The new book, Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip-Hop Fashion is a trip down memory to the early days of urban fashion through the lens of the pioneering group of artists known as the Shirt Kings. By adapting the graffiti skills from the trains and spray cans to shirts and airbrush, they created a new look for a new generation.

Edwin PHADE Sacasa is a founding artist of the group and it is through his archives that we are transported to the 1980s in New York City where the fashion of the day was loud, colourful, and filled with cartoon imagery on clothes. Mickey Mouse with a Fila suit, Casper the Friendly Ghost with gold teeth, Roger Rabbit with a flat top hair do and Pink Panther with gold chains and guns – it was the reinterpretation of American classics with an urban and gangster lean. The Shirt Kings were the inventors of this style and everyone across the city was well aware and made there way to Jamaica, Queens to a small shopping mall known as the Coliseum where you could easily bump into the biggest names in hip-hop of the day placing their orders. From DJ Red Alert to LL Cool J to Big Daddy Kane to Mike Tyson – they all had to have their Shirt Kings designs.

Shirt Kings: Pioneers of Hip-Hop Fashion chronicles the art, the styles, and the people who were loyal supporters of the Shirt Kings style and takes us on a trip down memory lane to when customization and art reigned supreme in New York City.

You can pick up the book here. More images below.

A staple accompanying each collection since its debut in Spring/Summer 2009, Carhartt has just unveiled their latest Brand Book. The latest issue features a selection of products from the new collection along with providing a closer look at the latest collaborations with Vans Syndicate, Diemme and UDG as well as offering an in-depth interview with Brandt Brauer Frick, and more. Look for the Brand Book now at Carhartt stores and retailers.

More images below.

Remember Logorama? The 2009 Academy Award-winning animated short which focused on the use of logos and brands became a point of reference for corporate culture. Ludovic Houplain, studio director and co-director of the film, conducted an extensive year-long research project, collecting over 40,000 symbols and trademarks that represent our world today.

The monumental archive Houplain amassed is the foundation of Logobook, an ultimate logo reference guide, featuring approximately 7,000 specimens organized alphabetically, with information about the designers, year of creation, country, brand, and company.

The book is out later this month from Taschen.

In the 1980s, at the dusk of the “Golden Age of Porn,” Barbara Nitke worked as a still photographer on over 300 New York porn movie sets over the course of a dozen years, during the Boogie Nights era of porn in New York. Her deeply intimate images were often shot between takes when the actor’s porn star masks were down, they reach far beyond the sex machine image of the industry to reveal the humanness of the actors.

After losing her deal with HarperCollins Publishers and unsuccessfully searching for another publisher she started a Kickstarter campaign and raised over $30 000. The book is now available online through americanecstasybook.com.

More images below. (NSFW)

Next month, Princeton Architectural Press is publishing a new book titled Instant: The Story of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos. It documents the story of visionary genius founder, Edwin Land, and how he grew Polaroid from a 1937 garage startup into a billion-dollar pop-culture phenomenon. Steve Jobs considered Land a personal hero and modeled Apple after Polaroid.

Check out a video after the jump for more info about the book and the history of Polaroid.

There are only a handful of names in cinema that have captured our hearts for decades. Whether it was in 1980’s Caddyshack or four years later as Dr. Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters, or the egocentric weatherman, Phil Connors in 1993’s Groundhog Day, all the way up to every Wes Anderson film he’s appeared in, including the latest, Moonrise Kingdom, Bill Murray is indeed a legend. We can’t even begin to fathom how many people he’s inspired, but one of the most recent is Belly Kids, who have put together a colouring book of several characters he’s played throughout his career. They also have some Bill Murray-inspired prints up for grabs too. Check out all the goods here.

More after the jump.

Based in West Chester, Pennsylvania, Justin James Muir is a photographer whose most recent project is a book that focuses on man’s most majestic and noble facial feature, the beard. It consists of portraits of 86 beards with 18 written contributions. All proceeds from the first pressing of the book will help finance the medical bills of a friend of Muir’s who was diagnosed with cancer, while all subsequent pressings will go entirely to the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. For more info about the book and purchasing go to bookofbeards.com.

More after the jump.

Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s, The Old Man and the Sea, this stop-motion video was drawn by Hagen Reiling for a school assignment. It details the plot of the novel showing the artist draw out the story from beginning to end.

Created for The Telegraph, Birth of a Book is a short video by Glen Milner, which shows how a book is created using traditional printing methods.

Photographer, Andrew Shaylor’s latest book, Rockin’: The Rockabilly Scene, documents the rockabilly crowd in both the States and the UK. He traveled through states like Alabama and Tennessee, with the goal of capturing the roots of rockabilly, before making his way to the west coast where the scene is more Latin in flavour, and then ventured to England to document the scene there.

More after the jump.