Readmill is a community for readers, allowing you to easily share and highlight the books you love. Read with the Readmill for App, and sync highlights from Amazon Kindle with the Readmill Bookmarklet.

This is Readmill from Readmill on Vimeo.

I love the Readmill tagline: Welcome to a world of reading.

In case you haven’t heard of the amazing kids book Oh, the Places You’ll Go Pop-Up. It’s a fantastic book.

And I admit, I am not the Burning Man Type. But this mashup-of-the-two moved me.

(via michaelgalpert)

The Little Know-It-All Graphic is Common Sense in book form, for Designers. It covers a broad spectrum of questions that designers need to know the answers to, in order to thrive in their growing field of practice. Not currently available in the US but SOON according to the gestalten.com site. Browse the book.

After organizing their bookshelf almost a year ago, Sean Ohlenkamp & Lisa Blonder Ohlenkamp decided to take it to the next level. They spent many sleepless nights moving, stacking, and animating books at Type bookstore in Toronto.

(If someone can tell me the couple’s names I would like to add them to the post and give them proper credit!)

This. Makes. Me. Happy!!

(thank you Alexandra)

A space suit is made out of a flight suit, a Goodrich tire, a bra, a girdle, a raincoat, a tomato worm. An American rocket ship is made out of a nuclear weapon, and a German ballistic missile; a ‘space program’ — a new organization with new goals — is made out of preexisting military, scholarly, and industrial institutions and techniques.
– Monchaux

Fascinating post on Fashioning Apollo: How the Spacesuit Came To Be over on brain pickings.

My studio mate Maria Popova launched a fantastically visual Tumblr featuring all her Book posts from Brain Pickings. Click on a book and you will be taken to that post over on Brain Pickings. Fantastic!

Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams explores Dieter Rams’ work. #wishlisted.

Found it via Josh Clark’s List of Gifts for Designers, Nerds, and Mobile Mavens

Every time you buy a book, Better World Books will donate one to someone in need. And, there’s free shipping worldwide. Fantastic.

(via the TBD Newsletter)

Issue #4 of 8 Faces is out! Yay! It’s quite an impressive line up in this issue:

With a cover by Jessica Hische, printed on metallic stock with white ink and foil-blocking, issue #4 features interviews with John Boardley, Craig Mod, Kris Sowersby, Doug Wilson, Nadine Chahine, David Březina, and Silas Dilworth and Neil Summerour of TypeTrust.

8 Faces Issue #4 features an introduction by Jon Tan, a review of Typography Sketchbooks, and web typography tips from Typekit’s Tim Brown. Every copy ships with an exclusive new catalogue courtesy of Typotheque. Ships mid-December.

Originally written in 2007, “B” is a thank you note, a love letter, a wish, a promise, a confession, and a secret. “B” is the perfect gift for every mother and every daughter. Short, touching and lovingly illustrated by Sophia Janowitz.

The incredibly charming Sarah Kay has been a performing poet since she was 14 years old. She is the founder of Project V.O.I.C.E, teaching poetry and self-expression at schools across the United States.

Order the book. Watch Sarah’s moving TED talk:

This book shelf by Daniel Eatock made me chuckle.

I am completely mesmerized by these works of art by Issac Salazar. Fantastic.

(via Gallobythian)

We kicked off the day with a CreativeMornings talk with Jessi Arrington which ended with a Rainbow Parade. Pretty magical, if you ask me. You can see some photos of the parade here and here.

Oliver Jeffers, one of my (and my daughter’s) favorite children’s book illustrators, just released a new book. It’s called Stuck. It’s about a determined little boy who wants to get his stuck kite out of a tree. How? Well, by knocking it down with his shoe, of course. But strangely enough, it too gets stuck. And the only logical course of action . . . is to throw his other shoe. Only now it’s stuck! Surely there must be something he can use to get his kite unstuck. An orangutan? A boat? His front door? Yes, yes, and yes. And that’s only the beginning. Ordered!

Ji Lee, former Creative Director of Google, now at Facebook just published a book called Word as Image. If you want to learn about Ji’s design philosophies, watch his fabulous CreativeMornings talk.

(thank you Ji)

The lovely Debbie Millman published a new book called Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits.

Brand Thinking is a dialogue with 22 of the world’s top culture critics, design executives, and branding strategists – people like Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, Daniel Pink, Grant McCracken, and Wally Olins – on the state of branding today, what “brand” truly means, and how companies and consumers can best embrace the future.

In each interview, Millman cuts through all the empty jargon and buzzwords to expose the underpinnings of how people respond to the ideas of designers, and how the best brands open avenues for cultural change in our daily lives–whether we’re aware of it or not.

FastCompany wrote a long post about the new book. Read it here.

I am ordering my copy right now: Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits

I just bought the white one pictured above. Yay!

Every week It’s Nice That invites someone from the creative industry to share with them what book they turn to in need of inspiration or reference, but condensed down, to five titles and the stories behind them. Lovely idea: It’s Nice That / Bookshelf

(If you’re into book lists by designers, make sure to also check out Designers & Books. A fantastic resource!)

Grace Bonney, force behind the blog Design*Sponge, just came out with a book called Design*Sponge at Home. (Available as a digital version as well.)

The book includes tours of 70 real-life interiors featuring artists and designers, DIY projects, step-by-step tutorials, Before & After makeovers submitted by her readers and essential tips on modern flower arranging.

Congratulations to Grace, what a wonderful achievement! And how adorable is this book trailer?

Here’s a fantastic book photography enthusiasts: Pinhole Cameras: A DIY Guide, by Chris Keeney. Definitely a cool gift idea for parents that want to pass on the love for photography. What better idea than to build pinhole cameras with your little ones?

