The Spoonflower Handbook


Book Description

An accessible guide to understanding and using Spoonflower to design your own fabric, wallpaper, and gift wrap. Designing fabric, wallpaper, and gift wrap used to be the stuff of dreams. Only a few select creatives got to do it, and it required formal training and significant financial investment. But times have changed, and today anyone with a computer, Internet connection, and idea can upload a file and order their own fabric or paper, printed affordably one yard or more at a time. At the forefront of this revolutionary DIY movement is Spoonflower, a North Carolina startup that produces designs for hundreds of thousands of users worldwide—twenty-four hours a day/seven days a week to keep up with demand. With step-by-step tutorials and projects that span a wide spectrum of skills, The Spoonflower Handbook is written for both new and experienced users of this print-on-demand technology. Covering everything from equipment to software to working with photos, scans, repeats, vector files, and more, it is an essential guide to a booming new creative outlet.




Making Marks


Book Description

A rich and varied glimpse into the creative processes of a broad array of contemporary architects. While digital technologies have pushed the boundaries of architectural creation, conceiving an original and appropriate design is as challenging as it has always been. As this book shows, however, a recent return to the basic act of putting pen or pencil to paper has produced some of the most successful buildings of the past decade. Making Marks follows the highly successful Architects’ Sketchbooks, which presented the rich breadth of sketches created by contemporary architects post digital revolution. Taking a post-digital perspective, the sixty renowned architects whose work is collected here show how drawing and new forms of manual presentation have been refined since the reawakening of this basic technique. Revealing why hand-drawing still matters, this global survey presents the freehand drawings, vibrant watercolors, and abstract impressions of a broad and eclectic array of rising talents and well-known names, including Jun Igarashi, Deborah Saunt, Daniel Libeskind, Meg Graham, and Brian MacKay-Lyons, to name but a few. Author Will Jones’s introduction reviews the importance of the physical sketch and its vital role in the creative process. Spanning diverse approaches, styles, and physical forms, Making Marks is not merely a compendium of the preoccupations and stylistics of current practice, but a rich and varied insight into architectural creativity.




The Graphic Design Idea Book


Book Description

This book serves as an introduction to the key elements of good design. Broken into sections covering the fundamental elements of design, key works by acclaimed designers serve to illustrate technical points and encourage readers to try out new ideas. Themes covered include narrative, colour, illusion, ornament, simplicity, and wit and humour. The result is an instantly accessible and easy to understand guide to graphic design using professional techniques.




I Had a Favorite Dress


Book Description

Open up a fresh and stylish story about growing up and keeping hold of your favorite memories. As the year passes, the narrator’s favorite dress goes through a series of creative changes, from dress to shirt to tank top to scarf and so on, until all that’s left of it is a good memory. Assisted by her patient and crafty mama, the narrator finds that when disaster strikes her favorite things, she doesn’t need to make mountains out of molehills—she “makes molehills out of mountains” instead! Structured around the days of the week, the story is also illustrated to show the passing of the seasons, a perfect complement to the themes of growing older and keeping hold (and letting go) of special mementos. Praise for I Had a Favorite Dress "A spunky story about adjusting to change with creativity and style. Tailor-made, so to speak, for the Etsy generation of DIY enthusiasts.” –Publishers Weekly “Everyone is smiling in the buoyant confections created by illustrator Julia Denos—including, it’s fair to say, young readers looking at them. Endearing picture book.” –Wall Street Journal “What could have been yet another example of kindergarten consumerism instead becomes one of resourcefulness and resilience.” –New York Times “Denos’s multimedia illustrations reinforce the narrator’s vibrant personality and the amazing transformations of the dress while capturing the action and emotion of the story. This book is sure to capture the imaginations of would-be seamstresses; children who can’t bear to part with a favorite item; and those who want to reduce, reuse, recycle.” –School Library Journal “Breezy in style, they smartly stitch each scene of alteration as the not-so-little girl sashays through the days of the week and the seasons. A charming interpretation of an old story that will speak to young fashionistas.” –Kirkus Reviews




A World of Artist Journal Pages


Book Description

By nature, art journaling is a private activity. But when Dawn Sokol’s first book, 1000 Artist Journal Pages, broke the fourth wall and shared the work of artists all over North America and parts of Europe, it created a ripple of inspiration throughout the art journaling community. In this much-anticipated follow-up, Sokol features more than 1,000 new, captivating pages, this time—by popular demand—from artists across the globe. Lists of techniques and materials used for each page, plus behind-the-scenes interviews, give readers a glimpse inside the minds of new and established artists, making this a stimulating compilation sure to inspire beginners and seasoned art journalers alike.




