Beatles fans will twist and shout when they get a gander at th beautifully designed and endlessly fascinating, Visualizing the Beatles: A Complete Graphic History of the World’s Favorite Band (Dey Street Books, $26.99). It’s quite nifty to flip through; the illustrations and graphics are colorful and highly informative and entertaining. The data and infographics present a fresh and innovative new way of understanding Paul and John and George and Ringo.
We realized why the magical history tour of the career of the Fab Four, explored album-by-album, has that addictive “feel good” look: The authors, John Pring and Rob Thomas, are professional graphic designers with a slew of top tier corporate clients. Do you want to know a secret? Having a successful Kickstarter fund for this book didn’t hurt.
“As designers, we wondered what it would look like to visualize The Beatles and chart their story—the evolution of their music, style and characters—through a series of graphics,” write Pring and Thomas in the introduction. “What might presenting the information in a totally different way, never done before on this scale, tell us that we hadn’t noticed or appreciated previously?”
Organized by album from Please Please Me to Let It Be, this stunning book deconstructs:
- Song lyrics
- Which Beatle carried how much of the songwriting load
- Instruments used
- Style evolution of their active years
- Album designs
- Track length
- Who took lead vocals when
- Success of singles across the world
- Tour dates
- Hairstyles . . .
- And let is be said lots more!