We enter petrol stations, make our purchases and leave, without stopping to consider the creative and technical skill that has gone into the genesis of these modern-day icons. Minale's latest book not only provides us with a compendium of recent petrol station design including all the leading international names (e.g. Shell, Texaco) from the USA to the Middle East to Russia as well as the designers who created each project. It also focuses our minds on the power of branding and illustrates the way in which design can affect us subliminally and alter our buying decisions. And it raises essential questions about the future. In the new millennium, will the architecture and design of today's filling stations become as talked about as those landmarks of other ages-the great power stations, the deco cinemas from the golden age of film or the warehouses of our glorious manufacturing past?

Brings together for the first time a collection of some of those landmarks that we see everyday and forces us to see them as a whole - a rich design source relating to an industry which has had no recognition until now.

An essential book for anyone interested in design, marketing or retail

Minale Tattersfield is one of the leading identity design consultants with offices throughout the world