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We're sending out all our best wishes to our clients, supporters and friends for a safe and happy new year. Picturia Press will be closed for the holiday, but back at work and designing new books the second week of January.

A big thanks also to Blogger Buster, they recently reviewed the Picturia Press blog in their "50 More Fabulous Blogs" posting. We we're thrilled to be included.

P.S. Watch for us during the MacWorld Conference in San Francisco, we'll be Blurbing!

Picturia Press has been asked to speak at a Blurb event during MacWorld Conference & Expo - San Francisco in January, 2009. It's a wonderful opportunity to share our experiences designing and working with the great people at Blurb over last 18 months. We're looking forward to being there and meeting everyone.

We recently read an article in Business Week on "The Next Big Thing In Selling Design". The article discusses how companies are now looking into the new "hot" trend of coffee-table books for marketing.

Designing and creating eye-catching print publications aimed at attracting new clients and for general business development purposes is an appealing method to reach out to their target markets in a unique way.

Picturia Press just finished publishing a very sweet and inspiring new book. We were contacted recently by a father who wanted to give his daughter a very special gift for the holidays. His goal was to create a book that would chronicle his daughter's life from when she was born through to her current life now as a teacher.

He has some really wonderful pictures of her through all stages of her life. In fact, he had to go through roughly 8,000 pictures to select the ones he wanted for the book! We had a great time working with him to create this lovely gift. We are looking forward to hearing back from him after the holidays to see how much she enjoyed the book. So stay tuned for an update on this project.

Picturia Press has worked with Lewis|Leeper, a legal firm based in Boston for over a year on several projects, including a book. Recently, we were contacted by the firm and asked to help them update their website.

We were pleased we could offer our services and give them a brand new website. If you would like to find out more about Lewis|Leeper, or to see their website, please click here.

Cold November, what an appropriate title for a book!

This was a very fun and exciting project we were asked to work on and we were so pleased to be part of helping create this book of poetry for our client.

Cold November is a collection of approximately 75 poems. Our job was to design a book working with color, fonts, typography and engaging background treatments and make the poems come alive on the page and give them mood and meaning. Hopefully we've accomplished this, we feel it's a beautiful book that should make the best seller's list!

Click here to view the book

Picturia Press is very happy to announce that yet another wonderful book designed by us has become a best seller! The book, A Journey of the Heart, was created for a fund raising event. This wonderful private diary and journey of a man recovering from a heart attack (see post of 09/05/08) was a great joy for us to create for Mr. Frank Ostaseski, of the Metta Institute. We wish him all the best, and we're pleased that the book is helping raise funds for their wonderful cause.

This is in fact the second book now designed by Picturia Press that has become a best seller. We recently published a cookbook called Friends, Food and Fiction, which was designed for a ladies book club in Des Moines, Iowa (see post of 09/14/08).

Orchids An Intimate Portrait of Beauty was a wonderful book for us to work on this month. This extremely beautiful book features the drawing, photography and paintings of Jerry Gotkin.

Some of the orchids in this book are captured in isolation and some in their natural environment. All of the images featured in this book, have been reproduced in Limited Editions by the artist.

Rather than create a catalogue of the orchids, Mr. Gotkin preferred to create a "stand alone" piece that would be in and of itself an artistic work, yet still compliment the original creations.

With over 120 pages of compelling images, this 13 x 10 book is stunning on it's own and we were excited to work with Jerry Gotkin again, making this the fifth book we have created for this Florida based artist.

To view the book, click here.

Marjorie's Table: Material and Instruments of Art as Art is the fourth book done with noted artist Jerry Gotkin. As usual, we were very fortunate to work with some beautiful images and we also had the benefit of being familiar with the artist's previous work.

This was a unique book to create in that it examines the work table, palette and the instruments that an artist uses to create. The materials - brushes, paints, canvases, vases, flowers and all they other items a painter would use - all displayed and seen as their own expression of art.

Jerry comments, "What I tried to do, in preparing the images and formulation, was a painful exercise. I saw that it was lacking a point of view and cohesiveness but I was at a loss to either recognize or articulate it. When I presented it to Suzzanne, she hit the target as soon as I sent her my ideas. It was a clarion bell. This book would not work if we were merely going to display the images as individual pieces. This had to be a conceptual book organized to convey a central theme. She knew what I wanted to do; I did not. I cannot express the clarity that came with her direction."

We're thrilled to bring to life another book of artistic work by Gotkin Arts Studio. We look forward to working on their next project with them. Click here to view the book.

When we did this book, I wasn't aware of what "Leaf Peeping" was and how extremely popular it is in New England. Apparently the leaves are only visible for a limited number of weeks and annually draws huge visitors to view and photograph the breathtaking fall foliage.

Hiking is the perfect way to experience the change of the seasons. These images were shot during a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trails in and around Rangeley Lake, Maine.

Such a fun book to create. Just under 50 pages and a 7 x 7 book, this is a wonderful way to take your vacation photos and turn them into a priceless memory book. These photos would probably have resided on a computer and sat for years waiting for something to happen. But now it is a treasured memory book that everyone on the trip will be receiving as a gift.

Click here to view the book.

