Pantone: The 20th Century in Color
Chronicle Books, 2011
Hardcover, 208 pages, $40

Pantone, the worldwide color authority, invites you on a rich visual tour of 100 transformative years. The book is designed by Brooke Johnson, who is a 2003 alumna of CCA's Graphic Design Program and now a member of our faculty and a senior designer at Chronicle Books. From the Pale Gold (15-0927 TPX) and Almost Mauve (12-2103 TPX) of the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris to the Rust (18-1248 TPX) and Midnight Navy (19-4110 TPX) of the countdown to the millennium, the 20th century brimmed with color. The authors -- longtime Pantone collaborators and color gurus Leatrice Eiseman and Keith Recker -- identify more than 200 touchstone works of art, products, decor, and fashion, and carefully match them with 80 different official PANTONE color palettes to reveal the trends, radical shifts, and resurgences of various hues.

The Pisco Book
ClearGrape, 2011
Paperback, 138 pages, $19.99

For the modern American cocktail enthusiast, The Pisco Book, designed by Graphic Design faculty Tom Ingalls with Kseniya Makarova (Graphic Design alumna) reveals pisco's long and colorful history through pictures and stories capturing the diverse range of approaches and styles that go into producing it, the legendary personalities who craft it, and the excitement for it among today's leading mixologists. Renowned pisco producers and industry experts share their personal ruminations about their connections to pisco. Also featured is the rich historic connection between Peruvian pisco and San Francisco that began during the Gold Rush and which is undergoing a Renaissance today. The book includes nearly 50 pisco cocktail recipes from leading bar chefs and mixologists in the U.S. and Peru.

Sniper
Bedwetter Books, 2011
Hardcover, 208 pages, $40

Sniper takes a loose and imaginary look at the Baltimore Snipers, examining the relationships of paired serial killers as an ultimate expression of repressed desire. Christopher Russell (Photography 1998) writes a perverse version of the classic American love story told through the narrative chaos of nameless characters, past-life flashbacks, false recollection, and parental and bureaucratic influences that define the psychological space of the outsider. The text’s 200 full-color pages are heavily illustrated, reproducing Russell’s drawings scratched into photographic emulsion. The release of Sniper revives the Bedwetter brand, which achieved notoriety during its 12-issue existence with a destroy-to-enjoy design strategy and an embrace of difficult literary and visual material.

Chicks with Guns
Vendome Press, 2011
Hardcover, 168 pages, $45

Graphic Design faculty member Bob Aufuldish is the designer for this book of photographs by Lindsay McCrum showing women gun owners in America. The book examines issues of self-image and gender through the visual conventions of portraiture and fashion. The guns are presented not as superimposed props but as very personal lifestyle accessories of the subjects portrayed. The women (whose portraits are accompanied by their own words) reside in all regions of the country, come from all levels of society, and participate seriously in diverse shooting activities. They are sportswomen, hunters, and competition shooters. Some use guns on their jobs. They may not all be classically beautiful, but in these photographs they all look beautiful, exuding honesty, confidence, poise, power and pride.