Sketchbook


Book Description

This book explores influential designers’ sketchbooks as a truer reflection of a designer’s thought processes, preoccupations, and problem-solving strategies than can be had by simply viewing finished projects. Highly personal and idiosyncratic, sketchbooks offer an arena for unstructured exploration, a space free from all budgetary and client constraints. Visually arresting objects in their own right, this book aims to elevate sketches from mere ephemera to important documents where the reader can glean valuable insight into the creative process, and apply it to their own practices. Featured designers include Ralph Caplan, Nigel Holmes, Chris Bigg, Eva Jiricna, Jason Munn, Gary Baseman, Marian Bantjes, and many others.




An Illustrated Journey


Book Description

Collects excerpts from the personal travel journal sketchbooks of forty-three artists, illustrators, and designers.




Dead Feminists


Book Description

A national bestseller, this lushly illustrated book is an inclusive celebration of inspiring women who transformed the world and created social change. Dead Feminists is a gorgeously illustrated letterpress-inspired book showcasing feminist history with a vision for a better future. Based on the beloved letterpress poster series of the same name, this book brings feminist history to life, profiling 27 unforgettable forebears of the modern women’s movement such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Gwendolyn Brooks, Rachel Carson, and more. Across eras and industries, passions and geographies, this collection of diverse, progressive, and perseverant women faced what looked like insurmountable odds and yet, still, they persisted. Dead Feminists, which features a foreword by Jill Lepore, author of The Secret History of Wonder Woman, is an illuminating and innovative reminder that women can be extraordinary agents of change. The future is female, but in many ways so is the past. Dead Feminists takes feminist inspiration to a new level of artistry and shows how ordinary and extraordinary women have made a difference throughout history (and how you can too). Featured Feminists: Adina De Zavala Alice Paul Annie Oakley Babe Zaharias Eleanor Roosevelt Elizabeth Cady Stanton Elizabeth Zimmerman Emma Goldman Fatima al-Fihri Gwendolyn Brooks Harriet Tubman Imogen Cunningham Jane Mecom Marie Curie Queen Lili’uokalani Rachel Carson Rywka Lipszyc Sadako Sasaki Sappho Sarojini Naidu Shirley Chisholm Thea Foss Virginia Woolf Washington State Suffragists




Architects' Sketchbooks


Book Description

Collects pages from the private sketchbooks of architects and studios from around the world, and includes comments from the artists as well as details on how they use sketching to evolve inspirations and concepts into more developed ideas.




Sacred Time


Book Description

We live in a world where there never seems to be enough time for all we want and need to do. In Sacred Time: Embracing an Intentional Way of Life, Christine Valters Paintner guides us as we move beyond our own lives and embrace a world that urges us toward rest, reflection, and growth. In Sacred Time, Paintner, abbess of the online Abbey of the Arts, shows us how by becoming in tune with the rhythms of the natural world, we can live more intentionally and experience a conversion toward a more expansive way of being. Paintner introduces us to the eight cycles of sacred time that exist in our everyday lives. These cycles that can ground us through our busy lives are breath, rhythms of the day, weekly rhythms and Sabbath rest, waxing and waning lunar cycles, seasons of the year, seasons of a lifetime, ancestral time, and cosmic time. Each cycle encourages us to mindfully consider the time that passes as quickly as each breath and as slowly as the passing of generations. Within each cycle, we find wisdom from sacred tradition and the saints, including St. Benedict, St. Ignatius of Loyola, and St. Hildegard of Bingen; room for growth; and the presence of the Divine. Along the way, we are also given scriptural guidance, and we are invited to spiritual practices and creative explorations that will help deepen our understanding of each cycle, allow that understanding to take root in our lives, and expand our lives beyond the pressures of each da