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Last year I got to work a bit with a book called Beasties, which is a craft book on how to sew imaginary beings. The author built some great staged scenes of the projects using cinnamon sticks, cardboard, watercolors, and the like. (You can see a few of them here.) My department purchased a few of them from the author for our sales people's use, and I became rather enchanted with the yeti.
A couple of months ago, I had the nice surprise of receiving one of my own from the author as thanks for the work I'd done to promote the book. (She actually made various creatures for everyone who worked on the book, which is pretty crazy as they seem rather involved--but no complaints here!) Right now he's been hanging out on my bookshelf.
He looks kind of terrified in this picture. I suppose the ominous shadows in the background don't help.
Lately my main focus at work has been Mad Men. Luckily, I am a big fan of the show, and so this is a good focus to have. We've just published the book Mad Men: The Illustrated World, which is an illustrated guide to the show and the 1960s era. It looks gorgeous, and the writing is on the irreverent/funny side. (To take a look at some of the pages and enter for a chance to win a copy of the book, plus the first three seasons on DVD, head to penguin.com/madmen. Okay, enough selling.)Not only did we do a lot of advertising for this book, but we also threw a little office party to celebrate the publication, and to reward ourselves for all of our hard work. (Which in my case was admittedly fun work.)
Here I am (all the way to the left) channeling my best Peggy look. I actually wore pantyhose instead of black tights in order to be more period-appropriate. I tried to make my hair a little bit bigger but that didn't last very long. So I covered it up with a hat. Also pictured are the publisher, publicist, and editor.
A few days before the party we made these cupcake toppers by shrinking some of the drawings from the book, printing them out in color, laminating them with a sticker backing, cutting them out, and sticking a toothpick between the adhesive part of the sticker and the backing. Which I think worked pretty well.
We also made these two life-sized cut-outs of the characters holding copies of the book so that people could pose as Joan or Don. (Or in some cases both.)Whiskey sours were served, and the Mad Men soundtrack was playing in the background. Overall I think it was a pretty successful party.
Awhile back, I'd bookmarked this insanely simple and cheap DIY project: invisible bookshelves. This particular approach is even simpler than the ones you typically see, in that it doesn't involve ruining a book by actually screwing it into the bottom of the shelf. As a result, they're not actually invisible, but that doesn't really bother me.
A couple weeks ago I bought a collection of paperback books whose covers were illustrated by Edward Gorey, and decided that I needed a way to display them properly. One trip to the hardware store and $6 later, I was screwing a set of 4-inch L-brackets into the wall.
They'll be a little more invisible once I add another book to the stack--I just need to find a few more Gorey designs. I know they're out there!
Here's a flickr set of Gorey paperbacks for your viewing pleasure.
Last week I had been planning to do a post here about some of the great book covers on my shelf. But then I started pulling out too many to do in just one post. And then it occurred to me that it'd be cool to do a blog that briefly examined each of the books on my shelf, one at a time, noting what drew me to each one in the first place.So then I started a new blog.I plan to maintain each one equally, so fear not Killed By Crafts readers (all seven of you).
Last week I was walking past the outdoor book vendors in front of NYU, and I happened to quickly glance at a table, only to see a copy of Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is the Massage staring back at me. I'd been wanting to get a copy of this book for awhile, and the $4 price tag made it even better. It would have been cooler to find the original Penguin UK cover (mine's an old Bantam edition) but I'm nonetheless pretty happy that I decided to give the tables a passing glance when I did. 
What most interests me in the book is its collage-style design, with strikingly juxtaposed black and white graphics and text. Some pages are printed backwards--I guess they're meant to be seen in a mirror but I was reading the book on a train, and let me tell you, while it's possible to do, the process is so slow that I had no comprehension of what I was actually reading on those particular pages. 
The book was written in 1967, yet many of the statements in the book seem to predict the Internet--for instance, "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." In fact, in that sentence he probably coined the phrase "global village." 
Don't mind my hands being in every picture, by the way. I couldn't get the book to lie flat otherwise. And anyway, it almost seems appropriate considering the number of pages in the book containing images of hands and fingers. 
