Picturia Press - Creating Books authored by you -->

Asian elephants are considered endangered on the IUCN Red list. At the turn of the 20th Century, there were 100,000 elephants in Thailand. Today, there are less than 5,000.

We were honored to be contacted by Don Tayloe regarding his documentary film, "The Last Elephants in Thailand". Don's film is a sweeping account of the lives of domesticated elephants and what is being done to save them. Their habitat has been drastically reduced and they are rounded up and turned into slaves in logging camps or to perform in the tourism industry. Fortunately, there are people trying to save the animals, but they are under funded and undermined by politics.

This book is a companion piece to the documentary and as a visual biography, we hope that it will encourage people to reach out a helping hand. For more information on Don Tayloe's film, please visit http://haepictures.wordpress.com/

To learn more about how you can help: http://www.fortheloveofanimals.net

This was a very quick, but enjoyable project to do for one of our clients in Las Vegas. Our client had an existing business plan that they wanted to present at an upcoming meeting of investors. They wanted to give the investors something that represented their concept and that would be unique and memorable. So we converted the traditional business plan into a very beautiful presentation book.

Sound interesting? Whether it's for a school, a sports team or a club....Blurb.com has new special running right now and is offering a great service to help get your book designed with no up-front expense or budget.

Here's what you'll get:

• 8"x 10" 40 page book (additional pages is negotiable)
• one soft copy proof book (to review before final order)
• 8 hours of design time (includes internal pages and cover)

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).

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.

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!