Reply to "MANGUSTA DESIGN BOOK"

LETTER TO FRIENDS ABOUT THE BOOK.
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>BELLA MANGUSTA, The Italian Art and Design of the De Tomaso Mangusta.

Some of you know that I have written a design book. Many do not, so I am taking the opportunity of the launch of the website for BELLA MANGUSTA to inform everyone. I have been writing about my car for years, many articles have appeared in magazines about it, always with my personally written text behind the name of the credited writer.

About five years ago as the De Tomaso Mangusta started to become noticed I realized that I had a unique opportunity. I had owned one for a very long time, I knew it well and I had the knowledge, experience and interest to write about it. More importantly I was uniquely experienced and able to write about the design. I had figured it out mechanically and aesthetically. I realized that no one else that I knew who owned one was likely to do that.
I had the ability to “Reverse Design” my car and to write about it in a way that was easily understood.

Since retiring I had been developing my communication skills, learning to become adept at explaining how design works and how creativity and aesthetic content were applied to car design. I combined the many writings that I had and tried to have my design story printed, sending it to a number of very good magazines in the USA and Europe Everyone loved it but it did not fit the “profile” of their publications, something new to me but very understandable.

Then Automobile Quarterly accepted it and wanted to publish it but they first went out of business. A photographer had photographed the car at the Ford house I then moved it to another spot and took a number of pictures myself. Two years later I decided to put the images together with my text and to create a book. I added more images last December after our first snow in 12 degree weather, the only pictures of a Mangusta ever seen in the real world in the snow.

I developed the book as I went along the way I would any other design project, combining the text, 7000 words on the left and the 64 large full color images on the right. My book has an artistic theme and is also designed for students….

Thank you for spending the time to read this, please take a look at the website, you will find images and pages from the book.  

bellamangustadesign.com 

Please let me know what you think.

All the best,
Dick Ruzzin