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Published October 27, 2010

Midweek Miscellany

Bespoke — Richard Weston, AKA Ace Jet 170, on the book designs for the soon-to-be-launched Bespoke Editions:

Bespoke Editions is a one-off edition press; offering beautiful custom-made classic books, printed on demand and hand-finished to order. Personalised and unique, each edition will be made using specially selected cover papers and finishes… The editions will be in a Demy format and the page layouts will be based on the Van de Graaf Canon. After a set of tests, we’ve settled on the beautiful Hoefler Text for the typesetting and each title page will feature a carefully chosen typographic ornament that has some relevance to the particular book.

All Programs Considered — Bill McKibben on the new public radio for The New York Review of Books (via the always astute Edward Nawotka at Publishing Perspectives):

[I]n one sense this is the perfect moment to be a young radiohead. It’s like 1960s and 1970s cinema, with auteurs rewriting the rules. New technology lets you make radio programs cheaply: Pro Tools sound-editing software has now replaced much of the equipment used in big, expensive studios. Listening is even cheaper: the iTunes store has thousands of podcasts… available for free download in a matter of seconds. “It’s a transformative and exciting moment, a huge revolution,” says Sue Schardt, executive director of the Association of Independents in Radio.

But there’s one problem, and that’s the economics of this new world. Radio is now cheap to make, true, but the people who make it still need to live. And it’s very hard to get paid anything at all…

Sounds awfully familiar…

The beautiful Ligature Loop and Stem poster at For Print Only:

Aside from being a purely creative outlet devoid of typical restrictions… one of the goals for anything produced under the Ligature, Loop & Stem moniker is that it educates as well as inspires. This piece scratched an itch for us in wanting to have a quick reference for letterform characteristics — in essence, so we can all speak the same language when talking about type.

A Pointy Tool — David Carr  talks to the founders of The Awl for The New York Times (via Kottke):

“My friends keep talking to me about how they want to start a Web site, but they need to get some backing, and I look at them and ask them what they are waiting for,” Mr. Sicha said. “All it takes is some WordPress and a lot of typing. Sure, I went broke trying to start it, it trashed my life and I work all the time, but other than that, it wasn’t that hard to figure out.”

And finally…

Tintin Gets Scalped — An annotated page from Charles Burn’s new graphic novel X’ed Out at New York Magazine (via Bookslut):

Nitnit’s name—and shock of hair—betray his origins. “Golden Books put out six of the Tintin books in English. This was before I could read, but I was looking at them very carefully. The books’ endpapers were filled with images from other Tintin stories that hadn’t been translated. I studied these endlessly. There was a little sentence on the back of each book that said, ‘Look for future titles.’ I kept looking but they never came.”

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Published October 22, 2010

From My Desk…

I’ve mention Kate Donnelly’s blog a couple of times here previously, but now you can take a look at my office space on From The Desks Of… should you be so inclined.

Other (more interesting) recent contributors to From The Desk Of… include book designers Peter Mendelsund and Coralie Bickford-Smith, and New Yorker critic Alex Ross. I’m honoured to be in their esteemed company.

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Published September 21, 2010

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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Published August 16, 2010

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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Published July 16, 2010

Something for the Weekend

The Trouble With Amazon — Colin Robinson, co-publisher at OR Books (so perhaps not entirely neutral), on the internet retailer for The Nation:

The accumulated effect of Amazon’s pricing policy, its massive volume and its metric-based recommendations system is, in fact, to diminish real choice for the consumer. Though the overall number of titles published each year has risen sharply, the under-resourcing of mid-list books is producing a pattern that joins an enormously attenuated tail (a tiny number of customers buying from a huge range of titles) to a Brobdingnagian head (an increasing number of purchasers buying the same few lead titles), with less and less in between.

