Congratulations on your projects and your presentations! I am proud of all of you! You are pioneers! Let’s wrap up the term! 1. Deadlines to note: Midnight April 6 | Midnight April 9 | Friday April 13 | Friday April …
David Barringer's books on design culture include There's Nothing Funny About Design and American Mutt Barks in the Yard. He has published the novels American Home Life and Johnny Red, several collections of fiction, and Unbound, a book on the future of the legal industry. Most books are available for purchase from this site at the dB Store. Others are available at online resellers, such as Powell's, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
Shock Books, Volume 1: Beauty Shock!
Beauty Shock: Shock Books, Volume 1 | The Collected Excerpts of the First Shock Books | Fall 2011 | Winthrop University | Full Color | Softcover | 7.5″ x 7.5″ | 64 pages | For Sale at Lulu | In the fall of 2011, students in a pilot seminar at Winthrop University wrote, illustrated and designed their own Shock Books. This book features excerpts of their wonderful, exceptional work. At the start of the seminar, students chose narrower themes, which I …
Humans Make Robot Movies…
Humans Make Robot Movies to Feel Better About Being Human in a Robot World | David Barringer | 7.5 x 7.5 | Full Color | 60 Pages | 2011 | Shock Books | Buy at dB Shop I created this book as an example of the types of books my design/illustration students would design for a seminar. I created a little publishing company called Shock Books that publishes themed books by graphic designers and illustrators. This year’s theme is Beauty …
Love Me Alone
Love Me Alone: Selected Stories & Love Letters | David Barringer | 4.25 x 6.75 | 208 pages | 2011 | Elope Press | Buy at dB Shop |~×~| Love Me Alone is an intimate, elegant pocketbook of fiction tied up in the ribbon of a single theme: love. While the economy puts stress on one’s checkbook, this little book stresses what’s important in life: love and heartache, romance and relationships. A collection of 17 love letters and 24 short …
There’s Nothing Funny About Design
There’s Nothing Funny About Design | David Barringer | 6 x 9 inches | 256 pages | 100 illustrations | 2009 | Princeton Architectural Press | Buy at PAP, Amazon, B&N |~×~| By winning the 2008 Winterhouse Award for Design Writing & Criticism, David Barringer firmly established himself as the freshest and most interesting writer on the subject. His articles are notable for his strong point of view, literary style, and humor. In this collection of over thirty new and expanded …
American Mutt Barks in the Yard
American Mutt Barks in the Yard | David Barringer | 8.25 x 5.25 | 128 pages | 2005 | Emigre and Princeton Architectural Press | Buy a signed copy at dB Shop or a used copy at Amazon |~×~| “We wanted to do something unique, something no other design magazine had ever done…. The answer came to us in the form of ‘American Mutt Barks in the Yard’ by David Barringer…. At 34,940 words, it fills the entire 128-page issue of …
American Home Life
American Home Life | David Barringer | 6 x 9 inches | 200 pages | 2007 | So New Publishing | Buy at dB Shop |~×~| Honest, funny and smart, Barringer makes brilliant comic work of contemporary suburban fatherhood. Henry Doran stays home while his wife Tina works as a family doctor, but the real stars are the kids: Lilly (“tall and lean, a second-grader, all limbs and a Broadway ego”) and Lance (“a solid sensitive first-grader who loves facts …
Unbound: How Entrepreneurship Is Dramatically Transforming Legal Services Today
Unbound | David Galbenski & David Barringer | 5.5 x 8.5 inches | 256 pages | hardcover | illustrated with 21 graphs and charts | 2009 | Buy at dB Shop |~×~| Unbound synthesizes trends in the legal industry and features interviews with 19 legal visionaries from The Body Shop International, Cardinal Health, Eversheds, Xerox, Lexvista, Trilegal, Pangea3, Deutsche Bank, Johnson & Johnson, The Vallex Fund, Del Monte Foods, UnitedLex Corps, Flex-time Lawyers, and others. This book was a two-year collaboration …
What Happened to Us These Last Couple Years?
