Craftside

Craftside Goody Giveaway: Books, Calendars, Notecards and BIC Markers

I have a super fun goody giveaway to keep your creativity cookin' throughout this year!

This Craftside goody giveaway includes:

The new books:

Playing With Sketches: 50 Creative Exercises for Designers and Artists by Whitney Sherman and Illustration School: Let's Draw Magical Color by Sachiko Umoto

To keep track of all that is going on in your life:

A Shoegasm 2014 Wall Calendar and A London Underground Poster Desk Diary 2014

A pack of our new Inspire Notecards Artwork by Sarah Ahearn Bellemare

And what is the perfect complement for illustrating and sketching?

Why, a fabulous new set of 36 BIC Fine Point Permanent Markers.

Leave a comment in to day's post by March 8th.

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It's not just about the fun-packed giveaway today. I also have a fun, creative exercise called Entopic Graphomania from Playing With Sketches: 50 Creative Exercises for Designers and Artists to share with you.

Click on these pages from Playing With Sketches: 50 Creative Exercises for Designers and Artists to enlarge and read all about this connect the letter technique. I had such a great time with it.

More about the Rockport book:

Playing With Sketches: 50 Creative Exercises for Designers and Artists

by Whitney Sherman

Drawing is the backbone of art and design; with all of the tantalizing wonders of the digital world, the best designers, illustrators and artists know that it’s good to step back occasionally and hit the refresh button on your hand and mind.

 

Playing With Sketches is a hands-on, fun approach to exploring drawing principles. Beginning with an introduction to the philosophy of learning through the process of play, this book brings you through a series of basic warm-up exercises that can be combined with later projects.

 

Then you’ll move quickly on to more challenging and engaging exercises, including word games, dimensional shapes, and inventive sketchbooks and letterforms, eventually creating a “toolkit” of ideas and skills developed through the process of play.

 

This book features creative, adaptable ideas, and numerous examples of designers and artists responses to each exercise, giving you a peek into their way of thinking and seeing.

With over 25 contributors, from high-profile designers, illustrators and artists to talented graduate students, you see work that will walk you step-by-step through a process or inspire by example. The book provides meaningful outcomes for your practice, including building an image archive, being exposed to new ways to use media and tools, inspiring you to break the rules, to collaborate, and much more!

 

Award-winning illustrator Whitney Sherman was trained as a photographer, held positions as an advertising art director, publications designer, and VP/Creative Director before focusing on illustration as proprietor of Whitney Sherman Illustration. Sherman has taught both graphic design and illustration, and was undergraduate Chair of Illustration for ten years before becoming Director of the MFA in Illustration Practice program at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. In addition, she is Co-Director of Dolphin Press & Print @ MICA, and owner of Pbody Dsign which produces limited edition illustrated housewares. She is nationally represented by Gerald & Cullen Rapp, Inc., New York.

www.whitneysherman.com/

 

Serve sushi over cocktails idea from the book 1,000 Food Art and Styling Ideas

For today's Tasty Friday post, I have a bit of eye candy from the new book 1,000 Food Art and Styling Ideas: Mouthwatering Food Presentations from Chefs, Photographers, and Bloggers from Around the Globe. These two photos feature a fun way to stack veggies, and my all time favorite is to serve sushi over a cocktail. Yummmm!

If you like to serve food in an interesting way, and like a book packed filled with ideas on ways to plate food, then I bet you will love this new Rockport book:

1,000 Food Art and Styling Ideas: Mouthwatering Food Presentations from Chefs, Photographers, and Bloggers from Around the Globe

by Ari Bendersky

Whether you’re a food photographer or a food lover, this book is sure to inspire you to create visually stunning dishes. 1,000 Food Art and Styling Ideas beautifully showcases 1,000 of the best food art presentations from around the world. From Italy to China to the United States, the photos highlight the best food art presentations each country has to offer, submitted by professional photographers, food stylists, chefs, and food bloggers. The succulent images will make your mouth water and inspire your next photo shoot—whether it’s a basic plate of pasta or a table full of pastries and parfaits. You’ll learn new techniques for staging your food to make it an out-of-world experience for your guests.

 

This is a visual showcase designed to provide endless inspiration for anyone who loves food, styling, and photography.

