What the judges said:

“The committee chose the Berg Fashion Library as our Electronic Reference Award winner for 2013. Not only was the quality of research astoundingly well developed, but its use of web-specific dynamics, including images and links to secondary materials, provided a thorough and insightful investigation of the history of fashion. The breadth of material provided a strong sense of history and the focus on individual fashion elements helped personalize the experience. We appreciate the time, energy and work that was put into the Fashion Library!“

We took the opportunity to introduce you to the Library on a previous post already, but we thought you may like to know that we have now freed up a couple of new popular culture articles to celebrate: Music and Fashion and Cosplay - these are only available for free for a limited period, so take advantage before they disappear!

It’s time we introduced you to The Berg Fashion Library!

This unique online fashion portal offers fully cross-searchable access to an expanding range of content collections – including the Berg Encyclopaedia of World Dress and Fashion online, a growing collection of e-books, reference works, images, and much more. A full list of content is available here.

Students and scholars in disciplines as diverse as anthropology, art history, history, sociology, geography, folklore, museum studies,theatre, and cultural studies as well as fashion and textiles will find the Berg Fashion Library a treasury of fascinating insights into people and cultures all over the world.

The Library is updated at least three times a year. We thought it would be fitting to introduce it to you today, since the latest update, which is now live on the site, includes content that may be particularly useful to lecturers who may be preparing their course materials:

500 Images from the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Batch one of five)

With this exciting addition to the Berg Fashion Library, the Museum will be sharing c.2,500 high quality images from their world-renowned costume and textiles collection. Highlights include designs by Elsa Schiaparelli and Charles Frederick Worth, and a stunning array of accessories. The first 500 of these images are now live on the site. Click here to learn more about this partnership.

500 Images from the Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s Collection (Batch four of four)

Bloomsbury’s partnership with the Metropolitan Museum of Art has made 2,000+ images from the internationally renowned Costume Institute’s collection available through the Berg Fashion Library.

Besides the Met and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, there is a wealth of images already available on the site, as a result of previously agreed partnerships with institutions such as the V&A Museum or the Commercial Pattern Archive (CoPA).  Click here if you would like to have a look at the full list.

2 New Lesson Plans

The Berg Fashion Library is perfect for use in teaching. Using material from the Library, lesson plans have been prepared and uploaded to help lecturers and teachers plan their lessons more effectively. These lesson plans are provided free of charge, but to access the articles and images therein, your institution will need to subscribe to the library. The latest update includes two brand new plans:

• Dress and Teens: a Brief Study of Influences

The study of this area of fashion is rich in fascinating content and serves as an excellent introduction into the investigation and development of subcultures. The readings for each individual lesson will encourage students to question influences on teen style that they may not previously have considered, such as specific aspects cultural and social change.

• The Study of Dress and Fashion

This unit focuses on the similarities and differences among dress, costume, and fashion, how different scholars view these three words and how the ideas involved in them are used in the Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion and the Berg Fashion Library. In addition, other words are related, such as ethnic and national dress and world fashion. This learning module begins with articles providing definitions and concepts followed by other articles that connect to these ideas.

Online Exclusives

We also keep the online version of the Berg Encyclopaedia of World Dress and Fashion regularly updated with new online-only articles, available to Library subscribers. These are the Online Exclusives. A new Exclusive has also just been added to the collection and is now also live on the site:

Trendsetting African American Designers Valerie Giddings and Geraldine Ray (The United States and Canada)

Click here to view the full list of Online Exclusives and learn more about the Encyclopaedia online.

New Journals Content

A key benefit of the Berg Fashion Library is its cross-functionality with Berg fashion e-journals for mutual subscribers. Users can now link directly from the Berg Fashion Library to related journal articles where the institution already subscribes. As part of the newest update, we have added two new journal issues (Textile 10:3 and Fashion Theory 17:1), as well as the latest abstracts for review articles and exhibitions published in the most recent issues.

Click here if you want to learn more about this feature.

