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Category: House Keeping

Riga Black Balsam

I’m sorry — there won’t be a round-up of fascinating things from around the internet today. A lot of emails and late night with some of Canada’s most illustrious book designers is largely to blame. Take my advice, if a book designer offers to buy you a drink, the sensible thing is to say “no.” Pictured above are shots of Riga Black Balsam. The less you know about those the better. Trust me.

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Raincoast Spring Books

I was out west for the Raincoast Books spring 2012 sales conference last week. Sadly I didn’t get to see much of Vancouver or catch up with half the people I meant to, but I did get to hear about a lot of great new books including one about building (and losing) an android Philip K. Dick. It’s non-fiction. Thanks Henry Holt!

Henry Holt also have a new novel by Herta Mueller, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2009, called The Hunger Angel, and the latest from John Banville’s alter-ego Benjamin Black, Vengeance.

Picador are publishing a collected edition of Edward St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose trilogy in January — the first time they’ve all been properly available in the US I believe — to coincide with the US edition of his new book At Last (Farrar, Strauss & Giroux). They also have a collection of essays by Siri Hustvedt, Living, Thinking, Looking.

While there was nothing on the list quite of the magnitude of this season’s long-awaited Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design, there are a few art and design titles that caught my eye. Princeton Architectural Press are publishing Woodcut, a book of beautiful prints by artist Bryan Nash Gill (you have surely have seen his work even if you don’t recognise the name immediately) and Up on the Roof, a collection of photographs by Alex MacLean of New York’s hidden rooftop spaces. They are also publishing a long overdue paperback edition of Michael Bierut’s Seventy-Nine Short Essays on Design, and a paperback edition of the beautiful, if overlooked, Typography Sketchbooks by Steven Heller and Lita Talarico. Lawrence King are publishing a new book on the history of picture books, Children’s Picturebooks: The Art of Visual Storytelling by Martin Salisbury and Morag Styles,  and a new edition of The End of Print by David Carson.

On the comics side, Drawn & Quarterly are publishing Jerusalem: Chronicle from the Holy City, the latest travelogue from Guy Delisle who previous books include The Burma Chronicles, Pyongyang and Shenzhen. D+Q are also publishing a new edition of Chester Brown’s controversial, scatological and long out-of-print comic Ed The Happy Clown.

I’m also looking forward to finally seeing more of Baby’s in Black: Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart Sutcliffe, and The Beatles in Hamburg by Arne Bellstorf which is being published by First Second in April (I just wish they’d gone in a different direction with the typography on the cover — the German and UK edition’s  have lovely swooping hand-drawn lettering).

And lastly — because I am big nerd and recently finished his earlier book Batman Unmasked — I’m excited about Will Brooker’s Hunting the Dark Knight: Twenty-First Century Batmanwhich is being published by I. B. Tauris in July.

Now, back to the Toronto grindstone…

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Address Change

If you’re in the habit of sending me catalogues or review copies, it is time to update your address books — please drop me a line  and I will send you the details.

And, yes, sadly I am losing the view.

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Vancouver

I was in Vancouver last week discussing the new titles from Raincoast Books this fall. It was a great week and there are lots of amazing new books coming down the pipe — not least of which is the MASSIVE Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design by Pat Kirkham and Jennifer Bass published by Laurence King (it looks incredible!) — but I am now really behind on just about everything else and life really caught up with me today. Suffice to say that posting around here might be even more erratic than usual for the next little while. Normal service (whatever that might be) will be back at some point. In meantime, here a few grainy (and rainy!) shots I took of Vancouver…

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Two

The Casual Optimist turns two today. Hardly a major milestone by all accounts, but I did want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported the blog over the last couple of years.

The Casual Optimist is still here because of all of the people who have told me to me stick with it. I genuinely appreciate all the people who have given me pep talks and lent technical assistance; the designers who have given me the benefit of the doubt and agreed to be interviewed; the folks who have reached out via email, Twitter and Facebook; and, of course, the countless bloggers and journalists who keep me in material.  Hopefully you all know who you are…

Lastly, it is also my wedding anniversary this week and I can’t thank  I. A. A. enough for her continued patience and understanding over the last eight years.  I don’t say that enough.

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Permanent Beta

Blogging is a learning experience. At least it is for me. Every day I discover a new way to make things better and I tinker with things. I don’t usually mention all the minor changes I make, but I’ve recently made three significant changes to the blog that I wanted to draw your attention to:

  1. Permalinks:  For reasons really too tedious to get into, I have changed the permalink structure of the blog. Theoretically anyone visiting here via an old link will be redirected to the new URL, but I have no faith in technology so I thought I’d better let you know about it. I’m sorry if I’ve broken anything important.
  2. Comment Guidelines:  I’ve not felt the need to have a comments policy before — and I’m still not 100% certain I really need one now — but I have found myself deleting more comments than usual recently and so this is an attempt to explain why I do and don’t post certain comments. The short version of the guidelines is “keep it constructive; don’t be a dick.” You can find the full version here.
  3. Twitter: I’ve been feeling self-conscious about repeatedly tweeting everything I blog, so I have created a dedicated Twitter feed for The Casual Optimist that will automatically update with links to new posts. I will occasionally post links to the blog from my personal twitter, but I plan to do that less and less.

Thanks for your patience.

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Typekit

Over the next few days (likely weeks/months) I’m going to be experimenting with Typekit to use a slab serif typeface for headlines on The Casual Optimist.

At the time of writing, you should be seeing the ‘logo’ and ‘tagline’ at the top of the page displayed in the beautiful Adelle by TypeTogether.

I would love some feedback on Typekit (is it intrusive?) and the typeface (is it an improvement?), so let me know what you think in the comments. Cheers.

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Always in Beta

I’ve been having a few nagging design problems with The Casual Optimist, and thanks to my friend Ehren, I’m hoping to address them over the next couple of days with a new wordpress theme.

I would like to apologise in advance if things temporarily go a bit wonky.

Always in beta right? Always in beta…

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