Crumble, Crackle, Burn: 120 Stunning Textures for Design & Illustration [Hardcover]

Von Glitschka (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 12, 2007

Crumble Crackle Burn is not only an inspiring book for incorporating texture into design, but also an affordable tool for transforming your images with textures - you'll receive 120 royalty-free textures you can use immediately! The book features 60 textures with beautiful full-color examples of how each texture can be used. Plus, the included DVD contains an additional 60 textures that you can also use in your day-to-day design work!

Crumble Crackle Burn showcases work from some of the most talented artists in the country, giving insight on how to incorporate texture into backgrounds, and even how to use texture as an illustration and typographic tool.

With the interesting and varied textures included in this book, you can begin adding depth, dimension and visual interest to your work immediately. Glitschka also offers useful pointers to help you do your own texture explorations, so you can notice and capture interesting textures in your everyday life.

If you don't have the time or money to commission original photography or illustration, let Crumble Crackle Burn help you use stock imagery to its best advantage and let your imagination run wild!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

After 18 years in the industry as a Senior Designer and Art Director for a handful of design firms and in-house art departments, Seattle-born Von Glitschka started his own firm, Glitschka Studios, in Salem, Oregon in 2002. His clients include PetsMart, Microsoft, The Wall Street Journal and Good Housekeeping.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: How; Har/DVD edition (June 12, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1581809581
• ISBN-13: 978-1581809589
• Product Dimensions: 12.2 x 9.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #480,219 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm a creative hired gun doing the full-tilt creative boogie out of my home studio in the land of Bigfoot.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Resource. Bad title / cover., November 9, 2007

By 

GJ "GJ" (Wisconsin) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crumble, Crackle, Burn: 120 Stunning Textures for Design & Illustration (Hardcover)

The book is great: it contains numerous textures of high quality, and quite diverse in their nature. I like using textures but my own small collection gets tired after a while. I do not particularly like most of the illustrations included in the book as samples, nor do I find them inspiring in any way, but it's a matter of personal taste, and they admittedly fulfill their function, which is to show how they might look when used in an actual design / illustration / Photoshop project. I enjoyed the brief, inspirational intro.

The ONLY problem I see here (and hence 4 stars) is a misunderstanding caused by the unfortunate combination of the book's title and its cover: both lead some potential buyers to believe the textures are provided IN COLOR. They are not: all are grayscale textures derived from photos (the ones on the book cover appear to be colorized, and not originally shot in color). The title should say: 120 stunning GRAYSCALE textures...

Several other reviewers also pointed out their disappointment that the book does NOT include any instructions on how to use the textures. This is true: a good, professional-level knowledge of Photoshop and/or Illustrator is tacitly assumed, but given the fact that the book is published by HOW Books (the publishers of HOW magazine) it is to be expected, and hardly an inappropriate assumption - how books publishes books by professionals and for professionals, people who know their tools well. Of course a few simple hints or suggestions on which blending modes in PS were used in the examples at hand, may have been helpful.

On the plus side, the author provides (on the intro page) the URL of his website (illustrationclass.com) where some (general) hints/ideas are included. The website also has a link to a dedicated book website, where potential buyers may download the intro chapter and 10 sample textures, and current owners of the book may register to receive an additional 30 new textures via a download.

I hope the book is a success, and will motivate the author to follow it up with a sequel filled with COLOR textures (like the excellent but unfortunately NOT commercially licensed "Resurgere" textures on deviantart website). If you are considering getting this, grab it before it's out of print. It's a very good, reasonably priced, useful resource that fully deserves its place on any designer's bookshelf.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Crumble Crackle Burn...Create!, June 11, 2007

By 

Randall Hill "Hill Design Studios" (Salem, OR USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crumble, Crackle, Burn: 120 Stunning Textures for Design & Illustration (Hardcover)

Von Glitschka is the Robin Hood of illustrative designers. He takes from the rich stores of his creativity and imagination and gives back to the entire illustration community. If you've ever stared at a piece of rusting metal and thought, "That's cool looking, I wonder what I could do with that?" then you've stumbled upon what makes this book (and Glitschka's mind) tick. When you have finished reading this book, I promise that you'll never look at peeling paint or cracked asphalt quite the same way again.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Texture junkies finally get their fix, June 8, 2007

By 

Paul R. Soupiset "peasouptx" (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crumble, Crackle, Burn: 120 Stunning Textures for Design & Illustration (Hardcover)

Glitschka has continually resourced other illustrative designers over the years. Crumble. Crackle. Burn. takes it to a whole new level: designer textures, inspiration from other illustrators, and a DVD full of bonus material.