Worth a Look

Monsters A Bestiary of the Bizarre

A great little book from Thames & Hudson, Monsters ‘A Bestiary of the Bizarre’ is one of those oddities you can’t resist! The querky typography of the cover and gorgeous finish makes it aesthetically moreish and the book has a lovely feel and weight. This book explores monsters through the ages and throughout the world. With a brilliant set of bizarre and fantastical illustrations, Monsters provides a dark yet engrossing visual history of fearsome beasts from every age and culture.

Mavellous Mazes

by Thomas Flintham

One of the great things about design and particularly illustration is the influence it has on children’s books. Thomas Flintham’s Marvellous Mazes is a testimony to this. If you ever wondered just how far you can push the creativity of a maze then look now further. What started out as a treat for my son quickly turned into a treasure for the Core Creative book shelf. Half of me is longing to complete all of the wonderful illustrations and the other half of me wants to treasure it as a work of art! Hat’s off to Thomas Flintham for making the maze so marvellous.

One for the Shelf

Stationery Design Now!

Like most designers, at Core Creative its often the simplest of jobs that require the most concentrated drop of creativity to help them blossom. Stationery design can be a love/hate relationship. Personally I find it a wonderful opportunity to pull together what is often a series of disjointed and disfunctional items under one shiney new umbrella. But when time does permit its so nice to take it to the next level and produce something beautiful.

Taschen’s Stationery Design Now! showcases some exceptional examples of this with a myriad of print techniques, paper choices and typography. You can’t help but be impressed and you’ll be picking out your favourites in no time. Its an ideal book for reminding you that any stationery project can be made to look stunning. The format Taschen are using for this series of books is great, heavy stock, sturdy finishing and a real ‘workshop’ feel. Very much a designers handbook and easily worth £20ish quid!

We’re Reading

Salvador Dali, I Les Revistes

There’s something very addictive about Dali and everything he did. As a fan and obsessive lover of surrealism, a dip into the world of Dali is to leave everything else behind. When the studio pressure gauge hits max at Core Creative its time to retreat to my little glass den and treat my imagination to one of my few heros.

Any follower of Dali knows all to well his fondness for making money as well as art and this book is a stunning collection of the numerous ways in which Dali sold himself to consumerism. Previously I had only collected his art but this book was a real find and covers a wealth of avenues that Dali explored. Its amazing to see just how much work he did in the commercial sector, and I guess a little sad at the same time.

Although is it wrong for a creative to explore all outlets of creativity regardless of whether it makes buckets of money or not?! I Les Revistes is a must for Dali fans and Creatives alike, showcasing the crossover between art and advertising. Its available from Amazon for around £60.00