Finally, we have also added a new functionality, which means that all the image pages will now include links from designer names to their respective entries in The A-Z Fashion, which we believe might make research much easier.

Not bad, huh?

If you are not new to the Library you are probably already familiar with most of these features. If you are, there’ s something else you might like to know: there are currently six FREE articles waiting for you on the Berg Fashion Library homepage.

Don’t forget to check them out before they disappear!

Not Sure if Your Institution Subscribes?

lf you want to see if your library subscribes to the Berg Fashion Library, go to your library homepage and see if it is listed and then try to access it. If it isn’t, do use the recommendation form if you would like to see this resource in your library.

If you have any feedback or would like more advice on how to use the Berg Fashion Library (or just curious to find out more!), please email us at bergfashionlibrary@bloomsbury.com. We would love to hear from you!

Noa Vázquez

Berg Fashion Library
www.bergfashionlibrary.com

Go to www.bloomsbury.com for up to 50% off on Thursday! The sale starts at midday…

Click to see a selection of the academic titles included in the sale.

Happy browsing!

Twitter: #BloomsburyFlashSale

In July 2012, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc acquired AVA Publishing. Since that time there have been many changes, including the not-insignificant move from Worthing to London of AVA staff! AVA’s titles have been successfully migrated to a new home at www.bloomsbury.com/academic. But until this point, AVA has been kept as an independent imprint and the AVA Academia brand maintained. To better serve you, our customers, this is now changing. With effect from 1^st April 2013, all new AVA titles will be published under the Fairchild Books name and carry the Fairchild Books logo.

Our last day in Worthing - much fun was had moving the entire office in the snow!

The Fairchild Books brand is well established and highly respected, particularly in North America. Established in 1910 and acquired by Bloomsbury in 2012, they have a long history of excellence in textbook publishing for the higher education market. The new combined Fairchild Books will publish around 50 new titles a year and have a backlist of 450 titles in fashion, interior design, graphic arts, moving image and photography and architecture. The AVA editorial team will continue to produce books with the distinctive look, feel and shape of the AVA list within the new imprint, with the additional benefits of a larger presence in the academic community, a unified brand and a simpler ordering process for customers.

Bloomsbury is an international publisher, with authors of the calibre of JK Rowling and William Boyd. It began to build its world-class academic division in 2008. It now has a particularly large presence in the visual arts, the humanities and the social sciences. Their lists benefit from a global presence, close association with a range of best-selling and highly-respected books and online platforms, and increased visibility in the marketplace. With the recent acquisitions of Berg Publishers, Fairchild Books and AVA Publishing, Bloomsbury has become the largest publisher of academic materials for visual arts in the world.

A nice selection of AVA books in their new home, in pride of place on the Bloomsbury mantelpiece!

We are incredibly excited about what the future holds for the visual arts at Bloomsbury. We believe this restructuring will be of huge benefit to our customers, authors and all those academics who rely on our textbooks in their teaching. It will allow us to offer:

One destination for all your teaching and research needs

Offering integrated books, journals and digital content to cater to all academic levels, covering introductory textbooks, practical studio guides and scholarly monographs.

A complete range of products in the following core areas:

Design
Architecture & Interior Design
Fashion & Textiles
Film & Moving Image
Photography
Ceramics

Digital innovation and online resources

Building on the global success of the multi-award winning Berg Fashion Library, we have a number of other exciting digital products in development, including the Bloomsbury Fashion Photography Archive which is launching soon! We are also developing a range of new online resources for instructors and students to accompany our textbooks.

And to reward you for reading thus far, we can also exclusively share the very first AVA cover with the new Fairchild Book branding…and isn’t it a good one!

