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 (eg 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.