Illustrator Andrew Kolb has created this lovely children’s book based on David Bowie’s classic track ‘Space Oddity’. Some songs are just oozing with lyrical imagery, and this is no exception – Kolb has really captured the childlike simplicity of the melodies and the words, and the illustrations really come into their own, I feel, when the story takes a slightly darker turn towards the end: “Tell my wife I love her very much”… “SHE KNOWS!”. If I had kids, this is what they’d be reading!

More visuals can be found on Andrew Kolb’s website

Andrew Kolb, Book design, Children's Books, David Bowie, Space Oddity

Following on from JK’s comments here, here are a few images taken from Patrick Ness’ new book ‘A Monster Calls’, illustrated by Jim Kay. Using a mixture of relief printing, black pen and ink, and various printed textures digitally pieced together, Jim has created a wonderfully dark atmosphere. I’d love to see the original works; I imagine the textures would really bring these images to life. There’s a lovely german trailer for the book, and you can see more of Jim’s illustration work.

A Monster Calls, Book design, Illustration, Jim Kay, Painting, Patrick Ness

Just My Type from Pentagram on Vimeo.

Hypnotic video trailer for Pentagram’s book, Just My Type, re-released next month. It pulses through 999 fonts in a minute starting and ending with Archer, the font used for the book’s US cover. While the smooth flow and pace of the animation is nice (at least the first 30 seconds), it’s a shame it doesn’t offer us a bit more, and tell us more about the book itself. It somehow feels a bit ‘basic’.

The book itself considers typography through the usual historic figures like Gutenberg, Baskerville and Gill and considers legibility, readability, typeface choice, politics, digital type – nothing new and much like many other typography reference books. I think the theory of typography has been pretty well exhausted now, and find the culture of type, and real-world contextual studies much more worthy of exploration.

I guess this raises a completely different question to the original purpose of this post. Are we being saturated with reworks of old material? What would you prefer to see? Any thoughts?

Baskerville, Book design, Fonts, Gill, Gutenberg, Just My Type, Pentagram, Typography, video

Punctuation is not just a great friend of the copywriter and author. Designers and typographers have long valued the punctuation mark for its succinctness and beauty of form, bringing simplicity, clarity, homour and intelligence to design. This charming Print.Magazine gallery showcases a history of the question mark and exclamation mark in design through the years.

Art, Book design, Copy, Copywriting, Grammar, Illustration, Typography

French design studio M/M Paris were in charge of designing this massive book on Kubrick’s unfilmed masterpiece Napoleon. Tucked inside of a carved-out book, all the elements from Stanley Kubrick’s archives that readers need to imagine what his unmade film about the emperor might have been like, including a facsimile of the script. This collector’s edition is limited to 1,000 numbered copies and you can order it here (thanks to Six)

Book design, Kubrick, Napoleon