To summarise what I'm trying to do here, I've worked at the university of Brighton's Art library for three years now, and I'm about to leave. I thought it would be nice to pick out some of my personal highlights. There are so many it's been difficult to narrow it down, but I've tried!
The third floor has been a particularly difficult one, for several reasons. The subjects covered on this floor most suit my areas of interest - here you can find art theory, ceramics, sculpture, jewellery design, graphic design, design history + theory, 3D design, furniture, etc, photography, music and film.
Equally though, I probably don't know the stock of this floor as well as I do the second and the fourth floors. Why? Hugely wimpy reasons - the books on this floor are generally very big and heavy, and because I have weak arms, I prefer to shelve on second and fourth, where the books are generally lighter. So although I do work on this floor sometimes, my knowledge of this area is not as good as I would have liked.
So this is a bit of a random selection, really.
Eqaully though, I could have picked a lot more than I have done here, but I suspect it would become a very long and dull journal with just me saying 'I like this'... 'I like this too'...
Anyway, firstly!
I love this book. It's basically a selection of drawings produced by various different members of famous bands whilst on the road. There's some really interesting stuff in here, and as a music lover, it provides a whole different perspective on the bands on tour.
This book is fascinating, and that cover totally messes with my head! Love a bit of op art.
I'd never heard of this before, and when I found it it really intrigued me. It was produced by Wyndham Lewis (and others), and (forgive me if I'm fuzzy on the details) it was produced as part of the futurism (and possibly vorticism?) movements. It's basically one giant zine, and you can really feel this in the way it's produced. It's full of all kinds of interesting writings and stories and typographic experiments, and I'd highly recommend you check it out.
Further to my previous mentions of my love of city planning... this book is absolutely fascinating. It's full of old and rare maps of cities all over the world (although mainly Europe), in stunningly high detail. I used the map of Vienna for my cropping project here. There are loads of other really fascinating books in this section too.
One thing I love about this library is that there are whole sections of books on some of the most obscure subjects. Here, grave stones. Books and books all about gravestone design. Curious.
I cannot recommend this enough. I'm ashamed to admit that I had very little knowledge besides the obvious, with regards the holocaust and surrounding events. This book really bought it home to me, but in such an imaginative and creative way. I read it over the course of a couple of hours, it completely drew me in and engrossed me, and also opened my mind to the possibilities of the graphic novel as a new way of story telling. (I know graphic novels are old news, but this was the first one I ever read.)
Really fascinating book about different ways of displaying information.
I've used this book quite a lot, it's full of simple, but extremely high quality vector outline drawings for stock use. Besides it's practical use, I just find it a very aesthetically pleasing book.
We were told to read this on our course reading list, and it really seems to be regarded as one of those seminal texts in graphic design. Controversially... I didn't actually like most of the work in it.
I own this book, and I love it. Maximalism is amazing.
This was the first book I ever got out of the library. I can't even remember why, but we were given some kind of task in cultural and critical studies, and we found an image from this book to display our point. I seem to remember it went down rather well, but as I say, no idea what we were supposed to be researching!
This really is really really sad. Beautifully illustrated, poignant and sad.
My boyfriend loves this book. It's by Neil Gaiman who is one of his favourite authors, and again, it's beautifully illustrated.
I couldn't pick one book from this section. They're all about PATTERN, and gosh I love pattern.
I don't think I've ever even looked inside these books... but look at those beautiful spines. No wonder they're reference only, if anyone took one out it would be RUINED!
My mum's cousin wrote this book. There's my library claim to fame :D
I used this book a lot while I was writing my dissertation. (For those of you who don't know, I wrote my dissertation on London Transport Design, and how it influenced the growth of suburbia in London) I absolutely love the London Underground posters in the early part of the century, and Frank Pick (Google him) is my hero.
This book is absolutely beautiful. And, not only beautiful, but also an intriguing and compelling story. I'm a huge fan of Graham Rawle's work... in fact his novel up on the fourth floor 'Women's World' is absolutely incredible, one of my favourite books... possibly, ever. Both are constructed entirely from collage materials, and are ridiculously elaborate and just... well, mind blowing. Cannot recommend enough.
The earth from the air, by Jann Arthus Bertrand. Very famous, of course, but still one of my favourite photography books.
One of my least favourite books to shelve, because it's ludicrously heavy, but one of my favourite photography books to browse though. Araki is a strange, strange man... strange but fascinating.
And so concludes my third floor tour. As I say, very edited highlights... But hopefully worth looking at.
