Steven Heller

Louise Fili

Elegant, quirky, fluid, brutish, ostentatious— a visual resource of cursives and other typefaces that resemble handwriting.

Elegant Lettering from Design's Golden Age

Scripts

Louise Fili has been an inspiration for designers around the world since the 1980s, when she raised the bar on book cover design, creating close to two thousand jackets as art director for Pantheon Books. In 1989 Fili founded her own graphic design studio, Louise Fili Ltd, and branched out into the fields of restaurant and food packaging design. Her lavish and elegant typography, often hand drawn, helps advertise and market such well-known brands as Sarabeth's, Bella Cucina, Jean-Georges, and Good Housekeeping, among many others. Known for her intense attention to detail, her fresh reinterpretation of vintage sources, and her passion for all things Italian, Fili has won numerous awards. Elegantissima, the first monograph on her work, covers the breadth of her nearly forty-year design career and is a must-have for graphic design students and professionals, as well as anyone interested in advertising, food, restaurants, Italy, and books.

The Design and Typography of Louise Fili

Elegantissima

A chunky, distinctive object of brilliant design in and of itself, Stylepedia is the first handy, cross-referenced desk guide to the kaleidoscope that is modern design. In hundreds of illustrated entries, Heller and Fili, the award-winning authors of Euro Deco and numerous other popular design titles, survey the designers, schools, and movements that comprise the practice today as well as take a fascinating glimpse back at some of the seminal early leaders. From the first Santa Claus to appear on a Coca-Cola bottle to the increasingly ubiquitous camouflage tee shirt, iconic everyday items of yesterday and today provide valuable inspiration to designers and design aficionados. As quirky as it is useful and positively packed with lavish color illustrations, this designer's design compendium is the only one of its kind.

A Guide to Graphic Design Mannerisms, Quirks, and Conceits

Stylepedia

A must-have for designers, not to mention that quirky group in love with type for types sake (you know who you are), Typology is the most visually dynamic compendium of typefaces on the market. Steven Heller and Louise Fili, two of the most admired and respected designers working today, cover everything from the classic elegance of the late 19th century to the fractured hypermedia of today. Organized by historical era and country of origin, each section introduces the culture and aesthetic of the period, discusses how individual styles developed, and offers insights into the artistry of key typographers and foundries. Expertly assembled and thoughtfully written, no other book encompasses this wealth of type styles in historical context. Its pages are profusely illustrated with hundreds of complete alphabets, and such original artifacts as typesheets, catalogs, broadsides, posters, and many other primary source examples. In all, Typology is the long-awaited type encyclopedia destined to be a standard reference work for years to come.

Type Design from the Victorian Era to the Digital Age

Typology

Renowned graphic designer and author Louise Fili takes us on a personal tour through her most famous brands, books, and packaging. This peek behind-the-scenes shows how research and vintage typography give rise to her unique and ingenious designs. She explains how her work--still done by hand--transforms from early sketches to final design. Her instantly recognizable style, elegant and timeless, takes shape on the page before our eyes. Also included are Fili's copyright pages, which are works of art in their own right. All content appears in print for the first time.

Inspiration and Process in Design

Paris is a city of pure enchantment, and everyone who loves the City of Light has a Parisian muse, from the Tour Eiffel to crème caramel. For celebrated graphic designer and incessant flâneur Louise Fili, it's the city's dazzling signage. For more than four decades, Fili has strolled picturesque Parisian rues and boulevards with map and camera, cataloging the work of generations of sign craftsmen. Graphique de la Rue is Fili's photographic diary of hundreds of Paris's most inventive restaurant, shop, hotel, street, and advertising signs. Classic neon café signs are juxtaposed with the dramatic facades of the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergère. Colorful mosaics cheerfully announce hotel entrances, department stores, fishmongers, even public toilets. Hector Guimard's legendary entrances to the Paris Métro stations brush elbows with graceful gold-leaf and dimensional Art Deco, Futurist, or Art Nouveau architectural lettering, as well as whimsical pictorial signs (giant eyeglasses announce optiques, and oversized hanging shears indicate a knife and scissors maker). A major influence on Fili's own work, many of these masterpieces of vernacular design, now destroyed, live on solely in this book, a typographic love letter to Paris sure to inspire designers and armchair travelers alike.

