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booksWhat's Next for Adland Author James Othmer?High-flying advertising executive turned author James Othmer's new book, Adland: Searching for Life on a Branded Planet (Doubleday), offers an inside look at the past, present, and future of the ad industry. His tales of the wild and morally questionable ride from the days of Mad Men to branded iPhone apps have proved to be a hit with readers, and AgencySpy editor Mathew van Hoven recently caught up with Othmer for an illuminating chat. In addition to revealing that he parted ways with one of his first literary agents when she quit to enroll in clown school, Othmer offers this tantalizing synopsis of his next book, a novel called Holy Water that will be out in June from Doubleday: It's about a water-filtration salesman who gets transferred to a third-world nation to open up a back office in a drought-plagued nation. His wife has thrown him out of the house because he lied about his vasectomy. It's one of those books. But he's vice president of Underarms and Sweat at a P&G Colgate-like multinational. It's this kind of droning job. It touches upon globalization, consumerism, 'What are we doing with our lives?' Views from Windows Find Their Way Into Two Books
If you like interesting or attractive scenery, but particularly if you enjoy looking at it through windows, 2009 is going to be a red letter year for you, given that there are two new books available that provide just that. First up is Matteo Pericoli's The City Out My Window: 63 Views on New York, where the artist asked well-known New Yorkers to let him come in and recreate the view from the windows they look out of everyday, be that at home or at their offices. The participants include Nora Ephron, David Byrne, Stephen Colbert, and a whole host of others (New York's Daily Intel has a nice slideshow of a few -- you can also take a peek at a few more pieces at Google Books, though some of the image scans are a bit wonky). Second is a bound edition of images from political writer/blogger Andrew Sullivan, taken from the regular series on his The Daily Dish, "The View from Your Window" (the book, appropriately, will take the same name, along with the caption "The world as seen by the readers of one blog.") Instead of heading to a publisher, Sullivan decided to ask his readers if they would want such a book. Because the response was good, he decided to go the self-publishing route, getting on board with Blurb.com to help put it out, all the while asking his readers for pledges to buy the book to try and drive the costs down and be able to print extra copies. It has ultimately arrived at $16.25 and is set to ship on December 3rd. The Polar Express Turns 25
Previously on UnBeige: Music for the Eyes: Taschen's Luxe Tribute to Alex Steinweiss
A Well-Reasoned Ripping Apart of Dan Neil's Ripping Apart of Alex Bogusky
Following up on our post from last week about LA Times reporter Dan Neil's tearing apart ad man Alex Bogusky's new book Baked In, the affronted author has decided to reply to the bad review with a bad review of his own, though not with his own mightier-than-sword pen. Bogusky has posted on his blog an unpublished letter to the Times' editors, written by fellow ad man Ernest Lupinacci, which attempts to take Neil and his review down a few pegs. There are certainly some well-reasoned thoughts therein, and delivered very well (so much so that we worried that maybe we were a little harsh in our initial post when we sorta kinda sided with the review). But as we reread, we think Neil still has the upper hand, given some of Lupinacci's odd arguments (Bogusky himself admits, "Sometimes Ernest is so smart I have no idea what he's saying") and Bogusky's opening statements (he brings up that the reviewer usually works for the paper's automotive section, which is interesting, but we don't understand why that disqualifies Neil from having an opinion). But your opinion on the debate is entirely your own and we will say no more about it (unless, god forbid, there's a reaction to the reaction to the reaction). A Well-Reasoned Ripping Apart of Alex Bogusky's Latest Book
Let's start this last day of the work week a little mean, shall we? Currently making the rounds in the ad agency world is Dan Neil's scathing review of modern ad icon Alex Bogusky's latest book (co-written with John Winsor), Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves. While Neil admits there are the occasional useful thoughts in the very, very slim book, he spends most of his review tearing it apart, saying that most of it is either very obvious words of wisdom ("better products tend to sell better") or not entirely grounded in reality. He sums it all up nicely toward the beginning when he writes "perhaps Bogusky and Winsor never had an editor to challenge them on some of the most evident holes in their book." It's a great picking apart of the book (we've always been a little critical of Bogusky's literary work ourselves), but also seems to have a wide spread, speaking to the many other self/business-help books that follow that "well this is all great, but how does it apply to the real world?" model. Quote of Note | Milton Glaser