While Picturia Press continues to create new books (three more in the works right now....) we wanted to take a moment to let all our new and existing customers that we are excited to be offering a 10% discount on all book orders placed on or before December 1, 2008. If you would like to take advantage of this offer, please reference the code: BB1201OLB.

Lots of books to create for the holiday season. Avoid the holiday rush and get started on your book project now. Picturia Press wishes you all the best during the upcoming holiday season.

Click here to view the book.

Today, we just finished our third book with noted artist, Jerry Gotkin. This was an exciting project for us to work again with Jerry on creating a showcase of his wife Marjorie Gotkin's "Still Life/Florals" watercolor and gouache. It is always a pleasure to work with Mr. Gotkin, and these were some incredibly beautiful images to design and layout. We recently published his Tall Ship Series and the Hospice by the Sea Gardens books.

Both Marjorie and Jerry Gotkin have been successful and well-known painters and artists for many years and some of Marjorie's works are in the Smithsonian Institution American Art Museum/Portrait Gallery Libraries. So it was an honor to help create this book for them.

Click here to view the book.

This is quite a unique book and although it took a very long time; it was a wonderful project to work on. Picturia Press was contacted by a book group in Des Moines, Iowa that had been meeting once a month for over 20 years! During that time they had read and reviewed over books and wanted to share their book list with friends and family. But also during that time, this book group, called the Decem Doctae, or "ten learned women", have been meeting at each other's houses to review the books and to share a delicious lunch prepared by their host for the meeting. So in addition to sharing their recommended reading list, they wanted to share some of their recipes they've collected over the years. Additionally, one of the ladies from their group is a photographer, so naturally, our clients also wanted to include images of their beautiful city.

It took some time and management to collect all the different images, bios, book lists and recipes from 14 different women belonging to the group over the period of 20 years and then editing the book so it was cohesive and consistent. Let's just put it this way... everyone writes a recipe differently.

The end result is a book we love and are sure the client will love also. Click here to view the book.

What a week it has been...and it's only Tuesday! We were thrilled to complete this new photography book, "Cuatro: Four Continents and Four Years", by photographer Angel Herrero de Frutos from Sitges, Spain.

The difficult task for this project was choosing which photos to use from a selection of Angel's work; all his images were so visually stunning. It was difficult at best to only pick a few of them. This is a photography book about his journey through four different continents in as many years. Places like Spain, China, France and Inda. We were very happy to work with Angel Herrero on this piece and wish him continued success in showcasing such fine work.

Click here to view the book.

Today, we finally finished part 2 of a set of 2 books on a mothers blog journaling her daughter's first year. Whew, it was a big one. The second book coming in at 425 pages. Again, very grateful to Blurb for their "slurping abilities - which allowed us to pull down all the entries including the images. If we weren't able to grab all the text and images that way, my client's child would be graduating college before we finished this book!

My client is not only creating a book to save and share with her child when she gets older, but is gifting the book to all the relatives and friends that they have all over the world. It's going to be a very special gift to all of them.

Click here to view the book

This was a wonderful book to work on, simply because it serves such a higher purpose. I was contacted by my client on behalf of the Metta Institute to create a book reflecting the journal writings of Mr. Frank Ostaseski. The founder of the Metta Institute, a teacher and a wonderful man who recently had several heart attacks and is now on the road to recovery. They plan to use the book as a gift to donors who attend the Journey of the Heart benefit for the Metta Institute in late September.

Although there was very little imagery, we worked with the text and used typography to call-out important or emotional points in Frank's journal and used color for more impact in delivering the overall message. This was a very quick turn around in order to make the deadline for the client, but it was a real pleasure to work with them and hope we can create more books for them in the near future. We wish them great success in their fundraising efforts.

Click here to see the book.

I am very happy to say that things have been quite exciting around Picturia Press lately and we are growing daily. It's been quite difficult to get to the blog and post any updates when we have been so busy. But, we want to keep you updated on our work.

Currently Picturia Press is designing and finishing up seven (7 )new books! Here's just a sampling of images from some of the books that are getting ready to go to print soon.

The first one going to press hopefully by next week, is a lovely cookbook we've been working on for a Des Moines Ladies Book Group. While crazy and challenging to work with 14 ladies on one project....we are finally getting it done, and it will be a beautiful book when it's completed. In fact, I am ordering a copy of this book for myself, since the recipes are so delicious! Look for it to be published soon.


We are also finishing up and putting the final touches on a beautiful photography book for a wonderful artist, Angel Herrero de Frutos, from Barcelona. (http://www.pinopic.com). His work is stunning and elegant and we were really pleased and honored to be working on this portfolio for him. You should see a sampling of this book within the next week or two!

Still more to come out next week will be a beautiful book we have been working on for the people at the Metta Institute (http://www.mettainstitute.org) for a fund raising event. Beautiful people doing such great work in the hospice care field. It's an honor to help them create something to further build awareness of this cause.

And of course, it is our privilege to be working with Jerry Gotkin again in producing another photography portfolio of his wife's work of florals. This will be our third book for Jerry and we always enjoy the beautiful art work and the friendship that has grown out of working together so much. This book should be out within the next three weeks.

So as you can see, it's been quite hectic at Pictura Press, but all of the projects we have are so great to work on and we are happy to play a part in each and every one of these wonderful books!