The Signs of Paris

Graphique de la Rue

Lise Apatoff

Shop and eat like a Florentine with this newly updated pocket-sized guide to the best of the magnificent Tuscan city known for its art, culture, and cuisine. Celebrated graphic designer and self-described Italophile Louise Fili, with connoisseur of all things Lise Apatoff, takes you on eight walks through Florence, discussing more than seventy of the city's most alluring shops—some run by the same families for generations, others offering young entrepreneurs' fresh interpretations of traditional techniques. Discerning travelers will discover rare books and charming hats, vintage Pucci and handmade shoes, cioccolate da bere (drinkable chocolate), colorful buttons, and bolts of rich silk fabric in this enchanting introduction to makers and purveyors of cloths, home decor, accessories, specialty foods, and much more. For each shop, there is a full-color photo, description of specialties, and information on location and hours of operation.

Shop and Eat Like a Florentine, Revised Edition

The Cognoscenti's Guide to Florence

This is the book that graphic designers and type aficionados have been waiting for: the first book in Chronicle's Art Deco design series devoted exclusively to type. Garnered from vintage specimen sheets and catalogs as well as commercial design artifacts from Germany, France, Japan, Holland, Italy, Russia, Eastern Europe, and the United States, these alphabets illustrate how the stunning style of the twenties and thirties extended to every facet of graphic design, including the typographer's art. Deco typestyles, like Deco architecture and furniture, were the heralds of the Machine Age, designed to embody progress. Endowed with a jazzy modernistic sensibility and baptized with evocative futuristic names such as Vulcan and Metropolis, these spectacular typefaces paved the way for a new era of communication via the printed word. In Deco Type, the team of Steven Heller and Louise Fili have brought together a unique collection of wonderful typefaces - many that have lain hidden for decades - to create an inspirational reference for designers and graphic artists everywhere.

Stylish Alphabets of the '20s & '30s

Deco Type

Shop and eat like a Florentine with this pocket-sized guide to the best of the magnificent Tuscan city known for its art, culture, and cuisine. Celebrated graphic designer and self-described Italophile Louise Fili, with connoisseur of all things Lisa Apatoff, takes you on eight walks through Florence, discussing more than seventy of the city's most alluring shops—some run by the same families for generations, others offering young entrepreneurs' fresh interpretations of traditional techniques. Discerning travelers will discover rare books and charming hats; vintage Pucci and handmade shoes; cioccolata da bere (drinkable chocolate); colorful buttons; and bolts of rich silk fabric in this enchanting introduction to makers and purveyors of clothing, home decor, accessories, specialty foods, and much more. For each shop, there is a full-color photo, description of specialties, and information on location and hours of operation.

Shop and Eat like a Florentine

For more than three decades, renowned graphic designer and self-described Italophile Louise Fili has traveled the cities and countryside of Italy cataloging the work of sign craftsmen in whose hands type takes on new life with a tantalizing menu of styles. Classical, eclectic, or Futurist; in gold leaf, marble, brass, wood, wrought iron, enamel, ceramic, or neon; painted, carved, inlaid, etched, tiled, or stenciled— the creative possibilities are endless. Grafica della Strada is Fili's photographic diary of hundreds of Italy's most inventive restaurant, shop, hotel, street, and advertising signs. A major influence on Fili's own work, many of these marvels of vernacular design live on solely in this book, a typographic love letter to Italy that will be an inspiration to designers and Italophiles everywhere.

The Signs of Italy

Grafica Della Strada

This volume showcases over 200 remarkable covers from diverse publications such as the Saturday Evening Post, Scientific American, Fortune, Good Housekeeping, and Vanity Fair. With eye-catching illustrations and a lively, informative text, Cover Story presents an entertaining look back at this exciting commercial art form.

The Art of American Magazine Covers 1900-1950

Cover Story

This strikingly designed volume presents French Modern commercial graphic design in all its glory. Every aspect of French life in the lively and turbulent decades of the '20s and '30s is displayed in this rich compendium of highly stylized design concepts, including magazines, posters, brochures, and retail packages. From exhibition affiches proclaiming the dawn of a new cultural era and symbolic advertisements celebrating the marriage of man and machine to seductive perfume packages and exquisitely chic cocktail paraphernalia, this stunning survey offers a wealth of original artifacts - some never before seen in the United States - making it an essential reference for industrial designers, graphic artists, and anyone with an interest in the history of fine design and advertising.

Art Deco Graphic Design

French Modern

A wide-ranging compilation of Art Deco graphics from six European countries, Euro Deco assembles a wealth of alluring and sophisticated design from an extraordinary period of creative vitality and political turmoil. An essential reference for graphic artists, designers and anyone with an interest in advertising or art history, this book assembles a wealth of original artefacts from the 1920s to the 1940s, including samples of design and illustration from posters, packaging, magazines, advertisements and many other sources. With sections featuring more than 2,000 samples of graphic ephemera from France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy and the Netherlands, Euro Deco offers inspiration for the designer and an engaging and original portrait of the time and place in which these works were created.

