February 28, 2007

{     Meet Mr. Product: The Art of the Advertising Character     }    

I love books and I love this book, it's just so nicely put together and packaged. Meet Mr. Product: The Art of the Advertising Character by Warren Dotz and Masud Husain is basically a compendium of characters that have been used to peddle the wares that they represent. It includes characters/designs all the way from the early part of the 20th century to more recent times. The qualities that make this book stand out are the layout, design and stunning high quality images in color. It's 272 pages long and not a lot of words of course, but enough to establish a basic understanding of the characters that are showcased in this little gem of a book. The paper it's printed on is more like card stock than your run-of-the-mill paper and is definitely able to withstand the constant flipping around that you will be doing.

Since my dad works for a publishing company he is always being sent books, many which have yet to be published, for him to review and I have lucked out many times because of this. This is just one such occasion too because when he gave this book to me a few years back, it was not actually in print yet, so I guess you could say that I got the inside scoop on this book. I know that's nothing special but I feel cool saying it.

I would certainly recommend this book to anyone who is into art, design, graphic design or all of the above. It's one of those 'gallery' type of books that you can have on your coffee table; it's a conversation piece and if nothing else, it looks super cool on your bookshelf.

- Contributed by Jerry: admit2nothing.blogspot.com