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!

Good things come in small packages. In 2006 artist Slinkachu started his Little People project, which definitely is among the good. The project involves the remodelling and painting of miniature model train set characters, which he then places and leaves on the street. As they are almost invisible for the unaware eye, the humorous scenes created by Slinkachu really come to life in his photography. Check out some of the images below.

For the best overview do check out the blog itself, as it has much more of these great images, and it shows you the size of the little people to their surroundings. The best of these pictures are also bundled in the book ‘Little People in the City’. Get it here now.

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.

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.

Check out a selection below. Pretty cool to see where Burton’s Willy Wonka, The Joker and The Mad Hatter come from:

Available in both limited-edition lithograph ($300) and standard hardcover ($70) versions, The Art of Tim Burton can be pre-ordered from Steeles Publishing and will be available at the MoMA bookstore in New York and Forbidden Planet in England.

After lauging my ass off looking at ugliesttattoos.com, the book ‘Black Tattoo Art’ by tattoo fanatic Marisa Kakoulas explores the opposite side, the good side.

This book is a photographic trip around the world exploring that pay homage to the ancient roots of tattooing in their contemporary interpretations. And there are some pieces of art in there. All and all it is an amazing document of great tattoos. Get the book here.

For more info and ordering click here.

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.