What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?

The four guys from The Buried Life on the cover of their book

I'm currently reading the book What Do You Want to do Before You Die?

It's a really inspiring read of how four young guys formed a group called The Buried Life and wrote a bucket list of 100 goals. They ended up achieving most of them like playing basketball with President Obama and being on the Oprah show.

The rest of the book is filled with bucket list ideas from people all around the world. Reading this book is so inspiring, after reading some of the goals they achieved it reinforces that truly, anything is possible.

Also as a side note - I posted this pic on my new instagram account, to keep up with my illustrations and work please check it out here.

Colour combos

I've been meaning to re-design my business card for a while now, but designing for yourself is one of the hardest jobs! I'm currently looking at colour inspiration... I'm definitely liking the lime green  :)

Currently reading: Modern Dog

I'm currently reading Modern Dog: 20 Years of Poster Art. 20 years is a long time to be creating art, and there's some awesome posters in this book, but I also love reading the often funny stories behind how the artwork was created.

Marc McKee

It's been a while since I posted any book reviews, but I haven't seen any art/design books that caught my attention. Apart from this one, of course. What caught my eye with Warning: The Art of Marc Mckee was the front cover, and the rest of the book is pretty darn awesome as well. It's by the same book publishers that published a book on Todd Bratrud (and I wrote a review of that book here) so if you love skateboard art then you just might love this book, too.

Wing's book reviews

Just want to share an awesome link for design and illustration book reviews! Check it out here. Also while you're at it, check out the fantastic work of Christopher 'Wing' King.

Curvy Book 8

My Frankettes illustration is featured in Curvy Book 8! It's super cool to be in the book as Curvy has spent nearly a decade uncovering the world’s most creative female illustrators and artists. There's a ton of amazing artists in the book - I posted a few of my faves below...

Sonya Fu

Deb

Miss Van

R. Black

The book comes with 3D glasses as a few of his illustrations have been rendered 3D.

R. Black is the man behind some of the most memorable gig posters in the past few years. The book Futura documents his style of creating vector illustrations that are often quite dark.

There is an intro by Brian Ewing (remember I posted a review about his book here?), but there isn't much else in terms of interviews or notes to read. Which is a shame, since I like to read about the people behind the artworks and I like to know how they got started, etc. I did find an interesting interview with him online here, where he talks about his work.

Nevertheless, the work is AMAZING and as a visual history it is an awesome book. I definitely recommend it!

Lettering

Last year, I had a go at some typographic works using found objects (click here to see). It was loads of fun, and made me more interested in illustrating words to tell a story.

A book I recently purchased for typographic inspiration is Lettering: Beyond Computer Graphics. As the name suggests, it's choc-a-bloc with hand drawn typography using all mediums (one example uses cheese on a pizza!)

I'd recommend this book for all the typographic nuts.

Todd Bratrud

Looking at these gory hand diagrams makes me cringe!

Gosh, its been yonks since I have posted any book reviews. I have bought a few awesome books that I can't wait to share. The first one is called I Hate the Art of Todd Bratrud. Todd is best know for his illustration work for skate companies, and you may have seen the green lizard ladies he drew for Volcom.

His work often juxtaposes something cute or sexy with something that is repulsively disgusting. A few of the illustrations of bloody finger injuries in the book made me cringe - just click on the last picture above to see what I mean!

Fantastic book, the only comment I have is that I wish there were some more background info about him as an artist - how did he start out, etc. But for pure visuals, this book is very cool.

Tales from Outer Suburbia

Lately I have been working my way through all of Shaun Tan's amazing books. I love the way he writes surreal stories and the quirky creatures and inventions he conjures up in his drawings. I adore all his books, but my favourite has to be Tales From Outer Suburbia. Every single page has been so thoughtfully designed with different mediums used to illustrate the short stories.

It is so inspirational how much success Shaun Tan has attained simply by following his passion for writing and illustrating children's books. This year he won an Oscar for best animated short film The Lost Thing, and he also won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (a prize of AUS $760,000) acknowledging more than 10 years of his work in children’s literature.