He was really not related to the field of illustration. He was an outsider who came in and proved that you could be an enormous personality, do an individual thing, and still be used successfully in commercial art." -Milton Glaser on Andy Warhol, who he calls "the perfect commercial artist," in Tony Scherman and David Dalton's POP: The Genius of Andy Warhol (Harper) Don't Judge a Film by Its Nostalgic Faux Book Cover
UnBeige's Eva Hagberg's Dark Nostalgia and 50+ Years of SOM
A couple of weeks back, we told you all about UnBeige 3.0's Alissa Walker's great City Walks Architecture. And while we yammered on about that release, we briefly mentioned UnBeige 2.0's Eva Hagberg's upcoming book through Monacelli, Dark Nostalgia, but hadn't been able to say much more than "It's coming out soon!" But now that it's out, we wanted to give it its justly due by saying that we've gotten a chance to check it out and have aptly drooled all over its gorgeous pages. It's chock full of beautiful, mostly dimly-lit, cozy-yet-cool interiors of restaurants, hotels, and houses, all of which caused us to suffer through a variety of feelings, from hunger to sleepiness to, perhaps most frequently, outright envy. It's a great look at the blending of the modern with the classic. And while we're on book talk, with our copy of Dark Nostalgia, we also just got a sneak peek of the not-yet-released, five volume series Architecture of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which is now ranked highly on our wish list for the upcoming holidays. We've only seen the final book, which covers 1997 to 2008, but judging from that, the whole collection should be just incredible. The edition we've seen runs through the most high-profile and/or impressive buildings the firm put together over that span of time, making you regularly stop to think "I didn't know SOM did that one, too!" If you're an architecture buff, it's a great batch of information (and if you live in Chicago, where SOM calls home, you really don't have any excuse not to show some local pride by taking a look when the whole series gets released in mid-November). A Tale of Three Dust Jackets
Here at UnBeige, we love a good dust jacket almost as much as we love a good book (which we store in teetering stacks on any flat surface we can find), and so we were intrigued to read Ron Hogan's recent post on Galleycat, our bookish brother blog, concerning the dust jacket switcheroo for Mathilda Savitch (FSG). The debut novel by Victor Lodato started life as an advance reading copy (ARC) wrapped in an illustration with a macabre Alice in Wonderland quality. We also found a slightly tweaked American ARC (pictured above, at center) that tightened up the typeface selection and toned down the Alice factor, ditching the girl's headband and sash, trimming her hair, and ensuring that she was outfitted in more sensible shoes for a scramble through the forest, which has also been tidied of a craggy tree. "Both my editor, Courtney Hodell, and I thought this was a great cover," Lovato told Hogan, "but maybe it just needed to be...sexier in some ways. It was a little cold. So they wanted to play with some other ideas." The new dust jacket cover (above, at right) of the novel, which hit bookstore shelves nationwide last month, features what you'll probably recognize as the work of artists and snowglobe wizards Walter Martin and Paloma Muñoz. Specifically, it's "Traveler 48 at Night," a photo of a snowglobe they created in 2003. "The novel's about a child alone in an emotionally frozen landscape, and she's trying to figure out lots of things, from where her sister went to death in general," said Lodato, pointing to the final cover. "And this just seemed very resonant to that." PreviouslyHenry Dreyfuss's Lost (and Found) Symbol Sourcebook Bauhaus Dressing: Josef Albers Loved a Good Salad Bar Former UnBeige Editors Make Good, Release Books Michael Cho Creates Jacket Art for 25th Anniversary Edition of Don DeLillo's White Noise (Un)Funny Business: David Barringer on Design London's Design Museum Spotlights World-Changing Chairs, Cars, Dresses, Shoes Jeff Goodby Responds to Bob Garfield's Theory That Advertising is Doomed Charles Saatchi Opens Up for