We are living in a golden age of self-expression. The explosion of user-created content on blogs and social networking sites moved Time magazine to name You" their 2006 person of the year. But while we may be spending a lot more time in virtual worlds, we have not lost the urge to make our physical world more meaningful. By leaving art and ideas in public places, you can affect someone's daychange their mood or their mindand maybe even change the world in the process! The Guerilla Art Kit shows how small artistic acts can start a revolution. Keri Smith, noted author of Living Out Loud and the blog Wish Jar Journal, uses her unique drawing and handwriting style to help anyone find and release their inner artist or activist. This visually exciting activity bookfull of step-by-step exercises, cut-out projects, sticker ideas, and morehas both fun assignments and handy tips to help you unleash your creative energy into the streets, where you can really make an impact. From the quick exercisesleaving books for strangers to find, chalking quotes on the sidewalkto the more involvedmaking a "wish tree," guerilla gardening, or making your own stencils The Guerilla Art Kit contains everything you need to put your message out into the world."

In this digital age of computer-generated graphics and typography, it's refreshing to find typographers who still believe in working by hand. No longer relegated to designer's sketchbooks, hand-drawn type has emerged from the underground as a dynamic vehicle for visual communicationfrom magazine, book, and album covers to movie credits and NFL advertisements. As the practice and appreciation of hand-drawn type grows, its time to celebrate the work of those typographers whose every letterform is a work of art. Hand Job collects groundbreaking work from fifty of today's most talented typographers who draw by hand. Graphic designer and hand typographer Michael Perry selects work representing the full spectrum of design methods and styles. Each hand-drawn work is entirely shaped by the artist's unique processevery one a carefully executed composition enhanced by unplanned accidents of line, color, and craft. Hand Job also includes photographs of found type,artists studios, and the tools that help make typography come to life. Whether you are looking to invigorate your design work or are just in need of a little offbeat inspiration, Hand Job will have you reaching for your favorite pen.

Driving beats, coursing rhythms, swaying skirts, and swaggering bandleaders playing deep into the sultry night: Latin music is a celebration of life and sensuality, and nowhere are these essential values better reflected than the dazzling record covers that present this music to the world. Cocinando!: Fifty Years of Latin Album Cover Art draws together the most beautiful, sexy, colorful, innovative, and creative Latin record covers from all the various genres of Latin music: mambo, salsa, bossa nova, tropiclia, Latin jazz, and rock. Featured are covers by such legendary performers as Joo Gilberto, Machito, Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, Ray Baretto, Caetano Veloso, Santana, and countless others. Author Pablo Yglesias provides a compelling introduction to the history of Latin popular music and the designers who have brought this music to visual life.

One of the first impulses of an owner who's lost a pet is to canvas the neighborhood with quickly made posters. And even if we haven't seen the wanderer in question, many of us stop to read these notices, which are often charming combinations of heartfelt pleas, humor, and handmade art.For the last decade, Ian Phillips has collected lost pet posters from around world. In Lost, Phillips selects from his vast collection those posters notable for their cleverness, humor, sorrow, entreaties, rewards, and-in several instances-sheer outlandishness ("Lost Lost Lost: one brown and white 'mottled' street duck. Does not answer to the name of Neither Norman"). For designers, artists, or anyone who wants to tap into the human and creative side of our everyday lives under stress, Lost is a book that tells a story on every page.As a collection, the posters represent an authentic folk art that expresses a commonality between the readers and the makers from the United States to China. For pet owners everywhere, and for anyone who has very stopped to read a lost pet poster, Lost is a heart-warming tribute.

This museum in book form takes readers deep into the world of Wes Anderson. Packed with an exhaustive and eclectic collection of film stills, accessories, clothes, souvenirs, books, and delightfully bizarre ephemera, this immersive treasury offers extraordinary insight into Wes Anderson's literary, musical, and cinematic influences, which range from Indian cinema to French pop to Italian speed car racing to the New Yorker magazine and the work of J. D. Salinger. Among the museum's artifacts are a recipe for a ham sandwich from the French Dispatch's Le Sans Blague café; the history of Tang-the drink of choice for the campers in Moonrise Kingdom-and the secret of L'air du Panache, the cologne worn by the concierge of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Readers will discover Anderson's connections to the balalaika, the Beatles, and Benjamin Britten. And they'll discover how the filmmaker was inspired by the works of Hal Ashby, Satyajit Ray, Orson Welles, Mike Nichols, and Francis Ford Coppola. Perfect for dipping into, and filled with information that will surprise even the most diehard Wes Anderson fans, this technicolor treasury is as profoundly entertaining as it is authoritative.

Decades before he blew the lid off the high-stakes art world by shredding a work immediately following its purchase at an auction, Banksy was committing acts of artistic protest on the streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world. We still dont know who Banksy is, but thanks to this book we have a greater sense of how he works. This book features approximately eighty works from the start of his street art career to Today, most photographed in situ and presented in vibrant illustrations. This book guides readers through Banksys artistic processes and explains his influences, such as the Situationism movement and the May 1968 uprising in Paris. It delves into key works such as Love Is in the Air, a stencilled graffiti that subverts the idea of violent protest; Flag, in which the iconic American photograph at Iwo Jima is altered to reflect a group of Harlem children atop a burnt-out car; and the slyly titled Turf War, in which Winston Churchill sports a grassy Mohawk. the book also pays tribute to Banksys rats, a reviled symbol of urban decay that the artist reimagines as rappers, violin players, and painters. As Banksy continues to challenge the political, economic, and racial oppression that takes place every day in cities around the world, this book offers a timely appreciation of just how the artist has embedded himself into the psyche of the powerful as well as the voiceless-without ever revealing his own identity.

London's streets, built up over more than two thousand years, are a maze of history, cultures and stories. In his fantastically detailed maps of the city, Stephen Walter translates these elements into a tangle of insightful yet humorous words and symbols that make up a complex of hidden meanings and wider contradictions. Testament to Walter's skill and importance as a cartographer, his groundbreaking, oversized map The Island was one of only two works by contemporary artists to feature in the seminal Magnificent Maps exhibition held at the British Library in 2010, the other by Grayson Perry and was exhibited together with some of the most important maps in history, such as Pierre Desceliers's 1550 world map. The work, which reimagines London as an insular body of land surrounded by water, has now been reconfigured and turned into Walter's own version of a London street atlas, with readers able to explore his unique vision of the city by flicking through the pages. A grid at the front of the book lets readers easily navigate their way through the map and the large-scale, detailed reproductions allow for close examination of his witty and inventive depictions.Walter's cartographic renderings have a cult following and now a wider audience will be able to immerse themselves in his uniquely personal vision - one that both celebrates the art of mapmaking and pokes intelligent fun at the city he calls home.

The creator of Funny Birds offers a dazzling new three-dimensional pop-up book - in which a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly - that will delight myriad fans of all ages.

For over one hundred years, men and women around the world have been dressing up as their favourite characters from movies, games, comics, TV and books. Beginning as a curiosity and hobby for social outcasts, it's now a global phenomenon, fuelled by the Internet and an explosion in geek fandom. This in-depth look at the world of cosplay includes interviews with the stars, photographers and props builders, offers insights into cosplay's history, current landscape and explains its creative processes, like how to build the perfect costume. Cosplay World features over two hundred compelling photographs, showcasing everything from campy 70's costumes to cutting-edge suits engineered in workshops and built using space-age materials. The result is both a celebration and serious look at a popular means of self-expression that continues to fascinate.