Book Brew

Advertising legend and self-described "cultural provocateur" George Lois has 120 life lessons for you, provided that you have talent -- and $9.95. That's the price of his new book, Damn Good Advice (For People with Talent!): How To Unleash Your Creative Potential, published this month by Phaidon. The bullet-pointed bible tackles everything from design dogma (#19: You can be cautious or you can be creative, but there's no such thing as a cautious creative.) and career tips (#29: Your portfolio should ignite, provoke, shock, kick ass.) to handy habits (we learn in #65 that Lois seeks inspiration in weekly trips to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art) and personal anecotes that feature cameos by the likes of Bob Dylan and Muhammad Ali. Now get back to work! Warns Lois, now 81, "If you don't burn out at the end of each day, you're a bum!"

Remember Gooey Huey or Leaky Lindsay? Wondering what became of Sewer Sue or the elusive Adam Bomb? Reunite with these and 202 other disgusting old friends (they haven't aged a day!) in the pages of Garbage Pail Kids, out next month from Abrams ComicArts. The book celebrates the beloved sticker trading cards, produced by Topps in the 1980s with a creative team that included Art Spiegelman and John Pound, who have penned the introduction and afterword, respectively. Along with a trove of rare GPK images are four previously unreleased bonus stickers. Just keep them away from Up Chuck and Heather Shredder.

The eternal question: Frosted Flakes or Lucky Charms? One is grrrrreat, the other magically delicious, and both are sufficiently sugar-coated to get even the drowsiest morning off to a sweet, if slightly jittery, start. Celebrate this breakfast staple in all its forms with The Great American Cereal Book, out this month from Abrams Image. In words and a whopping 350 pictures, Marty Gitlin and Topher Ellis explore breakfast cereal history and lore, from Grape-Nuts (neither grape nor nut!) to Trix (definitely not just for kids). Design fans and cereal fiends alike will delight in the generous servings of vintage ads and historical packaging.

Designer Todd Oldham and writer Kiera Coffee have outdone themselves with their mega-monograph on Alexander Girard, new from Ammo Books. The product of nearly four years of research and, at 672 pages, an innovative scheme of printing and binding, this coffee table book is a must for any design lover. Oldham was granted exclusive permission to sift through the fastidiously kept archives of Girard (1907-1993), who is best known for his folk art-infused textiles for Herman Miller but also designed everything from buildings to typography. "I'd estimate that 90 percent of the work in the book hasn’t been seen before," Oldham told us recently. "Wait 'til you see the stuff from his early design career, in the '20s." And take a closer look at the image credits: Many of the archival photos were taken by frequent Girard collaborator Charles Eames.

"Apple Computer, Inc. has never developed an entirely new electronic product: it did not invent the computer or the MP3 player or even the cell phone," writes Ina Grätz in her introduction to Apple Design (Hatje Cantz). "That these devices from the company are nevertheless considered to be among the most innovative of our time can be explained above all on the basis of their product design." The new book features more than 200 examples of Apple designs by Jonathan Ive and his team, from the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh to the latest iPad. Each object is pictured from multiple angles and examined in detail as part of a broader exploration of Apple's approach to industrial design, production, materials (including pioneering applications of translucent plastic and aluminum) and, of course, marketing.

Celebrated comics artist Daniel Clowes (Wilson, Ghost World) has a big year ahead of him, with an exhibition of his work opening this spring at the Oakland Museum of California and an accompanying mega-monograph. In the meantime, treat yourself to The Death-Ray, freshly reissued by Drawn & Quarterly. It's Clowes' complex and darkly comic take on the superhero genre, with a teen outcast thrust into the role of ray gun-wielding masked avenger. "The costume is something I made up when I was 15 or 16, and the very basis of the story -- a skinny kid who lives with his grandparents and has a ray gun -- is something I was trying to write back then," Clowes has said. "Thankfully I never got it together. I would have really embarrassed myself."