The post is a follow-up to this review that I published yesterday.


I have to admit that the brief review of the Compassion, Courage and Friendship from RedBubble.com that I posted yesterday was written in a hurry, as I wanted to get it published yesterday. I did not get much of a chance to look through the book, but quickly took some photos, jotted down my first impressions, and posted it.
Since then, I have let some work colleagues look through the book, and have also had some more time to look through it myself, so I thought I'd post some additional thoughts on it.

As mentioned yesterday, the quality of the book is great, with very good colour reproduction on glossy pages. All text is very legible, and the choice of fonts works well, and the cover of the book is a creative creation based on four art items from RedBubble members.

The editor has done a great job of trying to keep pages with similar themes together. In most cases, the content (photo, drawing or writing) of the left hand side bears some relation to the content on the right hand side, and definitely helps to provide some cohesion when reading through the book.

Most of the photos included in the book are fantastic, with the following ones being my favourites:

• Brothers by Katrina Lenarczyk / Zash Photography
• Jodhpur, India by Karen Cook
• The Proud Mother by Margriet Meintjes
• Generations by Shane Smart

2 of my favourite photos in the book

spine and cover

photo

However, there are a couple of photos in the book that just seem out of place - they look like typical "happy snaps" from a holiday, and do not fit in with the quality of many of the other photos.

Many of the drawings in the book also do not appeal to me, but I suppose appreciation of drawings is much more subjective, it's probably because some of the drawings do not appeal to my taste. That's one of the aspects of art - what appeals to one person may not necessarily appeal to another person, although several of my colleagues who looked at the book had similar thoughts as myself.
However, the one drawing (actually a composite piece with a part of a photo included) that does appeal to me is A Boy, His Teddy Bear and His Dragon by Randy Monteith.

I'd like to see a book containing only high-quality photos (and possibly with writings too), rather than mixing photos and drawings. In my view, including drawings detracts in some way from the high quality of some of the photos.

Some of the photos in the book piqued my curiosity, and made me want to know more about the background of the photo. However, the only information about each art item in the book is the title and artist's name. However, the back page of the book provides a reference list of each page number, artist name, and URL to the artist's profile on RedBubble. I found myself looking up some of the artists on RedBubble, so I could read the artist's description of that photo, as well as read through the comments left by other RedBubble members.
I believe it would be useful to include this artist's description with the art item in the book, to allow readers to get a better understanding of the photo/drawing, and better appreciate it.


Update (24 October 2008): the Compassion, Courage and Friendship book is now available for purchase from here.


Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with RedBubble, other than being a member, and a volunteer moderator of the forums. A copy of the Compassion, Courage and Friendship book was provided to me at no cost by RedBubble for review.