Books, Design and Culture
I posted this documentary short about baker Chad Robertson, co-founder of Tartine Bakery & Café in San Francisco and author of Tartine Bread, on the Raincoast Books blog yesterday. I wanted to share it here as well because there is definitely something inspiring about Chad’s process, enthusiasm, and dedication to his craft. And he’s a surfer…
(Disclosure: Tartine Bread is published by Chronicle Books, who are distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books)
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I’m currently in Vancouver for the Raincoast Books sales conference and I was very happy to see Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig by Steven Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen on Chronicle Books Fall 2010 list. Design:Related has a short piece about the book here.
(Obvious disclosure: Born Modern will be distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books).
Lessons from Allen Lane — James Bridle on what publishers can learn from the founder of Penguin Books:
Amazon is an infrastructure company, Apple a technology and design company, Google is a search engine. None of them will be able to replicate publishers’ passion for books.
But to take advantage of this, publishers need to look… beyond one-size-fits-all definitions of our product, and beyond publicity-grabbing, short-term management and imprint rearrangements that have nothing to do with readers’ demands.
In short, we need to walk down that platform with Allen Lane again, take a long look at where and how people are reading, and help them to find a good book.
Unknown — The Guardian discusses lost and undiscovered literature, including the work Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky:
Eventually Krzhizhanovsky succumbed to despair and stopped writing, choosing instead to compose his narratives in his skull. Even those works that were written down, however, feel internal, hermetic. Clearly Krzhizhanovsky expected to remain unread, and so could be as dense and complex as he wished. But if the stories are not always easy to follow, they’re always worth the effort.
The marvelous NYRB recently published Memories of the Future, a collection Krzhizhanovsky’s short stories (and it’s very good).
48 Hour Magazine — Can you write, photograph, illustrate, design, edit, and ship a magazine in two days? An interesting team of people want to find out…
A Lack of Ideas — at The New York Times book blog Paper Cuts tries to define what makes a cliché:
“Words can be overused, or used thoughtlessly…but a cliché… is a phrase that substitutes for a thought. The dictionary calls it ‘an expression or idea that has become trite.’ Individual words don’t become trite — except in a context…”
[W]hat ought to concern readers, writers and editors most is not necessarily the overused words (we all get sick of “lyrical” and “compelling” and their ilk), but rather the intellectual laziness their overuse might signal.
And finally…
200 Year Kalendar — A beautiful letterpress calendar produced by German design studio Sonner, Vallée u. Partner, seen at Studio on Fire’s blog Beast Pieces (via ISO50).
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Jason Godfrey’s Bibliographic: 100 Classic Graphic Design Books was one of my favourite books last year.
Published by Laurence King in the UK, the book is distributed by Raincoast in Canada (Chronicle Books in the US) and so I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to ask Jason a few questions about the book and get some lovely spreads from the publisher.
My original plan was to run the interview on the (recently redesigned) Raincoast website, but ultimately the interview was a little too long for our blog there, so I’ve decided to republish the whole unexpurgated monster here.
As I mentioned on in my original Raincoast blog post, Bibliographic is not history of graphic design or even a definitive list of 100 books on the subject — it’s more of an essential design book shopping list — and basically I really wanted to know why Jason decided to make the book, how he decided on the final selections, and what exactly was informing his decisions.
We corresponded by email…
What was the inspiration for Bibliographic?
There was a need for a illustrated resource of graphic design publishing. Many books and articles contained very good reading lists but I had always found them rather detached without the visual reference. The best graphic design books are important artefacts in the history of graphic design and many of the books are becoming difficult to find and access.
What criteria did you use to select the books?
The only rule that was applied throughout was that the books had to be visually interesting, there seemed little point in photographing books that would not look appealing on the page. That the books were designed by some of the cream of graphic design this turned out not to be a big problem but it did mean that some important critical analyses had to be put to one side.
Did you ask other designers for their recommendations?
Whilst mentioning to other designers that I was working on Biblographic I found that they were very keen to promote their own favourite titles and it did help extend the list and also confirm the importance of books that had already been chosen. As part of the book I asked about 20 designers to give me a list of 10 books from their own library, this was an idea borrowed from the designer Tony Brook at Spin who had earlier published a newspaper Spin 2 with reading lists from 50 designers.
Was it difficult to decide which recent books to include?
To gauge which newly published titles will come to be seen part of the canon of graphic design books is not the easiest of tasks. Looking back from a distance helps to establish the relevant trends and lends more perspective to any choices. Regardless the best books all seem to be those that can tell a good story. One recent book, Mark Holt and Hamish Muir’s 8vo: On the Outside (Lars Müller Publishers, 2005) did just this, exploring the process of the studio’s work and the effect of technological on this process and output in a thoroughly engaging book.
There are photographs of every book included in Bibliographic. Were any of the books difficult to locate?
A number of the books are from my own collection others I borrowed from friends and colleagues. Some were so precious I had to send the photographer Nick Turner over to where the their owner could keep them in sight at all times. A handful of books I could only locate at the St Bride Printing Library who were kind enough to facilitate their shooting.
Were there any books you wanted to include but couldn’t access?
