An impressive publication that presents a large selection of typographic works by Niels 'Shoe' Meulman, arranged in a uniquely simplistic manner. Every spread presents two interacting visuals on its opposing pages. This repeating duality makes this book much more than just a collection of the artist's best work; it unveils the basis of all graphic art. The idea of universal harmony, sometimes described as yin and yang, is translated to the 21st century.
"Signs of Our Times surveys the use of letters or the morphology of words in works by artists from the arab world and Iran, over the last six decades. This unique book considers the work of more than 40 key-artists across three generations, from the early pioneers of the vernacular Letrism movement in the 1950s to artists incorporating the written word in their work today" (provided by publisher)
For many people, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia evokes images of deserts, camels, and oil, along with rich sheikh in white robes, oppressed women in black veils, and terrorists. But when Loring Danforth traveled through the country in 2012, he found a world much more complex and inspiring than he could have ever imagined. With vivid descriptions and moving personal narratives, Danforth takes us across the Kingdom, from the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the country’s national oil company on the Persian Gulf, to the centuries-old city of Jeddah on the Red Sea coast with its population of undocumented immigrants from all over the Muslim world. He presents detailed portraits of a young woman jailed for protesting the ban on women driving, a Sufi scholar encouraging Muslims and Christians to struggle together with love to know God, and an artist citing the Quran and using metal gears and chains to celebrate the diversity of the pilgrims who come to Mecca. Crossing the Kingdom paints a lucid portrait of contemporary Saudi culture and the lives of individuals, who like us all grapple with modernity at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
This collection of unique works by 150 Los Angeles graffiti and tattoo artists represents an unprecedented collaboration across the city’s diverse artistic landscape. Many graffiti artists carry sketchbooks, called black books, and they ask crew members and others whose work they admire to inscribe their books with lettering or drawings. A few years ago, the Getty Research Institute invited artists, including Angst, Axis, Big Sleeps, Chaz, Cre8, Defer, EyeOne, Fishe, Heaven, Hyde, Look, ManOne, and Prime, to consider the idea of a citywide graffiti black book. During visits to the Getty Center, the artists viewed rare books related to calligraphy and letterforms, including works by Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci. The artists instantly recognized the connections to their own practices and were particularly drawn to a liber amicorum (book of friends), a form of autograph book popular in the seventeenth century. Passed from hand to hand, it was filled with signatures, poetry, and coats of arms, like a black book from another era. Inspired by this meeting of minds across centuries, these artists became both creators and curators, crafting their own pages and inviting others to contribute. Eventually 150 Los Angeles artists decorated 143 individual pages. These were bound together into an exquisite artists’ book that became known as the Getty Graffiti Black Book. This publication reproduces each page from the original artists’ book and recounts the story of an unprecedented collaboration across the diverse artistic landscape of Los Angeles.
Written by best-selling author and hand letterer Abbey Sy, The Complete Photo Guide to Hand Lettering and Calligraphy covers the basics and beyond for creative lettering techniques. The book begins with an overview of tools and materials, both traditional (pointed pen and fountain pen) and modern (including brush markers and chalk), then presents a visual glossary of letterforms, highlights the unique characteristics of the featured alphabets, and demonstrates how to draw letterforms to foster an understanding of how they’re created. The core chapters explore traditional, modern, and special effects lettering using a variety of mark-making tools, with in-depth how-to on adding flourishes and other special details, plus creative projects. There’s also an introduction to modifying and creating letterforms digitally, as well as practice sheets for the featured alphabets. So whether you’ve never tried lettering before or you’d like to develop your skills and consider all your creative options, The Complete Photo Guide to Hand Lettering and Calligraphy will guide and inspire you on your lettering journey.
Typography has jumped off the printed page to stand on its own as branding, sculpture, and even architecture. Lettering Large examines this phenomenon through a diverse collection of images collected from a vast range of sources around the world. As technology has made construction and production of monumental letters possible, the demand for their design has grown exponentially. This book is the first to chronicle letters as presences in the urban landscape. Preeminent graphic design and typographic commentator and historian Steve Heller teams with Mirko Ilić, a noted graphic designer, to select the most dramatic and telling examples culled from sites across the United States and throughout Europe and Asia.
The Italian journalist Elisa Pierandrei reflects on the present situation of the visual arts in Africa and the African diaspora through a selection of her articles and interviews that for the most have previously been published by various online media outlets. In her new e-book, she guides the reader along the stories of 12 contemporary artists (Helina Metaferia, Lunga Ntila, Benjamin Deguenon, Massinissa Selmani, among others) and 3 old masters (Ibrahim El-Salahi, Mohammed Melehi, and more) who are either originally from Africa or are of African descent. These stories are sometimes told in the form of magazine articles; others are told through interviews and editorials complete with images of the artworks. While always being creative without forgetting tradition and history, this new generation of artists brings the reader on a brief but fascinating walk through the world of African visual art and culture. This volume constitutes an ideal continuation of the work that Pierandrei began in 2011 on the verge of the Arab Spring in Cairo, when she investigated a new form of radical artistic expression, graffiti and street art from the 25 January Revolution, which became the subject of her first e-book. The foreword is by Russel Hlongwane.
This book examines the ways in which women in the contemporary Middle East and North Africa have re-imagined revolutionary discourses through creativity and collective action as a means of resistance. Encompassing a stunning array of forms and genres, such as graffiti, street performance, photography, phototexts, novels, and comics, the book draws from a vast spectrum of artistic production in revolutionary periods between 2011 and 2022 in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, and Algeria. El Nossery sheds light on women’s postrevolutionary artistic output by engaging an interdisciplinary approach: the book is divided into three sections which foreground the unique relationship between textual, visual, and performative modes as they intertwine with art and politics. Arab Women’s Revolutionary Art thereby aims to demonstrate how art, as always oriented towards an open future, can preserve the revolutionary spirit that was sparked in 2011 by documenting what happened and determining which stories would be told. The revolution, therefore, continues.
