BAL x Brooklyn Book Crawl
In honor of Independent Bookstore Day’s virtual celebration on August 29th, we’re teaming up with indie bookstores across Brooklyn to showcase the artist books and guides we have here at Brooklyn Art Library. Some touch on New York City history, others are made for (and by!) participants in the Sketchbook Projects, and all will be great resources to spark your creativity!
Keep reading to learn more about the books we have available, including our kid-friendly titles, that you can order online and safely pick up on Saturday.
Don’t forget to use the code ‘BOOKCRAWL’ to get 20% off when you complete your curbside pickup order.
BROOKLYN ART LIBRARY
The Sketchbook Project World Tour is a great curated collection of sketchbooks from all across our global community. Pages of eye-catching sketchbook spreads, coupled with insightful interviews from the artists who crafted them, means you can return to this book again and again for inspiration—and it’s a great way to get to know our Library’s collection if you’re new to the Sketchbook Project! Whether a sketchbook is from Bangalore or Brooklyn, you’ll be sure to find your new favorite artist.
For a more bite-sized assortment of sketchbook spreads, feel free to scoop one of our Brooklyn Art Library zines! An ode to the DIY culture of the Library’s collection, each themed booklet features spreads from artists all around the world and working in a variety of mediums like illustration, collage, and more. The zines are currently available in “Travel, Cities, Places,” “Portraits,” “Collage, Vintage, Ephemera,” and “Photography, Place Memory.”
Whether you’re stuck on a project, eager to embark on a new creative adventure, or just looking to pass the time in quarantine, 99 Art Challenges is full of inspiring prompts to get you sketching, collaging, writing, or making. Maybe you’ll “draw something from a dog’s perspective” or “illustrate your commute.” Regardless of how you choose to tackle these 99 prompts, it’s a great way to stay motivated either independently or you can pair up with a fellow artist to complete this book.
Created by our very own associate director Autumn Fox and former staff member Marissa Passi, Canvas and Cassette is a zine that explores the intersection of art and music. Immersive spreads from emerging illustrators meet interviews with up-and-coming musicians, album reviews, and even mood-setting playlists. It’s a mixtape and art gallery all in one. Some highlights? A review of St. Vincent’s Masseduction, a conversation with Canadian artist Ariana Sauder, and a look at how color impacts the storytelling of music videos.
ARTIST RESOURCES
Sketchbook Project contributor Katrina McHugh brings her passion for music and her prolific talents as a graphic designer to her unique book, Pop Charts: 100 Iconic Lyrics Visualized. Each page features a playful diagram from songs that have probably been stuck in your head at one point or another. Featuring classic tunes from Radiohead, The Beatles, David Bowie, and more, it’s the perfect gift for the music enthusiast in your life and a great way to test your own sonic trivia skills.
If you’re obsessed with transit and urban design, this New York City Transit Authority: Graphic Standards Manual is exactly what you need. Full of designs by modernist icons Massimo Vignelli and Bob Noorda, this book is a great way to learn about the creative history that shaped the MTA’s iconic signage over the years. Whether you’re a collector of pieces of New York City history or looking to get inspiration from the detailed graphic design standards across these hardcover pages, this manual makes for the perfect gift for collectors and coffee table book-lovers alike.
The NASA Graphic Standards Manual presents the government agency’s quest for a futuristic graphic design informed by its legacy of space exploration. Created by Richard Danne and Bruce Blackburn, this manual includes reproductions from Danne’s personal notes and slide images from the duo’s original presentation to the NASA administration. This high quality hardcover is a great collector’s item, especially if you take an interest in American design history or if you’re a sci-fi buff looking for some visual inspiration.
Sister Mary Corita Kent rose to fame in the 1960s, producing pop-art prints and graphic pieces inspired by the likes of Andy Warhol and Ed Ruscha. International Signal Code Alphabet features Kent’s 1968 series of kaleidoscope serigraphs that integrate typography and scripture, as well the maritime flags of the International Code of Signals. In honor of the series’ 50th anniversary and Kent’s centennial birthday, the book was created in collaboration with curator Aaron Rose and the Corita Art Center.
