The Bomb — Alison Forner‘s cover design for Stephen M. Younger’s history of nuclear weapons (Ecco June 2009), seen at Book Covers Anonymous.
Has the computer democratised design? — Designer Peter Saville (perhaps best known for his iconic designs for Factory Records) at D&AD President’s Lecture earlier this month (above). More interesting snippets from the talk are available here (via The Strange Attractor).
Reminder — Writer Charlie Stross on why there isn’t a tipjar on his blog (via Times Emit):
If I put a Paypal tipjar on this blog to take conscience money from folks who’ve downloaded a (cough) unauthorized ebook or two, the money would come to me, not to the publisher. And without the publisher those books wouldn’t exist: wouldn’t have been commissioned, wouldn’t have been edited, wouldn’t have been corrected and marketed and sold in whatever form filtered onto the unauthorized ebook market. (Yes, they commission books, and pay authors for them up-front — a vital part of the process, because most of us can’t afford to take a year to write a book on spec and then hope somebody liked it enough to buy it…)
“We publish books and give them away – free” — Concord Free Press (via Scott Pack):
All 1,500 copies of our first free book, Give and Take, are circulating through the world—from New England to New Zealand, Soho to Slovakia. Our readers are making voluntary donations to charities or people in need. We ask them (nicely, of course) to give, then pass the book on, so that every time it changes hands, it generates more contributions.