Euro Deco

Exquisite graphic design artifacts comprise this unusual collection culled from the pages of type and typography books dating from 1896 to 1936. Design professionals, students and teachers of graphic design, and anyone with an interest in vintage design will be delighted to ?nd rare, never-before-reprinted type specimens, vintage layouts, logos, and decorations that will serve as an inspiration and resource for practicing and aspiring graphic designers.

An Eclectic Collection of Typography, Ornament, Letterheads, and Trademarks from 1896 to 1936

Vintage Type and Graphics

A Revival and Celebration of the Golden Age of Typography Any type user and enthusiast will doubtless derive joy from the letters and ornaments in Vintage Graphic Design, gathered from the rare and forgotten sources that authors Steven Heller and Louise Fili have collected over the years. As type gourmets, Heller and Fili savor type in many forms—especially the aesthetically idiosyncratic and the printed artifacts of which historical or retro typefaces are samples. A period of rapid innovation and growth in printing and type technology, the late 1800s and early 1900s saw type foundries in Europe and America burst into wellsprings for bold compositions and arresting typefaces However, this is not a history book; rather, it is a sampler of tasty typographic confections or so-called eye candy. The curated selection here reflects this era’s printing material, including stock pictorial cuts, filigree borders, and cartouches galore. These aesthetic gems are the fruit of Heller’s and Fili’s labors after spending decades scouring the antiquarian book and flea markets of Paris, Berlin, Rome, Florence, Barcelona, eastern Europe, and elsewhere online and in auction catalogs to find examples of graphic design worth preserving and reviving. These beautiful—yet often absurd—rarities represent historic typeface catalogs and specimen sheets from an age when craftsmanship was at its zenith and attention to manufacture was rigorous. Paired best with the authors’ 2011 book, Vintage Type & Graphics, this full color volume is not just about delectation for its own sake, but to prove beyond a drop-shadow of a doubt that just because a typeface or decorative device is “old” does not mean it is “old-fashioned.”

Type, Typography, Monograms & Decorative Design from the Late 19th & Early 20th Centuries

Vintage Graphic Design

Bold, monumental, atmospheric, architectural letters with relief and shadow define great periods of confidence and optimism. Shadows add intrigue and spectacle to otherwise mundane words. And theyre back in style. Drawn from a particularly rich period in the history of shadow type, from the 19th to the mid-20th century, this is the first compilation of popular, rare and forgotten three-dimensional letters from Germany, France, Britain, Italy and the United States, where the best examples were produced. Presented in compact form, with examples from some 300 sources compiled by the leading historian of graphic design, this lively publication, packed full of typographic ideas for any purpose, will amuse, enchant and inspire anyone aiming to impart depth to their design.

Classic Three-Dimensional Lettering

Shadow Type

What is it about Italy that inspires passion, fascination, and utter devotion? This quirky guide to the Italian way of life, with its fifty witty mini-essays on iconic Italian subjects, will answer that question as well as entertain and delight both real and armchair travelers. Topics range from expressive hand gestures to patron saints, pasta, parmesan, shoes, opera, the Vespa, the Fiat 500, gelato, gondolas, and more. History, folklore, superstitions, traditions, and customs are tossed in a delicious sauce that also includes a wealth of factual information for the sophisticated traveler:• why lines, as we know them, are nonexistent in Italy• why a string of coral beads is often seen around a baby’s wrist• what the unlucky number of Italy is (it’s not thirteen, unless seating guests at a table, when it IS thirteen–taking into account the outcome of the Last Supper)• why red underwear begins to appear in shops as the New Year approaches In addition to the lyrical and poetic, Italianissimo provides useful and indispensable information for the traveler: deciphering the quirks of the language (while English has only one word for “you,” in Italy there are three), the best place to find balsamic vinegar (in Modena, of course), the best gelato (in Sicily, where they first invented it using the snow from Mount Etna). There are also recommendations for little-known museums and destinations (the Bodoni museum, the Pinocchio park, legendary coffee bars).This is a new kind of guidebook overflowing with enlightening and hilarious miscellaneous information, filled with luscious graphics and unforgettable photographs that will decode and enrich all trips to Italy–both real and imaginary.

The Quintessential Guide to What Italians Do Best

Italianissimo

An invaluable collection of underappreciated stencil typography from prehistory through the twentieth century

Louise Fili

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