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Cicada Books presents Graphic USA, an alternative guidebook to 25 American cities written and illustrated by graphic designers. Graphic USA gives you an insider’s view of the best (and occasionally weird) restaurants, hotels, galleries, bars and coffee shops, all with quirky illustrations/graphics by the artists that live in each city. It’s quite like reading a friend’s notes on interesting places that you should see, with tidbits and paragraphs to help you along your way.

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When I first visited Portland I didn’t have an itinerary, and thus was a little bored. I tried Yelp but that only helped so much. I checked out the bookstore and thumbed through some typical travel guides. Not any better. Then I stumbled upon eat.shop. portland, a curated listing of the best and most unique local businesses. Suddenly I wished my vacation was two weeks longer.

The eat.shop guides focus on cities both big and obvious (nyc and paris) and small and not-so-obvious  (kansas city and portland). you could say we’re an equal opportunity publisher with 24 cities in our back pocket and counting. Because we believe that a guide needs to come along with you… an eat.shop guide fits perfectly into a handbag, a glove compartment box or your empty hand… we put our eat.shop colored glasses on and carefully choose 85 or so unique, authentic, scrumdilicious local businesses that range from eye popping and brand spankin’ new to deeply patinaed and way off the beaten path, funky and unexpected to chic and shiny.

Extra credit: Have you visited all the shops and restaurants eat.shop listed in your city?

What an excellent interpretation of a guidebook- if you’ve lived in a city for a little while or a lot, it’d be interesting to see what things you haven’t seen or done.

Not For Tourists is a growing series of guides to major cities. Their philosophy is simple: people need to use the cities they live in, commute into, or travel to effectively. They need to use their city’s transportation systems; its governmental infrastructure; its shops, restaurants, and nightspots—and they need all of this information while they’re on the move in a format that’s more accessible than the Yellow Pages, more informative than Zagat’s, and more useful than any other tourist’s guide out there.

Seattle, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, DC, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Chicago

$15.00, Buy it here.

visit Not For Tourists online.

These look to have some interesting information on wherever your travels might take you.

LUXE City Guides – the consummately stylish pocket travel guides, packed with astute, opinionated information for the busy and sophisticated visitor. Each hip, smart and stylish pocket-sized guidebook is packed with a highly selective and opinionated list of only the best shops, restaurants and hotels, unique services and lifestyle options each city has to offer. And what’s more, LUXE guides come with handy online updates.

Each guide, $9.99
Australia, China or European Travel Set, $17.99-$26.99
Asian, Europe, or World Grand Tour Box, $75.00-$110.00

Buy it here.

Danielle over at the style files has a great design guide on Amsterdam. She has put together lists of where to stay, eat, shop, and other things to see while you’re there. I love it when people take the time to do nice stuff like that.

New Wallpaper City Guides (listed below) with 10 additional cities due for Fall 2008.

AUCKLAND * BUDAPEST * CAIRO * CHICAGO * HANOI *LAS VEGAS * MELBOURNE * MUNICH * VALENCIA * WARSAW

“Pocket-sized insider guides compiled by the travel experts at Wallpaper* magazine. Tabbed listings offer landmarks, hotels, what to do in 24 hours, urban life, architectural highlights, shopping, sports and escapes.”

MadeInEarnest has their new Buenos Aires City guide out. As expected, there’s lots of links and recommendations for places to stay and eat, which are super helpful to have if you’re planning a visit.

Thanks MadeInEarnest!

The good folks over at madeinearnest.com
have started to produce some new city guides. Free to download and full of insiders’ tips, they’re sure to be handy for those of you planning a visit. First city: Helsinki. (various pictures above taken from wikipedia.)

“These will obviously be focussed more on the art and design side of each city, but they will also include anything else we find interesting or amusing. We are going to try to make these guides as useful as we can – with the relevant links wherever possible – so if you have anything to add to any Guide just let us know. Keeping them up-to-date and relevant will make them all the more useful. We are viewing them as invaluable companions to your travel books and the trips themselves and we hope you will do too.” -madeinearnest.com

[posted by katie]

Much to my surprise, while perusing my new Wallpaper* magazine, I discovered that Wallpaper* awarded Los Angeles with “Best City”. It’s not that I don’t love Los Angeles, it’s just when I moved hear exactly one year ago, I got a lot of flack from a lot of people. It has a bad reputation, but I’m finding it’s really a great place to be.

“It’s long been easy to knock LA, but a slow bounce-back began with the new millennium. House prices have gone through the roof and tourism is at record post-9/11 levels. The city of Eames, Neutra and ‘Googie’ has always had few equals in its appreciation of challenging design, and it shows in the star status given to the people creating the look of today’s LA, from Kelly Wearstler to Thom Mayne and, of course, Frank Gehry. “

I sincerely hope that no one will completely rely upon this for all communication when visiting a foreign land, but I do know that no matter how much you prepare, sometimes you just forget certain necessary words. This might be handy to have just in case your memory fails you.

‘You may be fluent in multiple languages but still sometimes find yourself “off the beaten path ” and unable to communicate effectively. “Point It ” is the solution, with images of 1200 items to which you can indicate for universal understanding.’

Do you get to travel a lot for work? Or even better, just for fun? These Wallpaper City Guides make aimless wandering a thing of the past with these 20 guides which find the best restaurants, bars, hotels, stores, sites, architecture and design.

20 City Guides available including: Amsterdam, Bangkok, Barcelona, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan, New York, Paris, Rio De Janero, Rome, Shanghai, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo

$8.95 for each guide or $175.95 for all 20 guides

Buy it here.