Becoming a Successful Illustrator | 9782940411931 | 192pp | May 2013

Other forthcoming titles from Fairchild Books include:

Pattern Cutting: The Architecture of Fashion, an inspiring and beautifully presented student guide to pattern cutting | 9782940411900 | 184pp | February 2013

The Fundamentals of Interactive Design, launching a new widely-anticipated Interactive Design series | 9782940411863 | 200pp | March 2013

Beyond Design 3rd Edition, the popular step-by-step guide to the pre-production processes of apparel product development | 9781609012267 | 576pp | August 2013

Draping for Apparel Design, 3rd Edition, a classic step-by-step guide to apparel design, now fully revised and updated | 9781609012403 | 544pp | April 2013

More information about all of these titles can be found at www.bloomsbury.com/academic. Our new Design catalogue which contains titles from across Bloomsbury’s visual arts imprints is also coming soon! Also check out our new Twitter handle, now @BloomsburyDsign.

I recently read a great article in the New Yorker which started off talking about the pitfalls of brainstorming, but then included so much more. I want to share a few of the main ideas – and add a few more – but if you have time, I definitely recommend reading that whole article (Groupthink: The brainstorming myth).

Some tips for stimulating creativity:

1. Apparently brainstorming doesn’t work. That’s what multiple surveys have said anyway. Specifically, the kind of brainstorming where negative feedback is not allowed (the kind recommended by advertising guru Alex Osborn of B.B.D.O.). Researchers have constantly found that, in spite of what Osborn said about encouragement and receiving only positive feedback maximising his staff’s idea generation abilities, people are in fact motivated to come up with more and better ideas if they are given some negative feedback. So, if you are struggling to come up with ideas, encourage someone to give you some constructive criticism (‘constructive’ is key!).

In the absence of a suitably encouraging yet try to view your own work analytically and give yourself some constructive criticism. If you stop and think about it, can you discover what, deep down, you know isn’t working? This might prove to be a very useful life skill so is worth developing.

2. Dismantle your office. If you work on your own at home moving your desk around is just procrastinating. But if you work around other people, apparently this can be very stimulating. Steve Jobs was a fan of this method. He designed the Pixar building around a central atrium and originally intended to force people to go there by placing the only toilets in the building there (he had to relent and install a second set, apparently). This nicely illustrates that the idea behind this one is nothing to do with feng shui, but everything to do with bumping into your colleagues and having a chat while you make tea (hey, you thought that was just procrastinating but actually you were stimulating creativity).

Discussing your work with people from different disciplines can generate fresh perspectives. This technique certainly worked in the case of Building 20 (see page 4 of the New Yorker article). It’s amazing how many leaps in scientific progress came from a poorly ventilated warehouse which was designed for early demolition. Apparently the layout ‘spurred interaction’ and created ‘knowledge spillovers’, which sounds sort of like a bad thing but manifestly was not.

Unfortunately, if you work around lots of other people and the desire to tear down walls suddenly comes over you, the odds are they won’t appreciate it. But the theory is sound. Step outside your box and engage with others.

3. Moving on from the point above – try developing a creative partnership. Think how many people this has worked for. If you are really stuck for ideas, is there someone whose opinion you value and whose advice you could ask? Someone who you have worked with efficiently in the past? Learn from the point above and consider looking to other disciplines. What about a classmate who you worked well with years ago but took a different path? As long as you don’t expect them to do the work for you, the chances are they will be flattered you think their opinion is worth asking for. Remember to offer your help on one of their projects in return. This should stop them resenting you for using up their precious time and may lead to a productive lifelong working relationship. Biscuits and cups of tea are also nice.

4. Visit your favourite websites and blogs. This may seem a bit obvious and likely to lead to more procrastinating but try following links to recommended sites that you are unfamiliar with, perhaps focusing on those that don’t necessarily excite you at first. See if any of them have newsletters and sign up. Everyone hates junk mail but pick carefully and you can always unsubscribe if you are unimpressed. You may just be sent a few gems of useful or inspiring information which you would never have seen otherwise.

5. If you’re really stuck, step outside your comfort zone and try some different methods. If you are working in a primarily visual medium and rely on lots of image searches to inspire you, perhaps try some word association for example (a tip endorsed by innovation.se). Try searching for ‘creative problem solving’ and see what turns up. Open your mind and try something new.

