A History Of American Graffiti: 400 pages covering everything graffiti in the States. Carefully curated by Roger Gastman & Caleb Neelon this book is a must have for all people loving street art. And if Shephard Fairey says “If there were a college course on graffiti, this would be its textbook, but these stories are more fun than academic: The History of American Graffiti also supplements a degree from the school of street smarts.” you know its good. Go get it on Amazon.

Street art has become quite the thing in the past few years, with frontrunners like Banksy leading the pack. As a result of this, books on this topic are as common as graffiti on the wall. Tresspass seems to be different though. The editors Marc and Sara Schiller whom you might know of the street art site Wooster Collective selected work on strict criteria, one of which was that all the work had to be uncommissioned, making sure it is a true expression of the artists.

The book features 150 artists with great full color images of their work. And it is not just graffiti, but focuses on performances, social movements and protests. Set to be released later this month, on the website of publisher Taschen you can check out the first 100 pages of the book for free, and pre-order it too.

By the way, I saw ‘Exit Through The Giftshop‘ yesterday. Many of the artists in this book are also in this documentary. Definitely a must see!

Slowly but certainly Fashion blogs are taking over from the traditional magazines like Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and W. The hottest accessory on the front row nowadays are laptops instead of sunglasses. But then a usual problem for the internet arises: Who is who and where do I find them?

That’s why I love the book ‘Fashion Bloggers’ by Kirstin Hanssen, Felicia Nitzsche and their co-writer Elina Tozzi. This book contains interview with bloggers and covers fashion journalism, street style photography, party photography, personal style blogs and men’s fashion.

This book is an essential database for every fashion conscious person around, and for your occasional fashion marketer too.

Yours for only €22,50. Get it here.

While the print industry is going through hard times, there are people keeping it alive through their creativity. One of these people is Magda Lipka Falck, a student at Stockholm’s design and art school Konstfack. Falck has created a universal travel guide, suitable for every kind of travel, whether you go halfway around the world or around the block you live in.

The guide consists of stories and advice that will take you to cool places no matter where you are. Advice like ‘Ask a stranger which is their favorite street. Go There.’ will surely get you to places otherwise unseen. And there’s plenty more of advice like that, as you can see in the gallery below. The advices are available printed on flash-cards so you can surprise yourself while navigating foreign places.

I really love this book. Regular travel guides usually take you to cliche places, places you can’t afford or simply don’t really care about. The originality is hard to find. This guide puts it back into your own hands, and gives you a personalized and truly unique trip. Just imagine where you’ll end up. Awesome work.

Through Cool Hunting.

When I was was in Brooklyn the other day, I wandered into the powerHouse Arena and was amazed by the quality of their collection, the cool photo exhibiton and the great looks of this store/gallery. powerHouse are the kind of publishers laughing at the fact that the internet is killing publishing as it was. In my opinion these are the guys who have carved a niche for themselves and are thriving.

powerHouse Books is best known for a diverse publishing program — specialized in fine art, documentary, pop culture, fashion, and celebrity books. I was especially struck by the quality of their photo books.

Since the company was founded in 1995 they have built up a massive portfolio of great work. So check out their website for the entire collection, and if you are in the neighborhood head for 37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY and see for yourself!

This movie was created by Dorling Kindersley Books for an internal sales conference, but was spread because of it’s genius. It makes me wonder though what the vision of DK actually is. Do they still believe in print and do they just see new technology as a means of promotion or have they realized that the game has changed radically? That they are in the publishing industry and that the media consumption has radically changed and they themselves also need to change in order to survive?

Pretty cool that books are getting trailers now too! Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. This prequel to the hugely popular Jane Austen zombie spinoff novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies now has its own bloody yet proper video teaser. The book comes out March 23. Check it out below:

Through Vulture

Photographer Daniele Tamagni has created a must have book: Gentlemen of Bacongo. The book is an amazing document about Le Sape.

Le Sape is a movement in West-Africa in which men (and a few women) dress in flamboyant designer and handmade suits and other luxury items. Le Sape short for Société des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Élégantes, or the Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People. A club we all would like to be part of, don’t we? Le Sape combines French styles from their colonial roots and the individual’s style (which is where the flamboyancy comes in). Le Sapeurs, as these African dandies are called, wear pink suits and D&G belts while living in the slums of this coastal African region.

Through this book Tamagni has created a great insight into this fascinating world of extremes. These guys take a love for fashion to the next level, as this quote illustrates: “A Congolese sapeur is a happy man even if he does not eat, because wearing proper clothes feeds the soul and gives pleasure to the body.”

As I said, a must have! Gentlemen of Bacongo is available through Amazon for $39,99.

As you might already know, I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic and dystopian stories. That’s why I was exited to find the Redacted Series, a great little project from Colin Ford. It features dystopian novels with censored areas, much like you find on old photocopied top secret documents, which totally suits the stories of the chosen books. The books he picked for the series are the classics (and some of my favorites) 1984, A Brave New World and Farenheit 451.

When people grow out of a sweater, it gets passed on to their younger brother or it gets a new life with someone
they don’t know. Glass is recycled to make new bottles. Used plastic turns up in mobile phones. Over the last
couple of years more and more companies have come up with ideas to find new purposes for written off products.

Creative agency THEY designed a book for Lingotto. The inside of the book is entirely printed on paper that’s been used for test prints. On average with every printing run 1 to 2 percent of the paper gets used for testing. So printing 100.000 sheets leaves 2000 sheets of waste paper. THEY collected different types of test paper and printed 500 books on the backside of the test pages. THEY used Japanese stab binding, by which you leave the old, ‘wrong’ side on the inside and the ‘right’ side, the side you want to read, on the outside. The cover of the book is made of misprinted packaging for juice and milk. By using different packages and printing in small numbers, the covers are all unique.

For the principle of redefining things, like buildings or paper, THEY invented a new word, made out of existing word: Restructive.

A great example of creative recycling. See below for some more pics.