And, on a not unrelated note…

What’s Wrong With Music Business — A fascinating  interview with Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records, at Wired. I’m usually really skeptical about comparisons between the music industry and book publishing, but there’s lots of good stuff here for book folks:

[T]he premise of technology being the great democratizer and allowing more artists to break through than before — actually, we’ve seen the opposite effect. Fewer artists are breaking than ever before, and fewer artists who are doing it themselves are breaking through than ever before. Back in the early ’80s, when the cellphone was first invented, there were more artists breaking on their own, with no technology, than they are now, with technology. Why is that the case? And what can change to open the gates again, to allow artists to break through, whether on their own or with help?… [S]ocial networks have been a really big disappointment in terms of moving the needle in either exposure or sales in any meaningful way. There are a lot of myths in technology that everybody wants to believe, because everybody wants things to get better.

The Little Coincidence That Haunt Your Life — An interview with Alan Moore, author of From Hell, V for Vendetta, Watchmen et al,  at The Quietus:

One of the academics at this conference was saying that he was working on a book which was about Watchmen as a post-9/11 text. I can see what he means to a degree. One of my friends over there… said he’d been talking to some people on Ground Zero on September 12, 2001 and he was asking them if they were alright and what it had been like. Two of them, independently of each other, said that they were just waiting for the authorities to find a giant alien sticking half way out of a wall…

…There was that atmosphere of a cataclysmic event happening in New York, which I don’t think had been depicted previously… even in science fiction terms it was perhaps unimaginable! Yes, you do find that a lot of odd, little coincidences like that haunt your life.

Double Take — Tom McCarthy, author of Remainder, Tintin and the Secret of Literature, and C, discusses Hitchcock, his preoccupation with doubles and the exact meaning of “MacGuffin”, with BBC Radio 4’s The Film Programme (via Lee Rourke).

And finally…

Blogs are dying says The Economist. Oh no they’re not, says Cory Doctorow in The Guardian.

The real question, however, is whether Publishers Weekly starting their own blog, PWxyz, is evidence for the prosecution or the defense… (Sorry, that’s a little mean-spirited. It’s great PW have started a blog even if it feels a somewhat belated)…

Have a great weekend.

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Published March 17, 2010

Interview at Books@Torontoist

I was recently interviewed by James Grainger, book columnist and author of The Long Slide, as part of the Books@Torontoist Litblog Spotlight series. Assuming that you don’t have anything better to do, you can read it here.

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Published February 5, 2010

Something for the Weekend

Book wonks are still abuzz about the whole Amazon vs. Macmillan thing (see here previously) — who won, who didn’t, WTF?, and Rupert Murdoch’s shit-stirring — but I’m reliably informed by someone whose job is looking cool at the photocopier* that it is a really boring topic of conversation, so I’m going to move on…

The AIGA Design Archives — including the wonderful 50 Books/50 Covers — has been redesigned by Second Story, mercifully moving it away from its previous Flash interface so we can all link to it properly when we talk about it (pictured above: Brooklyn Modern designed by Projects Projects)

Elements of an Incendiary Blog Post — Painfully on the money (via Kottke):

This sentence contains the thesis of the blog post, a trite and obvious statement cast as a dazzling and controversial insight.

This sentence claims that there are many people who do not agree with the thesis of the blog post as expressed in the previous sentence. This sentence speculates as to the mental and ethical character of the people mentioned in the previous sentence. This sentence contains a link to the most egregiously ill-argued, intemperate, hateful and ridiculous example of such people the author could find.

Coverspy — “publishing nerds hit the subways, streets, parks & bars to find out what New Yorkers are reading…” A cover-oriented variation on Toronto’s Seen Reading (via SwissMiss).

Context and Connections — A great interview with illustrator, graphic designer and writer Frank Chimero:

There’s value to… knowing what your peers are working on, but it’s not a day-to-day concern. You’d probably get further checking a food blog every day, because it triangulates your interests and you’ll naturally come towards it wanting to make connections to what you’re doing and what you already know. Sure, you want your knowledge of the field to be deep, but it’s optimal to have your interests wide and varied. It’s makes your consumption more nourishing too, because all of a sudden you get context!

And finally…

Agent of Chaos — Bonkers and awesome, Werner Herzog (not really) reads Curious George:

(No really, it’s not Werner Herzog).

