This stunning book showcases the bold and original work of Royal Designer Tony Meeuwissen. The artist also writes about his life at the drawing board and the inspiration and ideas behind his imagery. From the foreword by Peter Marren: Welcome to this gallery of the work of a most individual and lovable artist. Many will have seen Tony Meeuwissen's work without knowing the artist, for it has appeared in so many decorative forms from books to playing cards, from magazine and sheet music covers to postage stamps. His work was described by the designer Mike Dempsey as 'inventive, intensely detailed and full of wit and beauty'. Penguin Books art director David Pelham praised him as an artist with the eye of an illustrator and the mind of a designer, one able to solve visual problems with 'remarkable originality, skill and panache.' To my eye Tony's work is always affi rmative even in its darker moments. It is playful but not saccharine, clever but not conceited. It always wears a wry smile. Tony learned his craft in the market place of commercial art. He learned how to handle a wide range of media to develop graphic ideas while also discovering the beauty of typefaces. In the process he evolved his very distinctive artistic language, his own way of seeing the world: colourful, eye-catching, beautifully executed, his work is a product of his unique vision. He loves drawing animals, birds, insects and natural phenomena, but usually with a characteristic twist: shape-changing fantastical animals, a nuthatch hatching from a nut, a praying mantis in bishop's vestments saying grace over a butterfly. On the memorable Christmas stamps he designed for the Royal Mail in 1983, the Three Kings are represented by chimney pots and the continents of the world by melting snow slipping from an umbrella. His is a universe where nothing is quite what it seems, where proverbs morph into pictures and names turn out to have diff erent meanings. Words and rhymes increase this pleasurable sense of an alternate world with its own logic and rules. Tony Meeuwissen eschews computer-aided methods preferring his drawing board, his pencils and his paintbox. He has managed to inhabit the world of commercial art for more than half a century without ever becoming commercial himself. His work is always uncompromisingly his own: the product of a unique imagination coupled with the skills and standards of a perfectionist. Here for the fi rst time the full range of his work is presented. Like the door to the magical garden in Alice, turn the golden key and enter.

Opera performances are often radically inventive. Composers' revisions, singers' improvisations, and stage directors' re-imaginings continually challenge our visions of canonical works. But do they go far enough? This elegantly written, beautifully concise book, spanning almost the entire history of opera, reexamines attitudes toward some of our best-loved musical works. It looks at opera's history of multiple visions and revisions and asks a simple question: what exactly is opera? "Remaking the Song", rich in imaginative answers, considers works by Handel, Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, and Berio in order to challenge what many regard as sacroscant: the opera's musical text. Scholarly tradition favors the idea of great operatic texts permanently inscribed in the canon. Roger Parker, considering examples ranging from Cecilia Bartoli's much-criticized insistence on using Mozart's alternative arias in the "Marriage of Figaro" to Luciano Berio's new ending to Puccini's unfinished "Turandot", argues that opera is an inherently mutable form, and that all of us - performers, listeners, scholars - should celebrate operatic revisions as a way of opening works to contemporary needs and new pleasures.

Learning by doing is the best way to get to grips with new ideas, and graphic design is no different. Weaving together creative strategies and design principles with step-by-step Adobe software guidance, this unique book helps you to immediately put into practice the concepts as you're learning them so they become second nature. Covering all the introductory topics a designer needs to know - from working with colour and layout, to editing images and designing apps - this fully updated edition of the hugely popular Graphic Design Essentials includes plenty of hands-on instruction and real-life examples to give you a thorough grounding in the fundamentals. This new edition includes: - Coverage of Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign - Examples of designs from the UK, US, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, China, the Middle East and Australia - Smaller supporting activities alongside major project exercises - New design formats, including apps and infographics - Downloadable resources to use within the software instruction

