Eleanor Mathieson

Sitting in my office yesterday, breaking the health and safety rules by not having my laptop at eye level and potentially endangering my wrists from strain by not using the correct kind of keyboard, I was chatting to a lovely girl at the desk behind me. As our conversation developed it turned out she was in fact Eleanor Mathieson, editor, researcher and designer of several several published books, one of which I was already familiar with as it is stocked up and down the country in Urban Outfitters. She planted the idea in my mind of writing a book myself. A coffee table book, of course, most likely to do with editorial, perhaps one that documents the work of Fabian Baron or something.
Anyway, here are two of the books she has published:

Street Artists: The Complete Guide, was edited and also designed by Eleanor, is definately my favourite of her books. She was rather pleased to get my nod of approval for the layout as she confessed that she wasn't too experienced in doing that.

The other, Street Art And The War On Terror is in a similar vein content wise, yet while the imagery is really strong and interesting, I'm not particularly keen on the layout. Something about the black strips and the text in the white boxes turns me off. Why not just have white text on black background? Would tidy the design up like that *snaps fingers*. Perhaps if another edition is published I'll have a wee word with her haha.