Written by Norah Gaughan, one of the most innovative and respected knitwear designers working today, Knitting Nature was an instant classic when it was released in hardcover in 2006, and it is now available at a must-have paperback price. In Knitting Nature, Gaughan blends together the natural and artistic world with 39 stunning, fun-to-knit designs for women, men, and children. Among them are a skirt patterned after the hexagonal scales nature has used to cover a domed turtle’s shell, a jacket whose collar grows in a spiral—much the same way a ram’s horn does—and a tank top with leaves that grow the same way they do on a stem. Also available from Norah Gaughan: Norah Gaughan's Knitted Cable Sourcebook, Comfort Knitting & Crochet: Babies & Toddlers, and Comfort Knitting & Crochet: Afghans.
Natural Pattern Forms A Practical Sourcebook for Landscape Design Richard L. Dubé Here for the first time is a practical guide to naturalistic landscape design. With the aid of easy-to-use templates, author Richard L. Dubé introduces you to 48 natural pattern forms, and shows you how to apply these natural solutions to everyday outdoor design problems. Imagine drawing from a palette as varied as an arcing river, receding hills—even clouds and frost. This book provides the inspiration you need to break away from staid design solutions and discover design solutions that are creative and natural. All 48 original templates include a sketch, a photo, and a discussion of the structure, aesthetic attributes, and underlying emotional tone of the pattern form. In addition, Mr. Dubé shows how each form can be reconfigured to meet the needs of specific spaces. Further, each template is cross-referenced to specific design applications, demonstrating practical ways to incorporate natural pattern forms in real designs. This book is a unique and invaluable visual resource for professionals and a creative guide for students who are learning to see the natural landscape in a new way. In addition to expanding any existing repertoire of design solutions, this important new resource: Looks at specific design problems. Offers a range of possible solutions for each problem. Explains how and where to look for natural patterns. Presents information in a clear and concise manner. Provides beautiful visual examples. Author Richard L. Dubé is uniquely qualified to create the first practical guide to naturalistic landscape design. A practicing landscape designer for 17 years, Mr. Dubé is a professional interpretive naturalist with extensive knowledge of Japanese landscape design and construction. In this book he draws upon his knowledge of the conscious use of natural pattern forms in the world-renowned gardens of Japan.
The next exciting title in the bestselling motif series, 'Pattern Motifs' provides stunning patterns from around the world, and from various historical and cultural periods. They include patterns that have their design source in Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Celts, Islam, India, Africa, and Aboriginal lands but also the worlds of western folk, Gothic, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. The types of pattern provided include interlaced, basketweave, network patterns, web-like patterns, plaited, twisted, chequer, tartan, diaper, chevron, intersection patterns, Paisley and Arabesque. Author Graham McCallum's fine draughtsmanship makes this large resource of motifs an essential addition to the library of every designer and crafter, whether they are a needleworker, quilter, glass painter or woodworker. All the images are free to be copied and used for further creative work. The detailed index at the back of the book makes the search for the ideal motif quick and easy.
DIVThis hardworking reference book is an invaluable tool for art directors, designers, and students working in the fashion, product, and graphic design fields, as well as anyone in the business of visual communication. The Pattern and Palette Sourcebook is a desktop library of colors and patterns that addresses the professional's real-world needs in working with harmonies and contrasts. Divided into six unique style sections, the book provides readers with 15 appropriate colors for each section, which are then incorporated into 25 different patterns shown in six or eight color variations each. This enables readers to see the dramatic effect colors have in design and helps them better understand how to use color effectively. The book also demonstrates ways of creating designs that are distinctly unique from one another yet hold together in a group. This book is a must have for designers of all disciplines and experience levels. /div
The latest book based on the popular Print & Pattern blog, Print & Pattern: Nature celebrates beautiful surface designs, patterns, and motifs of leaves, insects, grasses, butterflies, and trees. Product areas covered include stationery, cards and giftwrap, fabrics, wallpaper, rugs, ceramics, homewares, gadget skins, and more. Documenting the work of the best designers in the field, the book is an invaluable source of reference and inspiration for surface designers, designer-makers and craftspeople, graphic designers, illustrators, and textile designers.
A richly illustrated sourcebook of two-dimensional pattern and three-dimensional ornamentation, for designers everywhere and anyone interested in visual culture. This richly illustrated, easy-to-navigate sourcebook of surface pattern and three-dimensional ornamentation presents more than one thousand historic and contemporary examples from around the world, each one succinctly identified and explained. Arranged thematically, it is unique among pattern books, as it includes examples not only of surface pattern but also three-dimensional ornamentation and embellishment, from Japanese kimono and William Morris fabrics to Chinese porcelain and contemporary furniture. Creatives working today are as fascinated and inspired by pattern and ornament as they have always been and this expertly compiled selection will appeal to designers, artists, and illustrators from all disciplines as well as anyone interested in visual and material culture.
You can use this book to design a house for yourself with your family; you can use it to work with your neighbors to improve your town and neighborhood; you can use it to design an office, or a workshop, or a public building. And you can use it to guide you in the actual process of construction. After a ten-year silence, Christopher Alexander and his colleagues at the Center for Environmental Structure are now publishing a major statement in the form of three books which will, in their words, "lay the basis for an entirely new approach to architecture, building and planning, which will we hope replace existing ideas and practices entirely." The three books are The Timeless Way of Building, The Oregon Experiment, and this book, A Pattern Language. At the core of these books is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets, and communities. This idea may be radical (it implies a radical transformation of the architectural profession) but it comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people. At the core of the books, too, is the point that in designing their environments people always rely on certain "languages," which, like the languages we speak, allow them to articulate and communicate an infinite variety of designs within a forma system which gives them coherence. This book provides a language of this kind. It will enable a person to make a design for almost any kind of building, or any part of the built environment. "Patterns," the units of this language, are answers to design problems (How high should a window sill be? How many stories should a building have? How much space in a neighborhood should be devoted to grass and trees?). More than 250 of the patterns in this pattern language are given: each consists of a problem statement, a discussion of the problem with an illustration, and a solution. As the authors say in their introduction, many of the patterns are archetypal, so deeply rooted in the nature of things that it seemly likely that they will be a part of human nature, and human action, as much in five hundred years as they are today.