Ari Bendersky, a longtime food and wine writer, is currently the director of content for Abe's Market, an e-commerce site that sources the best natural, organic, and sustainable products. Prior to joining Abe's, Ari was the founding editor of Eater Chicago and built it into the No. 1 destination for restaurant news in Chicago. He has also covered music, lifestyle, travel and more, writing for the New York Times, Associated Press, RollingStone.com, Chicago magazine, Time Out Chicago, Saveur.com and more.

Amazing altered book art from Layout Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Using Grids

My jaw dropped when I flipped to this page in Layout Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Using Grids that features an amazing piece of book art. I was about to say that this artist really thought outside the box, but what is more accurate to say they thought outside the book!

More about the Rockport book:

Layout Essentials: 100 Design Principles for Using Grids

by Beth Tondreau

Adhering to certain layout and grids standards and principles is important for any job from brochures, to annual reports, to posters, to websites, to publications. However, knowing how to bend the rules and make certain grids work for the job at hand takes skill.

This book outlines and demonstrates basic layout/grid guidelines and rules through 100 entries including choosing a typeface, striving for rhythm and balance with type, combining typefaces, using special characters and kerning and legibility. These essentials of grid design are critical to the success of any job.

Beth Tondreau owns and serves as creative director of BTD Design in New York. Prior to establishing BTD in 1985, she was design director of Viking/Penguin.

Tortured Type by Oded Edzer featured in the book Type Form & Function

Today's eye candy inspiration is from the book Type Form & Function: A Handbook on the Fundamentals of Typography. 

Click on this page from Type Form & Function: A Handbook on the Fundamentals of Typography to enlarge and use this page as your inspiration to create a bit of fun with your type in you art or journal page.

If you are like me and love reading about type and making it in fun ways, then I bet you will love the Rockport book:

Type Form & Function: A Handbook on the Fundamentals of Typography

by Jason Tselentis

Type Form & Function is a useful, comprehensive typography resource that both students and professional designers should have in their library. It looks at the influences of modern typography and symbols going back through time and examines certain type treatments and movements in design and logo types. It also focuses on how type works and emphasizes typographic fundamentals, while touching on logo/logotype design and page layout (print and interactive). Designers will be guided through the visual typographic clutter to make their designed messages more meaningful.

Jason Tselentis  is a designer, writer, and educator living in North Carolina. He has completed print and interactive design for: Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum; Henry Art Museum; Intel Labs; the National Park Service; Sony BMG Music; Continental Tires; and 20th Century Fox. As Assistant Professor at Winthrop University’s Department of Design, Jason teaches graphic design and typography. His work has been recognized by the AIGA and How magazine. To see more of his work, visit www.morsa.com.

Want to see more inside Type Form & Function? Then pop on over to Qbookshop.com and hit the Google preview button!

Make a monochrome found object collage from the book Playing With Color

Today, I have a fun color-themed prompt from the book Playing with Color: 50 Graphic Experiments for Exploring Color Design Principles for all of you who like daily inspiration to kick off your mixed-media art.

And if you like color as much as I do, and want a whole book on the subject, you can get yourself in the running for a copy of the Rockport book Playing with Color.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Click on these pages from Playing with Color: 50 Graphic Experiments for Exploring Color Design Principles to read all about monochrome collages and get a closer look at a few inspirations.

I love the idea of using found objects to make a monochromatic mixed-media collage.

More about the Rockport book:

Playing with Color: 50 Graphic Experiments for Exploring Color Design Principles

by Richard Mehl

Playing with Color is a highly accessible, fun approach to learning color application and principles. This hands-on book begins with an introduction to the philosophy of learning through the process of play. It then leads to a series of experimental design projects with an emphasis on color, providing the reader with a “toolkit” of ideas and skills. The awareness and sensitivity to form, color, material and craft gained through these visual experiments will increase the designer’s confidence in their personal and professional design work. This book can be used in the classroom or independently, and readers can go directly to exercises that appeal to them.

Richard Mehl teaches two-dimensional design, color theory and typography at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. He is a graphic designer by trade, working on projects for corporate and non-profit clients. Mehl received his MFA from Yale School of Art where he studied with Paul Rand, Bradbury Thompson, Matthew Carter and Edward Tufte. Visit him online at http://www.rmehl.com.