His New Book and BBC Reality Show Battered Books, Tattered Covers: The Photos of Cara Barer and Abelardo Morell American Fashion Cookbook Serves Up Designers' Favorite Dishes James Rosenquist Reveals Jasper Johns, Jokester! Wall Street Bull Artist Sues Random House, Authors over Book Cover Actor/Designer Bryan Batt Gets Book Deal Bookforum Launches New Website Steven Guarnaccia Casts Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Frank Gehry in The Three Little Pigs Ruben Toledo Covers the Classics Chip Kidd Feeds Gloria Vanderbilt's Obsession Per Olaf Fjeld's Tribute Book to the Pritzker-Winning Sverre Fehn UK Design Students Create Bold New Looks for The Secret History Chronicling Each Step of Making a 'Good' Design Book Ellen Lupton (and Her New Book) to Appear at Cooper-Hewitt Tomorrow It's Taschen Warehouse Sale Time! Love for Sale: Leanne Shapton Catalogs a Relationship That Was Barbara Streisand to Publish a Book About Architecture and Design Wordless Book Writers of the World, Unite! Chip Kidd on 'the Typographical Equivalent of Bad Toupees' Chuck Palahniuk Seeks 'Subversive and Slyly Promotional' Book Logo Michael Gross' Upcoming Book Ruffles Feathers at the Met Paul Graham Wins Deutsche Börse Photography Prize The Very Hungry Caterpillar Turns 40 In the Kitchen (and Bathroom) with Ron Radziner Rohde Trip: Phyllis Ross Examines Lesser Known Master of Modern Design Pentagram's Abbott Miller Joins Forces with Martin Parr to Encourage Dancing Snapshots of Another Time: the Amish Diaries Gilbert Rohde, Under-the-Radar Master of Modern Design Steven Heller's Design Disasters Turns Bad Into Good Stephen Sprouse Mania!: 2009 Brings Retrospective, Book, Website, and New Louis Vuitton Collection Bush Banks on Books, According to Former Chief of Staff Ushering In the New Age of Quiet, One Conservative's View For 2009 Motivation, We Present Author Dara Torres A Post-Holiday Treat for Knitters Business As Usual for One Book Agent Annie Leibovitz on the Ones Who Got Away In Brief: Of Icebergs and EDARs Yes We Can Sell Out First Printing: Obama Campaign Photo Book Is Pre-Sale Hit Previewing the 'Joe the Plumber' Book Cover In Brief: Selling Andy Warhol, Feting Design Observer Yes We Can: PowerHouse Readies Book of Scout Tufankjian's Campaign Photos Books In Brief: Ada on Architecture, Ames' Alcoholic Adventures Holy Japanimation, Batman, It's Chip Kidd's New Book! Getting to Know Book Designer Bill Douglas Before He Talked to Chip Kidd, Lynda Barry Taschen Releases New New New York Interiors (Which is New) Calling All Rail Fans: New Book for Your Coffee Table The Quintessential Tome for Vintage Illustration Lovers Stitch Your Way Through a Troubled Economy Postmodern Postcard Projects Are Something to Write Home About Sean Connery's New Book Has Everyone in Scotland Angry Alex Bogusky to Publish Suspicious 'Diet' Book Zach Plague's Boring and Book-As-Poster Party Photos National Geographic Mines Archive for New Photo Book Imprint Strand Bookstore Continues Tote Bag Innovation Building Your Japanese Craft Book Collection Petless Jon Arbuckle Gets Book Deal Tomi Ungerer: Octopus in the Bathtub, Blunderbuss in the Nursery From Spider-Man to Ayn Rand: A Closer Look at Steve Ditko Field-Tested, Steve Delahoyde-Approved: Coudal Partners Celebrates Book of Books Project Runway Finalist Daniel Vosovic Turns Fashion Inside Out Le Corbusier's Archives Expose the Man Behind the Buildings Eyes, Words Deceive Richard Hell, Christopher Wool A Look Back at Six Months of Design Fellowshipery at Chronicle How I Was Told There'd Be Cake Avoided Getting Covered with Icing A Quick Look at Maggie Macnab's 'Decoding Design' Method Founders Reveal Dirty Little Secrets in New Book Richard Meier to Wield Sharpie at Book Signings in Soho, Basel Doodlebooks: Ink Scribbles as Cover Art Taschen Puts Greatest Show on Earth in Book Form Hot Buttons: A History of Campaign Swag Historian Howard Zinn Is Comic Book Hero Knitters, Put Your Needles Down Now Bloomberg's Russell Finally Gets Around to Hating John Silber What Stefan Sagmeister Learned on His Year-Long Vacation Book Publishing Also Looks at Its Green-ness Art by the Book: Regina Joseph, Contextual Librarian Dan Kennedy Rocks On with New Book, Trusty Gary Baseman Figurine PSFK Gets Into the Trends Business Bob Dylan's Painterly Riffs on Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Co. Rodrigo Corral to Design Olsen Twins' Coffee Table Book Chip Kidd's The Learners Reviewed Glowingly in Newsweek Random House Purchases The Monacelli Press Chip Kidd Channels Voices for New Book Promo A Million Little Princes: Richard Prince to Design Cover of James Frey's New Book |
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