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The Earliest Publishers: How Medieval Manuscripts Were Made
A film from the Getty Museum introduces viewers to the beautiful handwritten books known as illuminated manuscripts
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Picasso's Art Suggestions, and Other Creative Lists and To-Dos
A book collects scraps of paper that detail the everyday decision-making of artists including Rothko and de Kooning
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The Ultimate Guide to the Steampunk Movement
Ray guns, goggles, and giant mechanical creations fill the pages of the beautiful, old-meets-new Steampunk Bible
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The Secret Lives of Maps: Artist Finds Stories in Geography
Ingrid Dabringer transforms normal maps into whimsical people and creatures, using paint to reveal their hidden shapes
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More Than 3,000 Vintage Book Graphics Find a Home Online
The site From Old Books is a stunning example of curated creativity, with high-resolution images that anyone can reuse
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Musical Sculptures Translate Weather Data Into Art
Nathalie Miebach crosses disciplinary boundaries to combine data visualization with color, shape, and sound
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The Secrets of Mankind's Greatest Structures, Illustrated
An artist and author sketches and contemplates what makes cathedrals, castles, and mosques last—beautifully—for centuries
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A Father of Web Design, Kept Alive by His Son
Ignored for decades, the design pioneer Ladislav Sutnar might have been forgotten—but his son, Radislav, made sure that didn't happen
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5 Videos That Will Change How You Think About Food: Part One
The best of the best from this year's TEDx Manhattan conference. First up: the Urban Design Lab's Michael Conard.
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Japan's Peculiar Subculture of Fur-Suit Mascots
Fuzz & Fur, now available from Amazon, examines odd creatures that promote everything from ski slopes to water purification
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Before Walt Disney: 5 Pioneers of Early Animation
A look back at the early-20th-century inventors of a new art form, from Émile Cohl to Eadweard J. Muybridge
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7 Must-Read Books on Maps
The art of the map—literary maps, maps of the body, maps of the imagination, and more—comes to life in this curated round-up of creative cartography
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Design History Hoodies: Target Embraces Vintage Type
A mega-retailer and a tiny wood type museum in Wisconsin join forces to bring a different kind of style to the back-to-school crowd
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The First True Animation: Celebrating Winsor McCay
A short silent film from 1911, Little Nemo, contains the seeds of one of the 20th century's defining storytelling techniques
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The Art of Cartography: BBC Film Shows Off Medieval Maps
Though removed from the BBC's website, "The Beauty of Maps," a guide to some of the world's great objects, persists on YouTube
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365 Days, 365 Artists: A Stunning Creative Calendar in a Book
The Open Daybook, from Mark Batty Publisher, helps you track the year's progress with daily hits of visual wonder
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Finally in English: The World's Best Type Reference Guide
Joep Pohlen's Letter Fountain, a handbook that stands out in design publishing's most crowded category, has hit American shelves
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The Power of Design: Totalitarian Regimes—and Their Brands
A book by Atlantic contributor Steven Heller looks at what images and typography have to do with Hitler, Stalin, and Mao
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A Visual History of the Alphabet
A book uses lavish illustrations and typography to tell how cultures transformed sounds into letters, why letters look the way they do, and why they'll never change
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From Design to Street Art, 5 Looks Inside Great Creators' Notebooks
A round-up of intimate drawings from Meriwether Lewis, Milton Glaser, Stefan Sagmeister, and other bright minds