First Things First! New Branding and Design for New Businesses is a great guide for creators and designers looking to embark on their creative careers. This book takes a step away from the rigid rules of corporate business design by featuring small, independent businesses and groundbreaking creative agencies who defy standards through their unique marketing work. This book is a great addition to your office set-up or a gift for the designer in your life and it’ll continue to be a great resource for inspiration for years to come.
A Map Of The World: The World According to Illustrators and Storytellers features hand-drawn, unique maps from an international cohort of geographic illustrators. This book will cause you to rethink the role maps play beyond navigation in defining place, interrelationships, and how they represent the histories and cultures of local and national communities. Each map is an experimental approach of cartographical design, from cartoons to graphic design. This guide to drawing guides makes for a nice gift for illustrators and an invaluable source of inspiration for designers of all ages, mediums, and skill levels.
Aaron Farley’s Chromatic Reflections compiles the artist’s collection of found images which he procured from an abandoned building in St. Louis. Farley transforms these recovered archival negatives into a richly colored series of images, ones that experiment with photography’s ability to manipulate light and color. Ephemeral histories come to life in Farley’s work, and this whole book of photography is a great look at how material and memory are deeply entwined.
Fodor’s Brooklyn Travel Guide was created by local guides, with off-the-beaten-path sights and recommendations abound. Each neighborhood is rich with museums, galleries, restaurants, and numerous cultural sites to explore, great for short weekend trips or long stays and useful for locals too looking to learn more about their borough. Whether you’re a foodie or an architecture buff, this guide has something for everyone.
Wildsam Field Guides are the travel agency’s pocket-sized look at regions and cities across the United States. Each pocket-sized guide is great to bring with you on the road, and full of great recommendations for restaurants, sightseeing, and more. With kid-friendly illustrated guides and stories of local lore and political histories, it’s a small book that packs a big punch for seasoned travelers and those embarking on new adventures. Guides are currently available for Brooklyn, New England, and Nashville.
Chris Dorley-Brown’s Drivers In The 1980s reproduces the photographs he took of Londoners stuck in traffic jams across the city. The bright pops of color from his use of color film accentuate each unique character’s demeanor and the way their cars reflect their personalities. It’s a unique approach of urban street photography that seeks to capture the socioeconomic turbulence of the decade, perfect for photographers eager to learn how to capture snapshots of everyday life.
Susannah Ray’s New York Waterways is a great photography book that showcases the underrated beauty of New York’s coastlines. Inspired by Walt Whitman’s poetry, Ray captures the rivers and bays that first built New York, and she does not shy away from showing the way industry and human life has shaped these waterways through the detritus we leave behind. A refreshing approach to documentary work, it’s a great book for New York historians and photographers alike.
YOUNG ARTISTS
Show And Tell Me The World: A Picture Dictionary is a great picture book for young readers full of the whimsical moments and objects in everyday life. With a canine companion as your guide, the reader takes a trip through cities, gardens, concerts, the depths of the ocean, the changing leaves of autumn, and airplane travel. Illustrator Tom Schamp transforms these mundane moments into exciting experiences through rich full-color illustrations. The bold artistic style comes with vocabulary that children can practice and learn as they flip through the pages.
Precious Planet: A User's Manual for Curious Earthlings is a great way for children of all ages to learn about the environment through a number of vibrantly-illustrated spreads. This picture book is great for young readers as it breaks down complicated subjects like climate change, energy, consumption, and waste into easy-to-understand and highly informative graphics. Precious Planet makes for the perfect gift for a budding scientist, or any child whose interested in learning about the world around them. With a focus on sustainability, this book seeks to educate the next generation how best to preserve the planet for future living and how Earth has changed over the centuries.