What Happened to Us These Last Couple Years? | Anthology edited and designed by David Barringer | 6 x 9 inches | 256 pages | Elope Press & So New | Buy at dB Shop |~×~| This literary anthology contains essays, fiction, correspondence, art, photography, humor, and poetry from 44 contributors, including Shari Goldhagen, Catherine Price, Maggie Smith, Spencer Dew, Grant Perry, Faruk Ulay, Jennifer Prado, Kristina Moriconi, Deron Bauman, Steve Almond, Claudia Smith, Patricia Cumbie, Molly Gaudry, Blythe Winslow, …
Johnny Red
Johnny Red | David Barringer | 5.5 x 8.5 inches | 276 pages | illustrated | Word Riot Press | Buy at dB Shop |~×~| Johnny Red is an epic and tragicomic love story, a modern picaresque novel about the adventures of Johnny and Ruth as they are imprisoned, survive their imprisonment, escape to the open road, make their way across America, and try to make something of their lives. Johnny is a Rock Red rooster; Ruth, a Leghorn hen. The …
Writer’s Specimen
“I’m blown away. This thing is sooooo good, so well put together. It really should be required reading for everyone who wants to be a writer.”—Bob Sassone, TV Squad |~×~| The Writer’s Specimen includes: Writing Isn’t Fun, a 117-page Graphic Magazine. 15 x 12, full-color PDF, designed for the monitor. On CD. Being A Writer Means, a 28-page minibook about what it means to be a writer. Extras: bookmark, postcards, and assorted goodies, such as a pamphlet on public speaking for …
We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things
We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things | David Barringer | 5.5 x 8.5 inches | 68 pages | 2005 | Word Riot Press | Buy at WRP and Amazon, in paperback or Kindle |~×~| The book includes 15 stories, a seven-page intro by Steve Almond, author of (Not That You Asked) and Candyfreak, and cover art and 8 illustrations by Eduardo Recife. Stories are thematically linked, as suggested by the title: We Were Ugly So We Made Beautiful Things . …
The Human Case
The Human Case | 29 Stories | David Barringer | 5.5 x 8.5 inches | 98 pages | 2002 | Brainpan Publishing | Buy at Amazon |~×~| “A remarkable voice, sophisticated, associative, humane.”—Steve Almond, author of My Life in Heavy Metal “Engaging and original.”—Tracy Grandstaff, Comedy Central “Barringer knows all our secrets, and invents a few we wish we had.”—Matt Herlihy, Sweet Fancy Moses “No two pieces are the same, yet all his work pokes our funny bone and tickles our …
The Leap & Other Mistakes
The Leap & Other Mistakes | 35 Stories | David Barringer | 5.5 x 8.5 inches | hardcover and softcover | 292 pages | 2000 |~×~| The first book, now only available used. Several stories, however, are included in Love Me Alone (2011), such as “Request for Proposal,” “Maid on Thursday,” “Citizens, Please Remain in Your Homes,” “Happy Holidays from the Huegelmanns,” and “From Me Then to You Now.” The Leap featured over thirty-five stories, the novella “Gryphus,”and “Bird Brained,” a fifty-page collection of …
Love Letters 1
Rudy Vanderlans hired me to write text for a type catalog. He wanted me to write love letters to seventeen Emigre fonts. When I submitted the first letter, I explained my inspiration: “I studied each typeface. I determined whether it was male or female. I described each typeface as if describing the personality of a real person. I listed attributes after each typeface describing them as wise, comic, casual, elegant, organic, predictable, voluptuous, beguiling, etc. I imagined what kind of …
Love Letters 2
This second volume of the Love Letters type catalogs includes seven of my love letters written to imaginary lovers who embody the attributes of certain Emigre fonts. In 2008, Rudy Vanderlans published Volume III of these type catalogs, which includes a selection of letters from Volumes I and II. Four of the letters I composed were never published. All seventeen letters are now included in Love Me Alone (2011), available from the dB Shop. You might still be able to …