The address of my page (and yours too I imagine) is https://kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights. If you have a kindle and do a lot of highlighting, go visit that page and you’ll see all of your highlights.

From there, via the tumblr bookmarklet, it’s trivial to share the quote on Tumblr. And so I suspect I’ll be doing quite a bit more sharing as a result of this discovery.

Sharing my Kindle Highlights, by Fred Wilson

(images via IndieFixx)

Ever since I tasted a Cake Pop I have been wondering how to make them myself. That’s where the Cake Pops Book by Bakerella comes in. Ordered!

Observing people while they’re driving is, passing them on the highway, is one of my favorite things to do. It comes to now surprise then, that I am in love with photos of everyday people cruising the freeways of Los Angeles. You can buy the book here: Drive.

(via Brain Pickings)

The Printer’s Terms contains explanations of virtually all printer’s terms of the pre-digital “lead age of typography” in English, German and French. Designed by legendary Swiss Rudolf Hostettler.

I just stumbled upon an amazing collection of Book and Design related Flickr Sets by German based Design Professor Michael Stoll. This Bosch Fridge Manual Set from 1963 made me chuckle. Or check out this Flight Thru Instruments book from 1945, describing different (military) techniques of flight in a profusely illustrated manner. Or this Corporate Identity Brochure from 1972 about the City of Munich.

Now here’s a gem of a discovery that stopped me in my tracks this morning: Rare Book Feast is new short movie series about the timeless character of books. Their message and what they look like are what is celebrated here. Nate Burgos believes that as our culture becomes digital in a lot of ways, it is all the more important (not to mention inviting) to revisit and learn from the early design challenges, creative solutions and general lessons that the “old” print world keeps relevant.

Kicking off this series is the “World Geo-Graphic Atlas” (1953) designed by Herbert Bayer with Martin Rosenzweig, Henry Gardiner and Masato Nakagawa: 2,200 diagrams, graphs, charts, symbols spanning 368 pages about our planet earth. All done before computers.

Video concept, script and narration by Nate Burgos of DesignFeast.com. Video creation, direction and production by Joe Giovenco of BRNeyes.com.

#fantastic

I couldn’t help but chuckle when I discovered these Fake Books by Emanuela Ligabue. They are handpainted wooden blocks, made to look like a book. (Please everyone, let’s welcome Emanuela to the internet. She just launched her site *today*, oh, and she happens to be the mother of wonderfully talented Olimpia Zagnoli)

(thank you Kyle)

I am obviously a huge fan of Christoph Niemann. So it’s no surprise that I already pre-ordered his latest children’s book called That’s How!

My studiomate William Burks Spencer recently finished a book about how to put together an advertising portfolio. In it, he interviews over 100 of the top people in the industry and asks them practical questions that a student or junior would have. You can check out his blog here or buy the book on Amazon.

The Line, the original a 10-meter-long drawing with 29 panels that unfold, accordion fashion, is Steinberg’s manifesto about the conceptual possibilities of the line and the artist who gives them life. His drawing hand begins and ends the sequence, as the simple horizontal line that hand creates metamorphoses into, among other things, a water line, laundry line, railroad track, sidewalk, arithmetic division line, or table edge; near the end, the curlicues etched by the iceskater’s blade remind us of the role calligraphy plays in Steinberg’s art.

The Line by Saul Steinberg

Karl Lagerfeld’s bookshelf system is crazy impressive (and big!) It’s an older shot by Selby, who just came out with Edible Selby.

(via Raul)

I just got my copy of Uppercase’s Work/Life 2 today and couldn’t put it down for what seemed an eternity. The Uppercase Directory of Illustration features 100 illustrators from around the world, compiled in a beautiful design.

Here’s a flip through the entire book:

Help your luggage stand out from the crowd with these Penguin luggage tags available in two titles: On the Road, Jack Kerouac and The Lost Girl, D. H. Lawrence.

This piece by Eva Kotátková made me look.

This Test Pattern Library made me chuckle. I found it over on Amrit Richmond’s blog, who found it on Unplggd, who found it on ffffound. Now, who can tell me who made this?

This is 2011, we should be able to easily give credit to the original author. Ugh!

A Book Apart just announced their latest book, The Elements of Content Strategy, written by our brand new studiomate Erin Kissane, designed by studiomate Jason Santa Maria and edited by studiomate Mandy Brown. Yes, that was studiomate three times in a row. The book will be released March 8th.

I am thrilled about today’s launch of long anticipated Designers & Books. The site is the brainchild of my friend Steve Kroeter and was designed by no other than Pentagram.

Steve told me about the concept of the site months ago and I have been anticipating this day, where I can share his wonderful idea. Steve approached highly respected members of the the design community and asked them to send in a list of books that had an important, meaningful, and formative impact on their lives. Books that have shaped their values, their worldview, and their ideas about design.

From Vitruvius to William Morris to Frank Lloyd Wright to Edith Wharton to Le Corbusier to Paul Rand—there has always been a particularly special and robust relationship between designers and books: reading them, writing them, designing them, collecting them, learning from them, and being inspired by them. Designers & Books celebrates that relationship.

Congratulations Steve! I am raising a glass of bubbly stuff.

www.designersandbooks.com

While I am not all that crazy about quilts, this Robot Quilt by Boo Davis made me look and smile. It’s called “Does Not Compute”. Boo Davis shares the pattern and everything you need to know to make it in her book, “Dare to Be Square Quilting: A Block-by-Block Guide to Making Patchwork and Quilts.”

(How appropriate that the cover features an owl, my ‘obsession in the making!”)

2011 by Paul Octavious