The Dream Catalog

Rating:
Summary: If you feel like frustrating yourself...
Review: If you feel like frustrating yourself by looking at all of the coolest stuff on the planet that you will never be able to afford...than read this book. Not that I dislike the book...I love it...that's the problem. Notice if you will, all the cool stuff was made in some random country. Hmm...interesting. Anyways, the book is an essential if you have just won the lottery or married Bill Gates.

Rating:
Summary: If you feel like frustrating yourself...
Review: If you feel like frustrating yourself by looking at all of the coolest stuff on the planet that you will never be able to afford...than read this book. Not that I dislike the book...I love it...that's the problem. Notice if you will, all the cool stuff was made in some random country. Hmm...interesting. Anyways, the book is an essential if you have just won the lottery or married Bill Gates.

Rating:
Summary: It was just a dream!
Review: Well, it might have been a good idea at the time but I bought this book at a really low, low remainder price and the bookshop, distributor and publishers probably made something from it. It is after all called a 'dream catalog' and I guess that sums up the idea that buyers would use it as guide to trendy stuff available on the net, trouble is so much of it is completely out of date. The best place to look for these dream items now is probably on Ebay.

So why did I buy it? Because it just looks an amazing book and for the price it is a brilliant visual record of product design at the turn of the century. Divided into four parts, In the home, Fashion & beauty, High-tech (the section that is most out-of-date) and Sport & leisure, with each of these sub-divided too. Each page has, on average, six color photos so there are about three thousand in the book and as they are mostly products they are all presented as cut-outs floating on the page and this is why I think the book looks so stunning. Each product has a caption including country of origin flag, web address and a few descriptive words, no prices obviously.

Product design folk and trendies who go for the slightly out of date will just love it.