From the Publisher. Collected for the first time, Maps presents 39 of the celebrated graphic designer's obsessively detailed, highly personal cartographic creations. Paintings as tall as 12 feet depict continents, countries, and cities swirling in torrents of information and undulating with colorful layers of hand-painted boundry lines, place names, and provocative cultural commentary. Read Author Q&A with Designers & Books.
Since the 1990s, in what I imagine to be her 15 minutes per day of free time, Pentagram partner Paula Scher has been painting massive maps of her own imagination. The colorful tapestries with type rendered in all-caps look like imaginative wayfinding but they function more like infographics, their visual hierarchies layered with not only place names but details like trade routes, zip codes, transit lines. The book takes a cue from Google Maps, giving one image of the full-sized painting and one that zooms in to a detail, where you can almost see Scher’s hand meticulously cramming in the name of every city in Uruguay, eventually spilling out into the Atlantic Ocean in waves. As the book progresses, Scher gets more topical (and more political) painting not only places but events like the 2000 Florida election results, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, or mapping out the history of the term “weapons of mass destruction.” As art, it’s gorgeous; as a process, it’s a lesson in obsession; and as a narrative, it’s storytelling at its best.
Announcements
Save the Date for This Year’s Designers & Books Festival: November 12, 2016, NYC
Designers & Books Festival: Onstage & Backstage 2016™
Saturday, November 12, 2016
Fashion Institute of Technology
Katie Murphy Amphitheater
7th Avenue and 27th Street
New York, New York
A full day of programming that celebrates the special relationship between the deisgn commuinty and books.
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For more information, contact: info@designersandbooks.com
Details on Designers & Books Fair 2015™
See the Work of Illustrators Revolutionizing Italian Publishing: September 29–October 26, 2016, NYC
Cover Revolution! Illustrators and the New Face of Italian Publishing
Opening, Thursday, September 29, 2016
Italian Cultural Institute
686 Park Avenue
New York, New York
“Cover Revolution!” is an exhibition and book (published by Corraini Editions) featuring work by the most popular and beloved Italian illustrators active in book design, including Lorenzo Mattotti, Franco Matticchio, Guido Scarabottolo, Gianluigi Toccafondo, Emiliano Ponzi, and Olimpia Zagnoli. Curated by Melania Gazzotti.
Details and to RSVP: http://bit.ly/2cy6iBw
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