It’s always a pleasure when you receive a parcel from Bitmap Books. Their books are always carefully wrapped with multiple layers and levels of protection, ensuring you receive the book in absolute pristine condition. The Art of the Box is a big, gorgeous-looking hardback art book. It oozes quality, with heavy gloss paper, incredible print quality and a lovely blue ribbon bookmark. The Art Of The Box is a substantial and exhaustively researched book, featuring 564 pages of glorious retro video game artwork and illustrations. The book is split into chapters, featuring 26 biographies of artists and illustrators, who, at some point in their careers, found themselves illustrating video game packaging. Artists featured in the book include Bob Wakelin, Steve Hendricks, Oliver Frey, Gerald Brom, Ken Macklin, Tom DuBois, Steinar Lund, Marc Ericksen, Julie Bell and Susumu Matsushita. The individual biographies include details of their journeys as artists, their inspirations and influences, the games they illustrated, and where their artistic careers have taken them. The Art Of The Box includes video game packaging illustrations and artworks going all the way back to the early days of Atari’s iconic VCS box art. It also includes modern-day collaborations and box art from the latest AAA games. Each biography is beautifully illustrated with full-colour box artwork, the book features well over 350 full-colour images! (We haven’t checked this number but there are a lot of images!).
Sadly, as the gaming industry moves further towards digital downloads and gaming subscription services, traditional box art is looking like it could become a thing of the past. But thanks to publishers like Bitmap and their fabulous art books, many artworks and images will be preserved and celebrated forever! The Art Of The Box is a true treasure trove of glorious cover art images and nostalgia, and an absolute must-have for retro fans, and lovers of fantastic sci-fi, fantasy and video game imagery. Please check out our short preview book video above for a quick look inside. The Art of the Box is available now from Bitmap Books and of course on Amazon UK and Amazon.com.
