Book Review “Star Trek: The Art of Juan Ortiz”

artofstartrekAuthor: Juan Ortiz
Hardcover: 112 pages
Publisher: Titan Books
Release Date: September 3, 2013

Our Score: 5 out of 5 stars

Who is Juan Ortiz? Juan Ortiz is an illustrator/designer for Disney and Warner Bros. and also a hardcore Trekkie. He had created artwork for each of the episodes from the “Star Trek: The Original Series”. The style of the work was nothing like anything fans have ever seen before and really represented a unique vision. Being a huge fan of “Star Trek” and of alternate poster art, I was immediately drawn to this book.

The first thing I honestly wanted to do with these posters was to rip them out and hang up each one on my wall, they are really that amazing. The book is comes in a large format ranking in at  14.4 x 10.3 x 0.7 inches, which is much bigger than the typical art book. The paper stock is solid and very study. The colors are gorgeous and very rish as well. I have to admit though this is expected since the amazing Titan Books is behind this release. They put so much love into there books.

Official Premise: What if every Star Trek: The Original Series episode was a movie event? What would the movie poster look like? This was the inspiration to develop a one-of-a-kind set of images for the series that launched a franchise. Artist Juan Ortiz has created unique retro-style art with the look of a 60s movie poster, comic book, pulp novel cover or advertisement, one each for all 80 episodes.

Before we get to the posters themselves there is a nice background on Juan Ortiz. The posters are each scaled to around 11×17 inches and are broken up by each of the three seasons, including the unaired pilot “The Cage”. When you reach the end of the book, the fun doesn’t end since there is a brief description of each episode and where Juan got his inspiration for each poster. If you are a hardcore fan of “Star Trek”, I cannot stress how amazing this book is and is a must have!

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