6. The Internet is a wonderful tool. I was inspired to write this blog post by a link to an online article posted on Twitter. But I do work for a publishing company and happen to think that books are pretty great too. Research what books are out there that could help you. If you are working in quite a niche area, this is particularly quick and easy and should be very rewarding. There will be books that have been published in your area that will be able to give you specialist relevant information, carefully selected for people in the same position as you (for example further resources, suggested reading, case studies etc).

If there aren’t any books available, maybe you should think about writing one. (Although that takes procrastination to a whole other level).

AVA has published a few books in the area of idea generation and research skills for designers, all listed below. Sometimes just looking at examples of other great ideas can be incredibly inspiring.

On that note, we have FIVE copies of the Art Directors Annual 91 to give away. This competition will run for 24 hours so your entries need to have been recieved by 5pm on 15th January 2013. If you think the book looks inspiring (see some spreads below) then all you have to do is share this post and then email press@avabooks.co.uk with your name and postal address and we will pick five people at random. Good luck!

The book was only just published and contains the 2012′s most innovative works in visual communication in national and international advertising, graphic design, interactive design, interactive media, photography, and illustration. You can read more information about it here or just take a look at some of the sample spreads below. It also has a great cover!

Other AVA titles which may be of interest to any designers in need of visual stimuli, recommended reading, interviews with other deisgners etc:

Basics Fashion Design 01: Research and Design (second edition) – for fashion designers

Basics Textile Design 01: Sourcing Ideas – for textile designers

Basics Graphic Design 02: Design Research – for graphic designers

Basics Advertising 03: Ideation – for graphic designers and those working in advertising

Basics Graphic Design 03: Idea Generation – for graphic designers and anyone who is just plain stuck

Visual Research (second edition) – for graphic designers studying at a higher level

The review of The Publishing Business: From p-books to e-books below appears in the January issue of Choice.

‘The Publishing Business serves as an illustrated introduction to how modern book publishers create and sell content. Smith (independent scholar) explains different types of publishers and outlines the variety of jobs available. The book dedicates most chapters to the main process of creating a book–from editorial through to distribution and sales. Each section includes several full-color charts, along with samples of covers and other products. This volume is part of the “Creative Careers” series, designed to help students learn about creative industries. It provides discussion questions and activities at the end of each chapter. Also featured are recommended readings, online resources, and a
glossary of key publishing terms. While the book is visually stunning and filled with case studies that range from major trade publishers like Random House to small presses like Persephone Books, the material is very introductory. Smith never dedicates more than two or three paragraphs to a particular facet of the industry. But this is one of the few titles that cover the digital revolution sweeping the industry, and it is a very accessible introduction. It deserves a place alongside Marshall Lee’s Bookmaking (3rd ed., CH, Oct’04, 42-0650) and Thomas Woll’s Publishing for Profit (rev. and expanded 4th ed., 2010). Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduate students and general readers.’ – J. Rodzvilla, Emerson College

Kelvin has also recently written pieces on the future of publishing for Publishing Perspectives and Book Brunch.

His book is the first in AVA’s Creative Careers series and can be ordered from Amazon.

There are more images from the book in this previous post.

Review quotes for The Publishing Business:

• ‘…unlike other guides to publishing it’s a visual feast … Although designed primarily for publishing students this is a great book for anyone starting out in publishing to dip into and jargon-bust, from which they will emerge feeling more confident. And with so much gloom and pessimism about our future it’s refreshing to read something both upbeat and measured … It’s great value and you’ll definitely learn from it, however seasoned you are.’
  - Rachel Maund, Marketability, 2012.

• ‘An introduction to the publishing industry as it is today. It stimulates and promotes curiosity and investigation from the graduate to the accidental author and publisher. This is neither a history nor complete compendium of publishing today, but it is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand how the modern publishing world works and wants to play any part within it.’
  - Mick Rooney, The Independent Publishing Magazine, 2012.

• ‘A must-read book for all of us who want to keep the publishing business alive. Inspiring, comprehensive, insightful.’
  - Teresa de Andrés, Visual Mag, 2012.