Award-winning artist and illustrator Sara Fanelli is one of the world's foremost illustrators, renowned for her experimental techniques that have spawned many imitators. Her unique contribution to book illustration is evident in such memorable books as "Dear Diary" ('one of the most extraordinary picture books ever devised' - "The independent"; 'an eccentric masterpiece' - "The Guardian"), "Mythological Monsters" ('a model of artistic engagement' - "Kirkus Reviews") and "My Map Book" ('an exhilarating and liberating book for all' - "The Guardian"). More recently she illustrated "The New Faber Book of Children's Verse and Pinocchio" (for the cover of which she was awarded first prize in the V&A Illustration Awards). Fanelli's inspiration lies not only in the visual arts but also in literature and the theatre. "Sometimes I Think, Sometimes I Am" is a remarkable creation by the artist, in which Fanelli takes the quotations and aphorisms that inspire her work, from Dante and Goethe to Calvino and Beckett, and places them in the context of a completely original artistic creation - sketchbooks, collages, paintings and drawings - at the heart of which lies a beautiful miniature book-within-a-book. The book opens with a newly commissioned text from Steven Heller, while Marina Warner introduces each of the five 'chapters' - 'Devils and Angels', 'Love', 'Colour', 'Myth' and 'The Absurd' - that make up this unique work. This is a book that will be enjoyed by anyone alert to the possibilities of what a book can be. It will be treasured, collected and marvelled at for years to come.

Applicable to a wide spectrum of design activity, this book offers an ideal first step, clearly explaining fundamental concepts and methods to apply when designing for the user experience. Covering essential topics from user research and experience design to aesthetics, standards and prototyping, User Experience Design explains why user-centered methods are now essential to ensuring the success of a wide range of design projects. This second edition includes important new topics including; digital service standards, onboarding and scenario mapping. There are now 12 hands-on activities designed to help you start exploring basic UX tasks such as visualising the user journey and recognising user interface patterns. Filled with straightforward explanations and examples from around the world, this book is an essential primer for students and non-designers needing an introduction to contemporary UX thinking and common approaches. Designed specifically for newcomers to UX Design, the companion website offers extra material for hands-on activities, templates, industry interviews, contributor notes and sources of guidance for those seeking to start a career in the industry.

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Over the past half century, computing has profoundly altered the ways stories are imagined and told. Immersive, narrative, and database technologies transform creative practices and hybrid spaces revealing and concealing the most fundamental acts of human invention: making stories. The Digital Imaginary illuminates these changes by bringing leading North American and European writers, artists and scholars, like Sharon Daniel, Stuart Moulthrop, Nick Montfort, Kate Pullinger and Geof Bowker, to engage in discussion about how new forms and structures change the creative process. Through interviews, commentaries and meta-commentaries, this book brings fresh insight into the creative process from differing, disciplinary perspectives, provoking questions for makers and readers about meaning, interpretation and utterance. The Digital Imaginary will be an indispensable volume for anyone seeking to understand the impact of digital technology on contemporary culture, including storymakers, educators, curators, critics, readers and artists, alike.

For generations, children’s books provided American readers with their first impressions of Japan. Seemingly authoritative, and full of fascinating details about daily life in a distant land, these publications often presented a mixture of facts, stereotypes, and complete fabrications.    This volume takes readers on a journey through nearly 200 years of American children’s books depicting Japanese culture, starting with the illustrated journal of a boy who accompanied Commodore Matthew Perry on his historic voyage in the 1850s. Along the way, it traces the important role that representations of Japan played in the evolution of children’s literature, including the early works of Edward Stratemeyer, who went on to create such iconic characters as Nancy Drew. It also considers how American children’s books about Japan have gradually become more realistic with more Japanese-American authors entering the field, and with texts grappling with such serious subjects as internment camps and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.   Drawing from the Library of Congress’s massive collection, Sybille A. Jagusch presents long passages from many different types of Japanese-themed children’s books and periodicals—including travelogues, histories, rare picture books, folktale collections, and boys’ adventure stories—to give readers a fascinating look at these striking texts. Published by Rutgers University Press, in association with the Library of Congress.