* Nic: I love you man.

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Published January 14, 2010

Goodbye BDR

Just like every other book blogger (and their mum),  I was sadden to read that Joseph Sullivan has decided to put his blog The Book Design Review on an “indefinite hiatus.”

The BDR has consistently been one of my favourite book blogs and was one of the first I added to my RSS reader.

It was a revelation to discover a blog that was about books and design. But more importantly The BDR made me realise that book blogs could be about the people who made books as well those that wrote them, and that enthusiasm might just be more interesting than snarkasm.

Nevertheless, I understand why Joe is taking a break (and I hope it is just a break, even though I don’t really think it is). Taking blogging seriously — taking the time to curate material and write about it well — can wear you down. There is (self-imposed) pressure to deliver, and when it doesn’t pay (and it doesn’t) it is hard to justify — especially if other creative projects fall by the wayside…

But, to be honest, I also feel kind of responsible. In the 5 years since Joe started The BDR a lot of other book design blogs like mine (even though I tell myself this isn’t really a book design blog) and sites like FaceOut Books and Pieratt‘s The Book Cover Archive have cropped up. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s also fucking irritating. Even though he’s always been very kind to me, I’m sure Joe must have thought WTF? on more than one occasion. Perhaps the Amazon poll for the best book cover of 2009 was the final straw?

All I really know though is that I will miss The BDR terribly, and that will try not to disappoint Joe’s regular readers who chose to haunt The Casual Optimist in its (hopefully temporary) absence.

Thanks again Joe. (And sorry).

(Pictured: The Great Perhaps, designed by Jamie Keenan, one The BDR‘s Favourite Book Covers of 2009)

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Published May 16, 2009

Something for the Weekend, May 15th, 2009

The Story of God — designer Arthur Cherry discusses his elegant design (which uses Marian Bantjes’ typeface Restraint to such brilliant effect) for the new edition of Michael Lodahlr’s book at FaceOut Books.

A Manifesto — Ted Genoways, the editor of Virginia Quarterly Review, on the future of university presses and journals:

University presidents need to see what articulate ambassadors they have in their journals and presses, what tangible, enduring records they present of the variety and vigor of their sponsoring institutions…[G]reat universities extend well beyond the edges of their campuses. They reach out to the larger world, they challenge and engage the public, and the most effective and enduring way of doing so remains the written word.

HarperCollins Wants to Be Your Friend — Leon Neyfakh looks at publishers and social media in the New York Observer. Ostensibly it’s about the ever so anodyne HarperStudio, but more interesting stuff comes from the other people interviewed:

“I don’t know if it’s a direct response to the fact that publishing is in a very uncertain period right now, or if it’s just an idea whose time has finally arrived, but people right now are really interested in experimenting,” said Ami Greko, a 29-year-old digital marketing manager at Macmillan. “There seems to be a real sense of, ‘Let’s get creative—nothing is set in stone yet, so let’s just try a whole bunch of stuff.’”

Das Buch vom Jazz — The German-language version of The Book of Jazz, illustrated by Cliff Roberts ,  found in a used-bookstore by Today’s Inspiration’s Leif Peng. The black and white illustrations are wonderful.

Moaning Eton-boys & Middle-Aged Hackettes — A great defense of blogging by Nina Power at Infinite Thøught  (via PD Smith on Twitter):

Print media suffers from a lack of space; certainly it is selective, but it is also exclusive — all the stories that don’t get told, the injustices that get covered-up. We may feel we can ‘trust’ print journalists more than bloggers… but the sheer quantity and variety of information online allows for the exposure and discussion of things that might otherwise get ignored.

And finally…

The Tyranny of Data — The New York Times on Douglas Bowman‘s decision to leave his position as top visual designer at Google, and the  limitations of crowd-sourcing design:

“Getting virtually real-time feedback from users is incredibly powerful,” said Debra Dunn, an associate professor at the Stanford Institute of Design. “But the feedback is not very rich in terms of the flavor, the texture and the nuance, which I think is a legitimate gripe among many designers.”