Legend has it that the book was supposed to be titled The Medium Is the Message, but it came back from the typesetter with a typo on the cover. But when McLuhan saw it, "he exclaimed, 'Leave it alone! It's great, and right on target!' Now there are four possible readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: 'Message' and 'Mess Age,' 'Massage' and 'Mass Age.'" (from Penguin By Design)
A picture of a live performance by the inimitable Velvet Underground. 
The book is filled with great quotations, such as this page of lines by John Cage--"Theatre takes place all the time, wherever one is. And art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case."
I love the numbered blank faced people on this page. 
A couple of months ago, I had the nice surprise of receiving one of my own from the author as thanks for the work I'd done to promote the book. (She actually made various creatures for everyone who worked on the book, which is pretty crazy as they seem rather involved--but no complaints here!) Right now he's been hanging out on my bookshelf.
He looks kind of terrified in this picture. I suppose the ominous shadows in the background don't help.
I went to the NY Art Book Fair at P.S. 1 for the first time this past weekend. It was insanely crowded and it seemed like everything I wanted was priced at several hundred dollars. But there were a lot of cool books and posters. If I were a little bit (okay, a lot) richer I might have come home with lots of awesome stuff.
In the P.S. 1 courtyard. I love how this person kind of fades into the mist.
I don't even know what we're looking at here.
Some book art on the walls.
I'm not sure what these were for but one seller had them stacked up.
On the wall in the subway station on the way home.
Here I am (all the way to the left) channeling my best Peggy look. I actually wore pantyhose instead of black tights in order to be more period-appropriate. I tried to make my hair a little bit bigger but that didn't last very long. So I covered it up with a hat. Also pictured are the publisher, publicist, and editor.
A few days before the party we made these cupcake toppers by shrinking some of the drawings from the book, printing them out in color, laminating them with a sticker backing, cutting them out, and sticking a toothpick between the adhesive part of the sticker and the backing. Which I think worked pretty well.
We also made these two life-sized cut-outs of the characters holding copies of the book so that people could pose as Joan or Don. (Or in some cases both.)
A couple weeks ago I bought a collection of paperback books whose covers were illustrated by Edward Gorey, and decided that I needed a way to display them properly. One trip to the hardware store and $6 later, I was screwing a set of 4-inch L-brackets into the wall.
They'll be a little more invisible once I add another book to the stack--I just need to find a few more Gorey designs. I know they're out there! 
Then I realized that they looked even better that way, so I decided to leave them. I like that now you can see the hand shape of the bookends, so that it looks like they are actually carrying the books.
Even more so, I love the colorful array of pages now on display.
Like vintage paper stripes. I wish they did this with books nowadays.
And you can still see the cool looking spines. It's a win-win, really.
What most interests me in the book is its collage-style design, with strikingly juxtaposed black and white graphics and text. Some pages are printed backwards--I guess they're meant to be seen in a mirror but I was reading the book on a train, and let me tell you, while it's possible to do, the process is so slow that I had no comprehension of what I was actually reading on those particular pages. 
The book was written in 1967, yet many of the statements in the book seem to predict the Internet--for instance, "The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village." In fact, in that sentence he probably coined the phrase "global village." 
Don't mind my hands being in every picture, by the way. I couldn't get the book to lie flat otherwise. And anyway, it almost seems appropriate considering the number of pages in the book containing images of hands and fingers. 
Legend has it that the book was supposed to be titled The Medium Is the Message, but it came back from the typesetter with a typo on the cover. But when McLuhan saw it, "he exclaimed, 'Leave it alone! It's great, and right on target!' Now there are four possible readings for the last word of the title, all of them accurate: 'Message' and 'Mess Age,' 'Massage' and 'Mass Age.'" (from Penguin By Design)
A picture of a live performance by the inimitable Velvet Underground. 
The book is filled with great quotations, such as this page of lines by John Cage--"Theatre takes place all the time, wherever one is. And art simply facilitates persuading one this is the case."
I love the numbered blank faced people on this page. 
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