• ‘The Publishing Business is a marvellous book. Books on publishing tend to be rather boring, but not this one. Written in very accessible style, it is jam-packed with helpful information, insights and resources; it is also beautifully designed, imaginatively and richly illustrated, and with all sorts of nice touches. It is a real pleasure to dip into!’
  - Hans Zell Hans Zell Publishing, 2012.

• ‘The Publishing Business provides an excellent introduction to contemporary publishing. It is recommended reading for anyone wanting up-to-date information about roles and responsibilities in this global industry.’
  - Sally Hughes, Oxford Brookes University, UK.

• ‘I think the book is superb! It looks so much better than any existing textbook on the subject, and practises what it preaches: it is a real visual feast for a visual medium. I shall definitely be recommending it as the main source that students need for their course. A really great production feat!‘
  - Brenda Stones, City University, London.

• ‘The Publishing Business is an excellent reference and will offer students a strong introduction to the opportunities and challenges within the current state of the industry. I certainly wish I could have read it before I started my MPub degree, if for no other reason than to get up to speed on the terminology … The Publishing Business is the first in AVA Academia’s Creative Careers series, and given its practical, comprehensive approach and clear, informative content, I’ll be sure to keep an eye out for the series’ future titles.’
  - Iva Cheung, Editor and Publishing Consultant, ivacheung.com.

• ‘A beautiful book which is well laid out and thought through. It serves as an excellent introduction to the entire publishing business which does not overwhelm the brand new student, rather excites their appetite for the trade in an accessible way. As such, I will be placing it on our recommended supplementary reading list.’
  - Leah Tether, Anglia Ruskin University, UK.

If you have read the book please do upload a review to Amazon! We look forward to receiving more feedback and are hard at work on the next in the Creative Careers series which will be a book about working in the illustration industry…

Following our acquisition by Bloomsbury in July there have been many changes. From being an office of 12, we are suddenly part of a company of 350. From a little town by the sea we will need to adapt to the bright lights (and crowded transport) of working in the UK’s capital city. From having to explain (frequently) that it is not Ava but A.V.A. (an abbreviation for Applied Visual Arts), thanks in large part to Harry Potter we will be working for an internationally recognised publishing house. All of our existing structures have changed. There are completely different workflows and systems and procedures and getting to grips with it all has been, at times, pretty overwhelming. In the last week alone two of our colleagues have left and they are going to be hugely missed – just how much hasn’t completely sunk in just yet as at the moment it feels like they are just leaving for the Christmas break.

But we have somehow made it to December, and in a few weeks will be leaving our Worthing office forever…and there is some difference in opinion about whether or not this is a cause for regret! (There has been a rather unpleasant leak recently which we won’t be sad to swap for the rather lovely Bloomsbury Bedford Square offices). Some of us will be making the commute up to London and one of us has already moved.

But though it is a time of change for us, it is also a time of change in publishing in general. And in these circumstances, it is reassuring to find people who believe in developing innovative solutions to the challenges publishers are facing to ensure we continue to be able to do what good publishers should do – be instrumental in the creation and presentation of valuable content, facilitate the effective distribution of that content, be the experts at promoting that content so it can be discovered by relevant audiences, and be constantly on the look out for more innovative ways to make that content more desirable, more findable and more widely available. In a time of such great progress, where technology is transforming the landscape around us, publishers need to take note of what Steve Jobs understood so well – that knowing what your audience will want next before they know it themselves is invaluable.

With this in mind, we would like to say thank you to all our new colleagues at Bloomsbury Academic who have been welcoming and supportive, and who have made the process of integration as pain-free as possible. We would also like to thank them for their enthusiasm about the content that we, and our authors and designers, have worked so hard to create. We continue to be very proud of everything we have achieved at AVA. We are very positive about what the future holds for AVA and the visual arts at Bloomsbury – now arguably the largest visual arts publisher in the world – which is quite a claim! In 2013 we intend to build on our previous success, for example by creating additional academic resources and improving our delivery methods for all of our content, thus bringing our titles to a larger audience of students, instructors and practitioners than ever before. We will also be working more closely with our new US colleagues over at Fairchild Books so stay tuned!

