on a subject that many have incorrectly assumed was already well-understood. Highly recommended.The Struggle for Modernism: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard Overview
A history of modernism in the teaching ofarchitecture, landscape architecture, and cityplanning at Harvard.
This remarkable volume tells the unique history of modernism as reflected in the teaching of architecture, landscape architecture, and city planning at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design. Tracing developments at the GSD, which was home from 1937 to 1952 of Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius, Anthony Alofsin reveals that America had initiated its own modern agenda before the arrival of the European modernist ideology. Filled with archival photographs and plans that have never been published before, this book will be of great interest to students and professionals in the fields of art, architecture, and design, as well as to architectural historians. 20 color and 250 black and white illustrations; plans

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Chairmaking Simplified: 24 Projects Using Shop-Made Jigs (Popular Woodworking) Review

Chairmaking Simplified: 24 Projects Using Shop-Made Jigs (Popular Woodworking)
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Chairmaking Simplified: 24 Projects Using Shop-Made Jigs (Popular Woodworking) ReviewI bought this book because I was interested in learning how to make shaker chairs, and wanted a thorough, comprehensive treatment of the details. This book comes very close to achieving all I had hoped for it, but it has a fatal flaw. First, let me explain the good points. The book does provide a comprehensive and thorough treatment of building shaker chairs from turning legs and rungs on the lathe through mortising the legs, shaping arms, rockers, and weaving the seat with shaker chair tape as well as rushes. The book is well organized and the author's approach seems quite appealing. The author does a terrific job of explaining nearly every phase of shaker chair building. Now for the fatal flaw. The author's approach relies completely upon two clever jigs: a front mortise rung jig (FMRJ) and a side mortise rung jig (SMRJ). The book provides (on page 67) drawings for the two jigs as well as some photographs of them on other pages. Unfortunately, the jigs cannot be built with the information provided in the drawings. In the SMRJ, for example, there is a trapezoidal shaped piece. The drawing provides the height of the longer leg of the trapezoid, but not the height of the shorter leg. Since the relative dimensions of these two legs determine the critical angle at which mortises are drilled, you really need this information to build the jig. This dimension cannot be determined by other information in the drawing nor can it be determined from information given in the text. Furthermore, the critical angle is discussed in general terms in the text, but nowhere specified (had it been, the dimension needed could have been worked out with elementary trigonometry).
The situation with the FMRJ is not any better. One of the dimensions in the drawing is missing. Furthermore, the photographs of the jig in the book do NOT correspond to the drawing. Thus it is pretty well impossible to determine exactly how to build this jig. The only thing that alleviates this situation is that, in this case, the jig is used to drill mortises at a 90 degree angle. Thus, one can see exactly what is intended and, I believe it would be pretty straightforward to design a jig to accomplish the intended task.
One final caveat. The section on turning and sharpening may be a questionable inclusion. Other books dealing solely with turning (Darlow's books, for example) provide a much more comprehensive (and better) treatment of turning and sharpening. I suppose its inclusion can be justified on the basis of providing a complete reference under one cover.
Without the two jigs, however, the author's approach cannot be carried out. While some experimentation (involving wasted time, material, and money on the reader's part) may resolve the dimensioning problems with the jig drawings, it irks me to have to spend my time and money doing so when a competent editing job could have obviated the necessity of doing so.
The author came very close to having a true classic here (one which would have rated 5 stars easily, and was prevented from doing so only by a careless editor. My advice to the author: find a way to get an addendum to the book out on the web correcting these errors.
Chairmaking Simplified: 24 Projects Using Shop-Made Jigs (Popular Woodworking) Overview"Chairmaking Simplified" offers the complete chair experience for woodworkers by providing not only step-by-step instructions for an in-depth education on chairmaking but also a history of chair design and a section on how to design a comfortable chair.Other titles have covered very specific chairs such as Windsor or Shaker, but this is the first title to break the chairmaking process into simple steps with jigs that can be used to create a variety of chair styles and configurations (with many never before published). At least one favourite for every woodworker is guaranteed. Kerry's jigs simplify the process of chairmaking, and his voice offers clear, easy instruction.

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Danish Pepper: Jens Quistgaard's Teak Pepper Mills Review

Danish Pepper: Jens Quistgaard's Teak Pepper Mills
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Danish Pepper: Jens Quistgaard's Teak Pepper Mills ReviewBook-Danish Pepper
Excellent treatment of a special collection . In depth research to back it up is evident. The photography is well done and adds to the understanding of the subject. Collectors of Dansk products will really cherish their collections after reading this.Danish Pepper: Jens Quistgaard's Teak Pepper Mills OverviewAt the height of the Danish Modern movement, Jens Quistgaard and Dansk spiced up the design world with a stunning series of sculptural wood salt and pepper mills. Danish Pepper features photos and illustrations of Dansk and other Danish mills, accompanied by a rich history of the mills and their creators. As the first book to focus on the work of the late Jens Quistgaard, it is a must for lovers of Danish Modern and an excellent addition to any design library.Details- 96 full-color pages- 50 photos of Quistgaard salt and pepper mills and shakers- 17 illustrations of Quistgaard salt and pepper mills and shakers by artist Robert Chipman- 33 photos of mills and shakers by other designers- Chapters on Quistgaard's life and the history of Dansk Designs- Analysis of Quistgaard's pepper mill design- Collector information, including a guide to determining vintage- Information on the use and care of Dansk millsPlease visit www.danishpepper.com to learn more.

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