TheDopeFiend

The Big Yellow Book

I would be willing to say that typeface design is one of the oldest forms of design. For ages people have scratched symbols and words into rocks, made their marks on paper and now creating digital typefaces. I have great respect for those who create fonts and typefaces. Obviously so do the creators of the book, simply titled, Font Book. With 1,760 pages and 32,000 font samples, the Font Book is the largest font reference in the world. If you are a designer, desktop publisher, typographer or simply just like fonts, the Font Book is a must have.

Pictoplasma’s Encyclopedia

Pictoplasma is a website that archives the world’s character artists and the characters they create. Pictoplasma has recently released their latest publication entitled “Pictoplasma – The Character Encyclopedia“. This book has combined thousands of characters and artists and sorted, clustered, cross-referenced and inter-linked them all. Making for the world’s first complete character encyclopedia.

Apartment Overheads

If you’ve wandered around sites like Ikea, Dwell, and Design Within Reach you’ve seen overhead apartment shots before. Graphic designers Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga have done some photo compositions of their aparment in Warsaw. The article tells you how this effect was accomplished so you can compose your own overhead shots.

Selling Your Soul?

For the past six years I have worked as either an in-house graphic designer, or worked for small design firms. Recently I have decided to try my luck as a full-time independent freelance designer for the first time. In doing so I have sought advice from more experienced designers. One source I have found helpful is a book called How To Be a Graphic Designer Without Losing Your Soul. This book gives insight into the less-glamorous aspects of graphic design not talked about as often, such as how much to charge, how to find work and how to deal with clients. There is much more to a good designer than creating pretty pictures, and this book will let you know what these characteristics are.

Books Actually

Books Actually isn’t just a bookstore. It’s heaven. This was one place I knew I had to go to once I arrived in Singapore. It was rather hard to find at first but I assure you, you won’t regret it. Think of it as a treasure hunt and in the end, you’ll know the hunt was worth it because everything there is so damn nice! The books are really actually worth reading and the people are actually worth meeting (puns intended). Once you go up the second floor of the shophouse where the store is located, you are teased with bits and pieces of literary foreplay. The walls are lined with paragraphs written on tape and photos of books are mounted on the wall. There is a little corner with a green chair with a dunce cap playfully awaiting customers. An army of toy soldiers are displayed on a ledge (I don’t know the literary significance of soldiers but they work) just beside the main entrance. Once you enter, everything is a dream.

Books Actually is at 125A Telok Ayer Street, Singapore 068594. Look for Karen or Kenny.

Brain Food: A Couple of Cool Books

Freewave is a 260 page book that comes with an included CD-ROM, that has works from over 100 graphic designers, font makers and other artists. The cool thing about this book though, is it also includes the tricks behind all the works AND over 4GB’s of the files, fonts and icons they used to make them! The content included is completely royalty free and is open for all personal use. So if you are looking to learn from the masters on how to become a photoshop master, this book is for you.

Another cool book out by the name of Built to Grind (soft cover, $34.95) looks like a good read. The book covers 25 years of skateboard history including spotlights on Rick Blackhart, Steve Olson, Steve Alba, Duane Peters, Christian Hosoi, Tommy Guerrero, Steve Caballero, Jeff Grosso, Eric Dressen, Ray Barbee, Mark Gonzales, Colin McKay, Danny Way, Tim Brauch, Andrew Reynolds, Peter Hewitt, Bucky Lasek, and Tony Trujillo and more. Check it out fools.

LosLogos

Last night a friend of mine showed me a book he had called LosLogos. It is a very comprehensive book of logos and logotypes from the best designers in the world, most of them with an urban and very modern feel. If you are at all down with logo design I highly recomend this book. They also have what seems to be a pretty cool project at their homepage. They are looking to collect logos from around the world and use them in a project called LosLogos City, so if you get a chance snap a few shots of your favorite local logos and submit them.