Books are podcasts you listen to with your eyeballs.
This book is the visual catalog for a collection of 830 printable digital files you can use in your own projects.
Flyers for your band, story prompts for your writing group, illustrations for your demented children’s book, a book cover for your sensitive exploration of gender issues, a poke in the eye to authority figures or systems of power, that sort of thing.
I’m giving you a head start, make something cool.
WHY DID I MAKE THESE?
Great question.
1. It’s really satisfying to stumble upon something that surprises and delights you without taking all of your money. I tried to make you one of those.
2. Like many people, I am a digital packrat. It makes way more sense to let it all go for a fair price and let it have another life as a layer in someone else’s work.
I hope you enjoy the bits and make some great stuff.
Bob Dow
Oakland, CA
Manic Publishing sells collections of design graphics that are unique, fun to look at, stand on their own in book format as a pop artifact, and might be useful to artists, craftspeople or total beginners looking for inspiration in readymades.
Poster artists, Etsy store owners who have run out of ideas, Cult leaders, traveling snake oil salespeople, all are welcome if your intentions are good and your money is green.
I'm shocked, offended, and somehow I bought every single book!"
I think this guy is a little nuts... but the books are fun and the amount of stuff you get is ridiculous. Highly recommend.
Ummm... is it legal to marry a book yet? "Clip Art for Witches and Poets" gave me a reason to craft again.
Bob Dow
Publisher
If you can share your work but don't want any outside input or criticism, you might be an artist.
If you can share your work and accept outside and input and criticism to make things better, you might be a graphic designer.
I am an artist who strives to be more like a graphic designer. I don't look at each thing I make as a precious object anymore, I let them go (for a fair price).
This all started when I set out to make a portfolio so I could drag it around and maybe get a job in a new creative studio.
When I started unpacking various boxes of experiments in my design attic, I realized other people might have some better uses for the piles of stuff I have created and collected.
When I was younger, the wild part of my brain had a hard time completing projects when the next shiny idea would inevitably take over. Getting older has brought patience and organizational skills. I finish things.
So I gathered up the creative bits, sorted them into groups and created a series of books that other people can take apart and use the ingredients as starting points.
Each book is a stand alone idea connected to the others by my madness and thin tendrils of logic.
If you work as a creative or just make stuff for friends, you have been in the corner I started in, called "zero budget" aka, "go make something from nothing".
I made a bunch of nothings to give you a head start. Download and remix them for your own projects.