It Is Beautiful...Then Gone [Hardcover]

Martin Venezky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2, 2004

Martin Venezky is not your typical point-and-click designer. While he is adept at operating a mouse, he is just as comfortable cutting and pasting type from old books or collaging found signs or making his own photographs. What results are the unique creations of a unique eye. And with this eye and his design firm, Appetite Engineers, Venezky has created beautiful and influential work for Speak and Open magazines, the Sundance Film Festival, Reebok, and numerous publishers and institutions.
It Is Beautiful...Then Gone presents Venzky's commercial design work as well as new graphic work created for the book; details of the wall collage that define his office and his aesthetic; the singular photography, collections, and notebooks that define his personality; and text that explains -- or at least questions -- it all. Venezky's philosophy that life and design are a continuation of each other permeates this elegant book filled with hundreds of idiosyncratic, deeply wrought examples.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This volume's introductory essay, written as Venezky methodically packs his collection of found objects for a move from his longtime San Francisco home, posits an existential question: "If the page is a frozen moment, then what came before and what will happen once the page is turned?" As much a collection of meditations on the author's process as it is a document of his work, this book works toward an answer by illuminating the principles that guide this accomplished designer, whose work has appeared in the SFMoMA publication Open and the literary journal Speak. Venezky's work yields little to cursory viewing, at first seeming to resemble the computer-enabled (and largely illegible) layering of the early 1990s. This resemblance is but a matter of context. Far from being beholden to or reliant upon digital tools, Venezky's relationship with technology is complicated by his preoccupation with process. Collaborator and design critic Karen Levine points out that "Venezky takes an almost Luddite view of his mechanical palette, nearly always preferring the ninety-nine-cent drugstore gadget to the state of the art." And a deeper look at the volume's many color illustrations reveals a nuanced and highly manual method. If Venezky's process is immersion, so too is his relationship with the objects he culls for his collages and assemblages. They completely envelop his personal surroundings, as illustrated in a meticulously annotated gatefold depicting his collection. And if the rhetorical question posited in the introduction receives no definitive answer in these pages, readers will nonetheless relish the opportunity to view Venezky's work for what it is: a deeply invested series of design explorations into the living process that surrounds the "frozen monument" of every page.
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Review

"...a fresh take on a designer's work and mindset...look into his thought process in design and in life." -- Step Inside Design, June 2005

...engaging monograph, loaded with dazzling examples of Venezky's intricate-and sometimes overwhelming-hand-cut collages of type and image..." -- CMYK, April 2005

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press; 1 edition (December 2, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568984561
• ISBN-13: 978-1568984568
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #872,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Provides his commercial design work plus new graphics created just for this book: some 700 images in all, February 2, 2006

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It Is Beautiful...Then Gone (Hardcover)

Martin Venezky's It Is Beautiful Then Gone (1568984561, $40.00) provides an unusual artistic approach: Venezky hones 'Slow Design', using raw materials and old design tools of collage and cut-and-paste to create an artwork which will intentionally age and decay over time. By this process, Martin Venezky maintains, the art evolves and changes and the artist develops a closer connection with the tool over the machine. It Is Beautiful...then Gone provides his commercial design work plus new graphics created just for this book: some 700 images in all.

2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing, October 2, 2006

By 

Katie (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It Is Beautiful...Then Gone (Hardcover)

Typographic inspiration at its best. Effortlessly combines interviews and stories with images of Venezky's work...every graphic designer should own this book.

6 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brillian, March 14, 2005

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Anon Ymous (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: It Is Beautiful...Then Gone (Hardcover)

Martin is brilliant, this book is beautifully designed and his work is amazing. Definately a very inspirational book for all graphic designers out there, especially for those experiemental typographers.