James Turner’s graphic novel, NIL : A Land Beyond Belief is so graphically dense it really must be seen to be believed. The entire book is done in the black & white vector style and it just works. The story itself is probably more dense than the drawing (I’m still working through it). It’s worth checking out at your comic book store.

The Penguin Great Ideas series of books is a great example of designing a series of collectible books for anyone’s library. Plus they’re paperback and relatively inexpensive, about $10USD each. I picked up a copy of The Art of War and the translation expresses the poetic nature of warfare and its ambiguities very well. The books are on shelves now, pick one up and give it a read.

Archigram, a British architectural collective, are the subject of a new book. Published by the MIT press, the book reviews the history and major projects of the group with many images not seen in most other books that feature Archigram’s work.

I have always loved the unique quality the Archigram drawings contain. The Walking City and Plug-In City are the most interesting large-scale works. The Suitaloon is an interesting take on clothing-as-housing. The best part is that these ideas were cooked up in 1960′s. Their ideas are often imitated by architects since then, but few can achieve the same results.

The Instant Winner is a skate company started by Craig Metzger. They pull a lot of guest illustrators and artists in to design the board graphics. Nathan Fox did the above series for their current 2006 series. Please support your local skateshop!

We love both Andrio Abero and his work…Andy has been putting out beautiful graphic design since he founded 33rpm in 2000. In 2004, Andy was received the Art Directors Club NYC Young Guns Award. Most recently, Andy designed the Bumbershoot 2006 Campaign. He’ll be moving to NYC from Seattle early next year.

alien workshop has been making incredible graphics since 1990 under the supervision of Mike Hill and Don Pendleton. Their boards are great, but the magazine ads are where the designers really shine. Unfortunately, Don recently moved over to Element to head their art department. I guess if you can’t gain credibility by copying another company’s graphics, you might as well buy-out their designer, right?