Josef Albers’s INTERACTION OF COLOR is a masterwork in twentieth-century art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this timeless book presents Albers’s unique ideas of color experimentation in a way that is valuable to specialists as well as to a larger audience. Originally published by Yale University Press in 1963 as a limited silkscreen edition with 150 color plates, INTERACTION OF COLOR first appeared in paperback in 1971, featuring ten representative color studies chosen by Josef Albers. The paperback has remained in print ever since and remains one of the most influential resources on color for countless readers (LINK down below).

Well, now for the amazing news! This book has now been made into an APP for the Apple iPad! Here are just a few of it’s amazing features:

• Full text and plate commentary, describing Albers's renowned principles on how to see and understand color.
• Over 125 original color studies, including flaps and moving pieces.
• Over 60 interactive plates that reproduce the experience of working with paper, a captivating feature inspired by Albers's teaching methodologies.
• A beautiful new palette tool, in which colors are manipulated like paper.
• The ability to create, save, and export your final designs and palettes into any vector-based design software.
• Over two hours of video commentary, including archival video of Albers and interviews with experts explaining key principles, making even the most challenging problems easy to understand.
• Interviews with leading designers and artists explaining how they use color in their professional practices.

The free download allows you to sample Chapter 10, including accompanying text, video commentary, two interactive plates, and the palette tool. The complete app, featuring the full text, 125 plates, 60 interactive studies, and over two hours of video commentary, is available for $9.99 through an in-app purchase on iTunes, just CLICK HERE!

Down below are a few promo videos showing this incredible app in action, please be sure to check them out.

Also, Yale University Press created a website that is very in-depth and very well designed. Don’t believe me? CLICK HERE!

WOW! This is insanely great news!! OK, we don’t mean to brag, but at this year’s 2013 San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) Chris Ware’s new Graphic Novel, BUILDING STORIES (Pantheon Books) won four 2013 Eisner Awards!!! Yes, FOUR! This is almost too good to be true and we are so proud of Chris Ware. His new Graphic Novel, also known as “The Book in a Box”, won in these categories: Best New Graphic Novel, Best Writer/Artist, Best Lettering and Best Publication Design.

We want to congratulate Chris Ware (and Pantheon Books) for their amazing success!

On Tuesday, July 30th, at 7:00 pm, Housing Works Bookstore is pleased to host a discussion with pianist/composer Timo Andres, artist/book designer Peter Mendelsund, and The New Yorker‘s Leo Carey.The event is FREE and should be extremely interesting so, if you can, go check it out! For more detailed information, please CLICK HERE!

Timo Andres, whose most recent album, Home Stretch, explores and recreates pieces by Mozart and Brian Eno, is a huge admirer of Peter Mendelsund, who has designed book jackets at Random House for iconic authors such as James Joyce, Franz Kafka (examples shown down below), Julio Cort zar, and Michel Foucault. Together, with the help of critic Leo Carey, they will talk about their respective “anxiety of influences” and the ways in which they hope to remain faithful to a tradition while making it their own. Copies of Home Stretch, which releases that day, will be on sale.

We should also mention that Peter Mendelsund is the Associate Art Director of Alfred A. Knopf Books, the Art Director of Pantheon Books, Art Director of Vertical Press, and has a new book coming out in April, 2014 titled, COVER (Power House Books).

Presented here, for your viewing pleasure, is an extremely in-depth interview recently conducted at Penn State University by the Host, Patty Satalia. She delivered a lovely, and very well researched, conversation with Book Cover Designer Chip Kidd. They talked about the History of Graphic Design, the Future of Books in General, and What are Some Important Issues Facing Publishers Today. They also discuss the importance of Penn State University on his life and work, especially his first novel, “The Cheese Monkeys, A Novel In Two Semesters”. Don’t believe us? Well, here’s the video to prove it, check it out!

Also, Please visit Patty Satalia’s official website CONVERSATIONS FROM PENN STATE because, there, they have a few more videos of “Conversations with Chip Kidd” that are well worth listening to. Also, while you’re there, you might check out some of her other interviews with other guests too. We promise, they’re ALL very interesting and really good stuff!! Just CLICK HERE!

Hey, if you’re reading this post and visiting this website then there’s a pretty good chance that you either love reading books or enjoy Graphic Design. Well, we’re happy to announce that we have recently posted a ton of brand-new photos of work done by the Designer, Chip Kidd. Of course all the new stuff is mostly all book covers but they’re fun to see. So, please visit our GALLERY PAGE by clicking RIGHT HERE, or you can always just click the “Gallery” TAB Button up above, just below the header. Enjoy.

Oh yeah, hey wait! We almost forgot to ask… PLEASE remember to share this site with all your friends on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media you might use. Our goal is to attract a lot of traffic to this site and we would appreciate ANY help you can give.Thanks!

Do you love books? Well, if so then please be sure to check out this photo of an amazing home library I found that is completely insane. I have always loved those “Bookshelf Ladders” that some libraries have. But could you imagine needing a book on the very top shelf, it would be scary to go up there, ha!

We think this might actually be the VERY first review for Chip Kidd’s next book, GO: A KIDD’S GUIDE TO GRAPHIC DESIGN, over at the always very informative SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL Magazine Website they recently posted an article that featured kid’s books that have “elegant and inventive book designs, newly published picture books that make clever use of visual presentation to convey information and story essentials, establish ambiance and tone, and challenge readers' imaginations”. Yes! This is so cool considering that the book will not be out until October 8th, 2013. Also, it is going to be published by the Workman Publishing Company. Hey, to check out the article, please CLICK HERE!

Here’s another quote from SLJ:

“Chip Kidd's Go: A Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design introduces children to basic design fundamentals, and builds a foundation that will empower students to not only appreciate art, but better function in a world where visual media is pervasive.”

Thanks School Library Journal!

Check out this wonderful Animation Video celebrating the 130th birthday (June 3rd) of Author Franz Kafka. It was created by an Artist/Animator named Pablo Delc n and he did an amazing job on it. The music, visuals, flow, everything is just totally great! We should also note that the graphic design is based on the Art Direction of all the “Franz Kafka” book covers that were designed for Schocken Books by Peter Mendelsund.

Chip Kidd, after being involved with a few projects with DC Comics’ characters, bought the original artwork from All-Star Superman #10, Batman & Robin #2 and a story from the 1960′s Japanese Batman Bat-Manga comics (with the art of Jiro Kuwata) and then had them specially custom-bound with glass covers. You can see them in the Comic Archive video down below and the end result is pretty interesting. Wow, what a treasure!

Here’s a very interesting piece of “Graphic Art” History. The 16mm short film “Mickey Mouse In Vietnam”, an anti-war movie by Lee Savage and Milton Glaser and produced for The Angry Arts Festival in 1968 has just resurfaced on the Internet. It uses animation in a very clever way. In fact, the techniques used are almost identical to the very early animation of Walt Disney so it just makes the film seem “more real”. Plus, that effect helps to add a lot of punch to the over-all message!

The co-creator of the video, Milton Glaser is among one of the most celebrated graphic designers in the United States, best known for his iconic I NY logo. Some of his other well known work includes the 1966 Bob Dylan poster and the DC bullet logo (used by DC Comics from 1977 to 2005). He also founded New York magazine with Clay Felker in 1968.

This video (posted down below, please be sure to watch it) was brought to our attention by Brian Galindo over at the BUZZFEED website. He also posted a very excellent interview with Milton Glaser about the film and they touch on some very interesting subjects. To read that article, just CLICK HERE!