Every year, the New York Chapter of the AIGA stages a podium discussion of emerging designers as part of their Fresh Dialogue/New Voices in Graphic Design series; each event is subsequently recorded in a publication put out by Princeton Architectural Press. It’s a handy little paperback with big print, a running side margin documenting incidents of audience participation (sometimes laughter, sometimes applause), and down-to-earth dialogue between the moderator and speakers. Fresh Dialogue Seven: Making Magazines, the most recent offering, covers the June 7, 2006 conversation between maverick magazine editors Lisa Farjam of Bidoun, David Haskell of Topic, Tod Lippy of Esopus, and moderator James Truman. In the book, each editor/publisher offers their own fantastic, truncated genesis story, and then answers questions from Truman and the audience that have, in written form, none of the meandering hopelessness that so often induces despondency in live audiences. (more…)

Most self-taught designers are pretty familiar with the Visual QuickStart series from Peachpit Press: Practical, clearly written guides to the myriad features of the software app or scripting language of your choice. New to the Peachpit family are Visual QuickProject Guides, boiling things down to a single project that covers just the need-to-know info. (more…)

The title alone of this book from Focal Press’ Essential Skills series makes me hopeful for the fate of my photography. To me, shooting in available light means getting some great candid shots at events, the occasional unplanned portrait, and a few environmental shots that are stunning without big lighting setups or major corrections later—tasks that are quite difficult for many beginning photographers. It turns out that my idea of the topic was a bit different than the Mark Galer’s, but I learned a huge amount of valuable photography tips all the same in an easy-to-read, activity-filled format. (more…)

I have a feeling that a lot of people, especially those unfamiliar with Mark Frauenfelder’s work (BoingBoing, “Make” magazine, and lots more), will look at this publication and think that they’re above it. The subtitle, “How to do everything on the Internet—better, faster, easier”, describes exactly what this book does. But those of us who have worked on the web for over a decade now think we know it all. Rule the Web proves us all wrong with tons of tips that even seasoned web users can play with right now. (more…)

If there is a utopic, sun dappled wonderland for nerds—the kind of place abundant with old circuit boards and sympathy for anachronistic societies—it would probably feature lots of free copies of Make magazine.

Make: technology on your time, published quarterly by O’Reilly Media (of Tim O’Reilly, champion of the open source movement and all forms of tech related publishing), offers instructions, tips, and inspiration for DIY hard and software projects. The most recent edition (Vol. 10, ‘Home Electronics’) features such compelling projects as: a Solar-Powered Bike GPS made of fully recycled parts, Mini High-Powered Laser made from an old DVD burner, a Tabletop Biosphere (sorry- ‘Shrimp Support Module’), and, phenomenally, a Brain Wave Machine (pp. 134,140, 110 and 88, respectively). (more…)

If you’re a design writer, it’s hard not to let your cowering awe of Steven Heller impede your ability to write an unbiased review of this book. But what’s not to love about Stylepedia? It surpasses its genre as a quirky coffee table showpiece, and delivers a compendium of over 100 truly informative short essays on alphabetized topics that range from style periods (Art Deco, De Stijl) to makers (Ed Fella, Paul Rand) to manifestations (Food packaging, Teen Magazines). Topics certainly hit both the high and low ends of visual culture—let’s say ‘Vernacular’ because we know what that means from reading page 319—but, as the authors point out in the introduction, even those topics that fall outside of the canon of ‘good’ design are included because they meet the criteria of having made a meaningful and lasting impression on society. Hence, Tiger Beat.

Stylepedia gives the appearance of being effortlessly compiled, written, and designed, which of course is the result of nearly unmatched knowledge and professional skill. Heller, the author of an estimated 105 books on design (when the number of books you’ve written becomes cloudy, you’ve definitely hit your stride), has been the art director of the New York Times Book Review for over 33 years, is currently co-chair of the Designer as Author MFA at the School for Visual Arts, and has been a prodigious commentator on graphic design as a freelance writer and editor for the AIGA voice. Fili’s no slouch either; in addition to writing fourteen books with Heller, she runs her own studio in NY, has generated work that’s been canonized in the Library of Congress and Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, and is a member of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. So I guess what I’m saying is, if you’re going to trust anyone to put together a Stylepedia and not make it schlocky, trivial or gimmicky, these are probably your two safest bets. (more…)

‘Design is art people use’. So begins the essential 2006 manual D-I-Y: Design it Yourself, edited by Ellen Lupton, curator of Contemporary Design at the Cooper Hewitt, in collaboration with the graduate students she teaches as Director of the Graphic Arts MFA program at the Maryland Institute College of Art. It’s a phrase worth remembering at a time when both the escalating celebrity of designers and the ever-increasing cycle of consumption means we’re less reliant on our own creativity to solve the basic problems of everyday life. Lupton is a champion of the DIY movement, and this easy to use and genuinely hip guide proves that she’s unafraid to hand the baton of high design to everyday folks so that they can improve the way they work, live and create—without utilizing the paid services of a professional.

In a recent review for Eye, I lampooned certain outcroppings of the seemingly never-ending DIY movement for using the guise of creativity to convince otherwise reasonable people to devote their time to completely pointless activity (again and again I come back to the ‘Knitted Car Antennae Cosy’). But D-I-Y manages to finally shut me up by offering tips that actually achieve the best of what design should do, that is, improve your life by (more…)