Rian Hughes

Really Good Logos Explained is built on the idea that it would be interesting and useful to read what four name-brand designers have to say about the same designs. The truth about any one sample might then be found somewhere between the comments. A logo is a microcosm of graphic design. There are a limited number of relationships that must be resolved in a way that looks thoughtful and purposeful. A logo must balance contrasts to make the mark visible and similarities to give it design unity. There are five considerations to making a design artful: A great idea, simplified to its essence Knowledgeable management of content Precise relationships Exact spacing Elegant execution Most books just show samples and leave it to you to figure out what makes them good – or just swipe the ideas as your own. This book illustrates how to see critically by deconstructing a design and it gives you the understanding to construct your own really good logos. It is a nonstop discussion of design contrasts and relationships that you can apply to any design process, not just to logo design.

The battle for your mind has already begun. At Jodrell Band in England Observatory in England, a radio telescope has detected a mysterious signal of extraterrestrial origin--a message that may be the first communication from an interstellar civilization. Has humanity made first contact? Is the signal itself a form of alien life? Could it be a threat? If so, how will the people of Earth respond? Jack Fenwick, artificial intelligence expert, believes that he and his associates at tech startup Intelligencia can interpret the message and find a way to step into the realm the signal encodes. What they find is a complex alien network beyond anything mankind has imagined.

576 pages : 23 cm

'Lifestyle Illustration of the 60s' is a survey of magazine artwork from the swinging sixties. It not only gives a fascinating insight into the extraordinary artistic talents of the illustrators featured, but also reveals the social aspirations of this unprecedented era of political optimism and sexual freedom.

"Culture is your local consensus reality; your clothing, cuisine and hairstyle, the music you listen to, the films you see; your values, ideas, beliefs and prejudices. Culture, unlike race, is not a compulsory accident of birth, but an intellectual position. Today culture has a powerful new vector: the internet. Ideas -- from a YouTube video to a viral marketing phenomenon or a fundamentalist religion -- are travelling further and faster, and changing the cultural landscape like never before. In a new electronic democracy of ideas, cultural power is devolving to the creative individual. We will soon all have the means to create; we just have to decide whether it be art or bombs. In our symbol-drenched lives we desperately need a way of decoding the messages that bombard us. Written and designed by Rian Hughes, cult-ure is the culmination of a decade's research into why and how we communicate. Revealing how ideas are communicated through words, symbols and gestures, how such ideas gain cultural currency via the theory of the meme, cult-ure provides a thought-provoking exploration into media convergence within our digital age and an insider's guide into the changing nature of communications, perceptions and identities. Set to become a cult publication for the digital generation, cult-ure is the 21st century answer to Marshall McLuhan's seminal The Medium is the Massage. Cult-ure is your thought-provoking guide to surviving the new media revolution, and a potent inoculation against infection by dangerous ideas."--