How amazing to think that a world-famous, Oscar-winning illustrator grew up in Perth! I'll finish off this post with a quote from Shaun's website ...

In school I was known as the 'good drawer' which partly compensated for always being the shortest kid in every class.

^_^

Peace Love and Brown Rice

I love it when good design and great content comes together to produce an amazing book. I recently got my hands on Peace Love and Brown Rice: A Photographic History of the Big Day Out. As the name suggests, it documents the Big Day Out music festival from the first one in 1992 (with Nirvana and The Violent Femmes on the setlist) right up to 2005.

The photos in this book are all by Sophie Howarth, and I love how she didn't just take photos of the bands but the whole festival vibe. A lot of the photos of the wacky festival punters are more interesting than the band shots! The pages are so thoughtfully designed to perfectly capture the gritty, grungy and chaotic nature of the BDO festival.

A beautiful book. Love, love, love it.

Semi Permanent

Yay! I just bought a copy of the 2011 Semi Permanent inspiration book, which features my Paramore illustration. Feels great to be published in a book alongside some of my favourite artists like Martin Ansin and Ken Taylor.

Tony Mott

Of all the types of photography out there, music and concert photography interests me the most. I recently received the book Rock'n'Roll Photography is the New Trainspotting which is a retrospective of Tony Mott's photographic works. The reason why he's one of my favourite photographers is because he has managed to capture the essence of so many Australian bands, some before they hit the big time. Midnight Oil, The Divinyls, Paul Kelly, Nick Cave... the list goes on.

The photos in the book are amazing and there's a good mix of old and new and local and international bands. I wish there was a bit more info included about the photos though - sometimes Tony will say something like 'the band was difficult to work with' and I was dying to know why!

The Handmade Marketplace (part 2)

So this post continues on from part 1. There have been times when I am reading an interview with a designer in Rock Sound magazine, and I am amazed to find out they are the same age as me (or younger!), yet they already have an extensive portfolio of work for big bands and concerts. And other times, I find out that designers I really admire have gone to study design later in life and are only just finding their creative niche in their 30s.

So I found this piece of advice in The Handmade Marketplace from Liz Smith really inspiring...

Don't worry about where you are in the process of building your business. Everyone is at a different stage, but everyone is at some stage. Listen to people ahead of you, help those who are still catching up to you, and don't be intimidated by people who seem to have it all figured out. No one has it all figured out.

The Handmade Marketplace (part 1)

I recently read the book The Handmade Marketplace by Kari Chapin. Since the explosion in popularity of handmade goods and Etsy, more and more people have been selling their creative goods online and in markets around the world. This book is a guide to how to set yourself up as a crafty entrepreneur. There are some good pieces of advice in the book, and reading about how other people quit their day jobs to do what they love is quite inspiring.

I just want to share some advice I read in the book from Diane Gilleland, I can really relate to her advice of 'putting yourself out there'...

If there's something you dream about doing for a living, find a way to do it right now. Seek out some small way to engage in it without pay or for minimal pay - and not as a job working for someone else but as your own effort.
I wanted to be in business for myself as a crafter for years, but nothing happened until I started putting myself out there via my blog and podcast. Those led to more opportunities and, more importantly, got me to begin embracing the role of entrepreneur.

There's another piece of advice that I wrote down from the book, but that post will be part 2!

The Tattoo Chronicles

Another book review! This time it's The Tattoo Chronicles by Kat Von D. I LOVE the cover of this book (designed by Lonewolfblacksheep) - spot varnish and debossing are used to great effect. And the inside pages are really well-designed as a lot of effort has been put into the photography and the vintage typography that bring the words to life. As for the book itself, basically it's a year in the life of Kat Von D as told by her personal diary entries. It focuses on her tattoo work but also talks about her private life as well. Admittedly, reading about her constant relationship problems with Nikki Sixx did get a bit tiresome, but you can't accuse this book of not being raw and honest - Kat really divulges some personal thoughts and musings. Also it's really interesting to get more of an insight into the showbiz side of things, as Kat talks about the LA Ink producers interrupting her tattoo sessions with clients just to talk about the show. After reading the book, I just had an even greater appreciation of vintage typography because there are some great examples throughout.