Adhering too rigidly to a design philosophy guided by “Web analytics,” Ms. Dunn said, “makes it very difficult to take bold leaps.”

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Published December 3, 2008

Don’t Panic

“The news heard ‘round the publishing world” is how Sarah Weinman described  the decision of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) — the US publisher of Philip Roth, Gunter Grass and José Saramago — to temporarily stop acquiring manuscripts.

Certainly the story has been ricocheting around the book blogs — and beyond — for the last week as everyone tried to figure out what the wider implications were.

GalleyCat, Sarah’s former stomping ground, quoted Janet Reid of FinePrint Literary Management :

“I think it’s smoke and mirrors,” she said of the announcement. “If they want something, they’re going to get it.” She pointed out that some HMH editors were known, even before yesterday’s freeze, for extremely judicious buying practices, and questioned how much less they could acquire (other than, of course, nothing)… “This is a whirlwind blown out of proportion to what it really is,” Reid continued, calling yesterday’s buzz a consequence of “the first huge economic downturn in the age of transparency.”

And, as the dust settled, HMH themselves tried to played things down.

According to The New York Times,  Jeremy Dickens, president of Education Media (HMH’s owners),  simply wanted HMH to be “extremely prudent about the way that we allocate our capital and where we make our investment decisions.” And HMH’s distinctly chipper-sounding spokesman Josef Rosenfeld described the new policy as “freeze-lite”  to the Associated Press:

“A headline about a freeze is very appealing, but in reality all we’re doing is taking a good, hard look at everything that comes in, much the way this company is watching all expenses and expenditures… It’s just a higher degree of scrutiny.”

Back at Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, Sarah cited literary agent Colleen Lindsay’s advice not to over-react (“publishers do this kind of thing all the time”), but sounded unconvinced:

“So no, we’re not in panic mode, not yet. But as long as… HMH’s parent company… continues to take a bath and the economy stays moribund (or worsens in the first quarter of ’09), the gloom feels rather warranted, even if it’s only a metaphorical sign of what may well come in other places.”

Personally, I was reserving judgment on the whole situation. But, I have to admit, Sarah was looking bloody prescient this afternoon when AP reported  HMH senior vp and publisher Becky Saletin had resigned, and The New York Observer began speculation that “the C.E.O. of HMH’s parent company, a man named Barry O’Callaghan whose core business in K-12 textbooks is not generating enough money to offset his massive debt, will sell the trade division and its illustrious backlist.”

Yikes.

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Published November 10, 2008

Monday Miscellany, Nov 10th, 2008

Think, study, then post: David D. Perlmutter, author of Blogwars, discusses slow blogging on the Oxford University Press blog:

“many of the bloggers I interviewed talked about the need to feed the blog that is, if you don’t put up 2 to 3 new posts a day you lose your audience. But fast anything, unless you’re competing in the Olympics, is not necessarily the road either to author or audience fulfillment.”

I love this idea, I’m just not very good at it or, perhaps, just a bit too good judging by the number of posts in my ‘drafts’ folder! Must try harder… (via the excellent ReadySteadyBlog by the way)

The business elite still love print according to a Folio magazine survey:

“Top American business executives spend a lot of time worrying about the volatile economic climate—and a lot of time consuming media, with a vast majority of them clinging to print.”

Ghosts in the House! Written and illustrated by Kazuno Kohara.
Ghosts in the House! Written and illustrated by Kazuno Kohara.

The Best Illustrated Children’s Books 2008:  a slide show of the New York Times picks (pictured).  The NYT‘s Children’s Books Special Issue is here.

A bitter-sweet love: writer Ellen Jordan discusses her coffee addiction in a essay in The Age:

“I wonder whether I’m afraid to write without coffee, afraid that every good sentence I’ve ever written came out of some mysterious alchemy of coffee and my mind. If I write with nothing, or with some pallid juice or herbal tea or decaf, will I discover that alone I have no talent?”

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