We hope your 2013 will be full of exciting new beginnings as ours will be. And happy Christmas! We thought we’d leave you with our attempts at a creative Christmas card…

Attempt 1 – we were going for a snowflake or a star…:

Attempt 2 – a sadly wonky snowflake:

Attempt 3 – a Christmas star! With a bit of help from  Instagram :

Have a wonderful holiday!

-from everyone at AVA

Please note our change of address. From 21st January you can find us at:

Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP

Tel: +44(0)20 7631 5600. The Worthing office will close on 18^th January 2013.

We wanted to see how easy/fun it would be to turn the 2D shapes from the book into 3D objects if we could print out the image files on A3 paper…the answer was very!

See how we did and watch this space!

Pattern Cutting: The Architecture of Fashion is by Pat Parish and is now available from the Bloomsbury website.

We have the proofs of Pattern Cutting at the moment, here are some of the pages – the main idea of the book is to allow students to experiment with different shapes, including linear, inverted triangle, square, balloon, trapeze, dome, hourglass, lantern and cocoon:

We also just received this (below), kindly sent over by our new colleagues at Fairchild Books, which has inspired us to get out our sketchbooks!

Fashion Sketchbook is available from the Fairchild Books website.

We hope you too are having a creative Friday…

Basics Fashion Design 10: Jewellery Design by Elizabeth Galton

184 pages / full colour / paperback / 978 2 940411 94 8 / publishing October 2012

Elizabeth Galton is the former Creative Director of Links of London and is now Creative Director at Aurum Holdings Ltd (Mappin & Webb and Goldsmiths). She is a visiting lecturer at several top UK universities and was appointed curator of Treasure, London Jewellery Week 2012. Her impressive contacts and successful experience in the world of jewellery design make this book incredibly inspiring, full of stunning pieces of jewellery and interviews with impressive jewellery designers such as Nadja Swarovski, Shaun Leane, Stephen Webster, Anne Kazuro-Guionnet and Lara Bohinc.  It is the perfect practical guide for all aspiring designers who want to see what it is possible to achieve in the competitive world of jewellery design.

This book explores a variety of topics including:

• the history of jewellery
• the fine, couture and fashion jewellery markets
• ethical practice and marketing
• the design process (how this evolves from an initial sketch to samples and then to the building of a collection)
• creating a lookbook
• dealing with customers, press and buyers
• pricing, manufacturing and retailing
• the day-to-day life of a cross section of jewellery designers and the diverse set of skills required (from working on design collaborations to being a member of the design team)
• portfolio and CV presentation.

Jewellery Design provides an overview of the varied career paths and a window into the worlds of some of the most talented jewellery designers working today. It has been written as a resource for all jewellery designers who want to learn about the industry and be inspired by an eclectic mix of fashion and fine jewellery from talented contemporary designers.

You can order a copy from the AVA website or from Amazon.

Look inside:

'Midas Touch' necklace designed by Elizabeth Galton

To celebrate this, AVA are holding a sale and a competition for three people to win a copy of our bestselling title, Simon Seivewright’s Basics Fashion Design 01: Research and Design (second edition).

To win a copy of the book, simply check out the cover of the second edition and tell us how many illustrated figures appear on it? Email your answer by reply to this email or to press@avabooks.co.uk, along with the address you would like the book sent to and we will pick three winners at random!

Entries need to have been received by Sunday 7th Oct.

We have also reduced many of the prices of AVA books at www.avabooks.com for a sale across all of our graphic design and fashion titles (including fashion management and textile design).

Most of the books have 30% off or more and are available with free postage and packaging to UK addresses. This sale will run from today, 1^st October, until 12^th October 2012. So if you are in the mood to learn something new and throw yourself into a creative project now is the time to order…

If there are any books you would like to see on sale in the future, please let us know. All AVA titles are also available from Amazon.

And please join us on Facebook and/or Twitter for more competitions and news!