Blinders — Charles Burns, author of Black Hole and X’ed Out, interviewed at Full Stop:
I’ve never really – and this sounds stupid because I’m working in a commercial medium – but I’ve never thought about an audience, or written for a specific audience, per se. I’m just trying to pull together my ideas in the best possible way, and I’ve never tailored those ideas for a particular audience. I bet I could do a pretty good teenage vampire story, for example. It would have plenty of romance, and just the right amount of titillating sex, but I think I’d wind up out on the Ben Franklin Bridge looking down at that water and thinking it looked pretty good down there [laughs]. I’ve really tried to put blinders on and just tell my stories the best way I can.
Book designer Stefanie Posavec at 10 Answers.
And thanks to MobyLives for pointing me to this 2008 article from The FontFeed: Top Ten Typefaces Used by Book Design Winners.
A Step Behind Where They Needed To Be — Peter Osnos on what went wrong at Borders for The Atlantic:
Borders stores took on a generic quality as executives and investors lacked the knowledge and patience to address the chains’ mounting problems. I’m sure there is more to this story (especially in the financial and real estate areas) than I know, but what really hurt Borders from the perspective of a book person like me was that the chain was no longer in the hands of true book retailers… Whatever else Borders does in the months ahead, it needs to recover its belief that real book-selling is an art (with all the peculiarities that entails), as well as a viable business.
And finally…
A look inside Seasons, the new book by the amazing French illustrator Blexbolex, published by Enchanted Lion Books:
(via Printeresting)