Read Charley Harper An Illustrated Life Todd Oldham Charley Harper 8601200916263 Books

Product details Hardcover 420 pages Publisher AMMO Books; 10.6.2011 edition (October 1, 2011) Language English ISBN-10 1934429821

Charley Harper An Illustrated Life Todd Oldham Charley Harper 8601200916263 Books Reviews

• As is Charley Harper - This book is AWESOME. My only beef, and I probably should have looked closer when I ordered it, is that it's very small. I actually saw this book in real life at the library and it was a huge, very cool coffee table book (probably 18"x14") or so, and about an inch thick. VERY cool for his stuff! This is not "small", necessarily (it's like 10x8 or something), but has far less impact than the huge one did. Still cool, but I'd recommend the huge one, if you can handle it! ;)
• I am a fan and collector of Charley Harper's, and, that being said, this book is truly a beautiful and wonderful representation of his work. Also, I want to say as an owner of the large $200 dollar edition of this book, I have to admit that I like this one better. The big one is really tough to physically handle due to its size and weight. Plus the pages in the big book are matte and really don't do Charley's work justice. This smaller version has glossy pages which allows all the images to really pop off the page. Please note that this version of the book has every single image and page that is in the larger version -- EVERY PAGE. So, buy this for yourself and buy one for a gift...everyone will love this book.
• I recently discovered Charley Harper through some recently acquired vintage posters. I bought this book on prospect and was excited to pour through the contents. The book does contain lots of his work in full color. However I felt that overall the book was a bit disorganized, messy and not really as educational as I would have hoped.
  
  I found the size of the book to actually work against the contents. Images were hard to see, poorly reproduced and in many cases seem to be a jumble of random of images without much thought given t o the presentation. Had the works been grouped a bit better I might have enjoyed it more.
• I love Charley Harper but mostly knew just his beautiful, innocent bird work. This book really opened my world to his history and more technical work done for educational works. Some images are straight up DARK yet breathtaking and address the harshness of nature. Harpe is so much more than cute, aesthetic birds so if you're a fan, get this book! The size and presentation is perfect for coffee tables or interesting nooks in your home.
• Todd Oldham has done a great job of paying tribute to an overlooked legend in the business. Many grew up with his illustrations as a child, and there is something simple/childlike about his illustration and complex at the same time.
  
  This is a huge hardback book with no dust cover. The boards are thicker than normal, probably due to the dimensions of the book. The book is 425 pages and the artwork is lavishly reproduced with no printing issues that I notice. Some images are full bleed and it's just a joy to look through.
  
  The book is divided into the following chapters
  
  Foreword
  Conversation with Charley Harper
  Betty Crocker's Dinner for Two Cook Book
  The Giant Golden Book of Biology
  The Animal Kingdom
  Ford Times Magazine
  Birds & Words
  Advertising & Promotions
  Mosaic Murals
  Paintings
  Posters
  
  It's great this was published in his lifetime and this is a wonderful tribute. Highly recommended.
• Charley Harper is a great illustrator to enjoy and learn from. This lower cost edition of the book (the full size edition sells for about $120 on , discounted from $200) will have to do for the likes of me. But, though small and rather cheaply made, it is a treasure. So, five stars for Harper and Todd Oldham, one star for the publisher. The binding is so cheap that through brand new, it arrived broken. I don't blame 's shipping department for this. Still, those complaints aside, I am happy to have a wide sampling of Mr. Harper's best work.
• There is nothing wrong with this book; it is really quite nice But, realize you are buying the MINI edition, NOT the 12 lb full format coffee table book. The product description does not make this clear. This item has a retail price of $29.95, but the listing price for this item, when I bought it, was about TWICE retail. Caveat emptor.
• As soon as I saw Harper's wonderful bird illustrations in Audubon magazine, I had to see more of his work. I was pretty taken aback by the price at first, but after previewing the entire book on the AMMO website (see Discussions below), I was more confident with my decision. It looked beautiful in the Flash slideshow and I hoped that it would look just as clear in the printed book. I had some concerns about the paper affecting print quality as the other reviewer mentioned, but I'd read other blogs & reviews from other sites and I'd heard more than enough good things about this volume.
  
  It arrived in a lovely black & white patterned box to protect it during shipping, which is also useful for storage. As far as printing quality goes, it looks very similar to my vintage encyclopedia set from the 1960s - I have a feeling that they chose the matte paper for this reason. Yes, the colors are not as vibrant as the online preview (or the glossy pages of Audubon magazine), and yes, many of the images look like enlarged scans from previously-printed sources. You can see the blown-up halftone and a bit of a blurry edge on many illustrations. The photos of his wonderful mosaics need some color adjustment and look better online.
  
  However, the whites are crisp and the blacks are pure black, and I'm not disappointed (I'm a picky OCD graphic designer too). My favorite aspects of this book are the creative spread layouts, the sketches & "in-progress" material, and the sheer volume & range of works contained in this book. It's an expensive book, but it's a deal when you consider the individual price of prints. In many cases, the prints will be about the same size as these pages anyways!