Customer Reviews

Device: file under: art, commercial

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I first became aware of Rian Hughes in the pages of a trendy independent comics magazine called ESCAPE, in 1983. The short strip I read there, NORM, is included in this book, but it's just a tiny fraction of a fraction of the broad range of Commercial Art Rian has produced during the course of the past twenty years.

Part Retro, Part Techno, Rian's Hip Fifties-influenced style remains remarkably unique and instantly identifiable. His negative space logo for the Vertigo comic book, THE INVISIBLES is just one of a thousand brilliant designs he has graciously collected together in this beautiful hardcover collection.

The book includes a CD of font samples and desktop patterns. Buy two and give one to a friend for Christmas.I cannot recommend this book highly enough. If you're not familiar with his work, you can get a taste of it over at his Device website.

This book is as good as it gets when it comes to cool, inspirational, pop design. Are you feeling a little stiff or confined when looking through the latest issue of Communication Arts magazine? Well fear not little camper, we'll get you through, and this book is the remedy for dull design or illustration books. Rian's style is a pop culture bistro, with influences of everything from 60s Jetsons animation to modern era furniture and architecture. Lot's of logo work, illustration, font design and packaging. I wouldn't pinhole his style, but it's more retro in flavor than anything else. If you have the chance, don't miss this book.

The included CD is really just a side note. I didn't find anything particularly useful on the CD, but it does look nice. It's more like an advertisement to try and get you to buy Rian's fonts online than anything of really usable content. I was disappointed to see that the fonts shown to be included on the CD aren't even all there when you open up the files (specifically the fonts that would be nice to have are missing), but instead you get three or four wingding type of fonts and a so-so retro font. Hence, I give the whole package four stars instead of five.

This is a highly recommended resource for all you graphic artists that use Illustrator/Freehand for a living. It goes to show what a good program combined with a imaginative artist can produce.

Don't let the cutesy cover fool you. Hughes' body of work spans from child-oriented graphics to R-rated in some cases. His style is a mixture of grafitti, retro, and cartoon reminiscent of house, techno and rave graphics.

I noticed that I've seen a lot of his art in products and have enjoyed them even before I knew about this book. I purchased this book blindly and have to say that it is one of the best buys I've had in awhile.

As a graphic designer, I found this book to be very inspirational- both in design and illustration. I have several dozens of art and design books in my library, and I can definitely say that this book is in the top 3 list of my favorite art and design books. The pages are extremely colorful and full of eye candy that anyone can appreciate. If you enjoy character-based art/design then you will definitely love this book. Looking through this book, I was very surprised to find that Hughes did the designs for a lot of the (trance and house) music that I listen to...definitely an added bonus. Whether you are a designer, illustrator, cartoon, and music fan, I highly recommend this book.

I first became aware of Rian a while back, but stumbled across his website and his excellent collection of fonts. Then I spotted the drawing on the front whilst walking past it in the bookshop and I couldn't resist but to get it.

It's filled with many of his excellent designs, enough to give anyone inspiration, with design commentaries on many of them establishing the reason behind them.

If you love bright bold vector based art, you'll love the book and the freebie CD!