Early in the process of compiling my list of 100 books I decided that many of the early examples of early 20th Century graphic design books particularly those of the typographic revolutions of the 1920s and 1930s would be too difficult to access as they are now the preserve of museums. It would all have taken me too far from my premise that Bibliographic could be representative of a working studio library.
Which books came close to being in the 100, but didn’t quite make the final cut?
Tough choices had to made particularly where an author or series of books were successful. Alan Fletcher is very well represented in the book and I couldn’t justify putting in the excellent Identity Kits: A Pictorial Survey of Visual Signals (Studio Vista, 1971) a book he co-authored with Germano Facetti the then art director at Penguin Books. Another book that came very close was Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographical Style (Hartley & Marks, 1992) which I felt lacked the visual punch necessary for Bibliographic.
Of the books you don’t own in Bibliographic, is there one that you particularly covet?
The 1926 Deberny & Peignot, Specimen Général would be a welcome addition to my library. There was copy in a studio I worked for and I was forever using it as a point of reference or just to admire the elegant section dividers designed by Maximilien Vox.
When did you start collecting design books?
There are a few books that I have from when I was a student but I didn’t seriously start collecting until I had been working professionally for a few years and made a decision to stop buying records in favour of what I found to be the more fulfilling occupation of acquiring books.
What is on your ‘to buy’ list?
New Graphic Design in Revolutionary Russia (Lund Humphries, 1972) by Szymon Bojko is a book I am trying to locate. I have yet to see a copy but it was designed by Herbert Spencer the author and designer of Pioneers of Modern Typography (Lund Humphries, 1969) and so I am expecting an interesting book.
In the introduction to Bibliographic, Steven Heller says he has a separate apartment for his books! How extensive is your library?
Mine is not as nearly extensive as Steven’s although it does take up a large part of my studio and I am in need of extra shelving at the moment. It also needs saying that in common with most designers my collection also contains many books on the arts, photography and others of general interest.
What is your own design background?
I graduated from the Royal College of Art in London and worked for a number of years at Pentagram Design, then moved to New York and Austin, Texas before returning to London and setting up my own studio.
What were the challenges of designing a book about design books?
After the efforts of writing Bibliographic the actual design was very enjoyable. Because each spread contains only one book the challenge was in arranging the images to create an enjoyable flow throughout the book. The spreads from the photographed books are so rich with graphic imagery that I was worried that the pages would look like graphic wallpaper if all the images were kept in pro, but changing the scale of the spreads helped to create changing areas of white space and focus the readers attention on one spread at a time.
Could you describe your process for designing books?
Knowing the amount of copy and image count for an average page is the start for any book design project. From this point I can begin to form a grid (invariably using the guides in Derek Birdsall’s excellent Notes on Book Design (Yale University Press, 2004), chose the typefaces, text and headline styles, treatment of imagery and other pagination. This will go to form sample spreads that are approved by the publisher before advancing on the book proper.
What does the future hold for book design?
The evolution of book design seems to move at a glacial pace, its foundations are based on a template centuries old with some 20th Century tweaks by the likes of Lászlo Moholy-Nagy and Gyorgy Kepes. Advances in printing technology have and will allow for more flexibility in how pages are laid out and inevitably there will be new fashions and styles to accommodate but little wholesale change.
Thanks Jason!
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Is this a new cover for J G Ballard’s Crash? HarperCollins Canada have a release date of November 2nd, so I guess so. And I would assume The design/illustration is by the immensely talented David Wardle who did the previous covers in this series… Can anyone confirm?
In any case, I think the Warhol/Banksy Elizabeth Taylor illustration fits the book pretty well and it’s a nice counterpart to the Marilyn Monroe on the cover of Atrocity Exhibition.
Moving the Needle — Literary agent Nathan Bransford on the challenges facing publishers in the HuffPo:
One of the big recent surprises in the industry… is a newfound difficulty making a splash… with adult nonfiction. Now, to get an idea of what a huge problem… this is, bear in mind that for many years adult nonfiction was the bread and butter workhorse of the industry. Fiction, except for very very established authors, has always been regarded as something of a crapshoot. Nonfiction, on the other hand, was a source of relative stability, and… healthy margins.
Not so much anymore. Everything is difficult to break out.
Artists’ eBooks — a new project from James Bridle and booktwo.org (now, James, if you could only get my bkkeepr badge work properly…)
I Don’t Know Why — UnderConsideration‘s FPO (For Print Only) looks at the quirky and deliciously creepy There Was An Old Lady by Jeremy Holmes, published by Chronicle Books (and — full disclosure alert — distributed by Raincoast in Canada)
And finally…
The (slightly bonkers) illustrator and musician mcbess has a new book (and vinyl record!) called Malevolent Melody coming out from Nobrow:
(If you haven’t seen the insane mcbess/The Dead Pirates Dirty Melody/Wood animated video, you can find that here if you are so inclined).
Update: Thanks to Deanna McFadden of the Tragic Right Hip and HarperCollins Canada for confirming with her UK counterparts that the Ballard cover was designed by David Wardle.
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Picador Paperback have posted their fall catalogue to Facebook. Apparently they also did this with their spring list too . Needless to say, I think this is a great idea. Is any one else doing it? (via Arthur’s Design)
Control — An interview with Alan Rapp, former senior editor of art, design, and photography at Chronicle Books and the new Associate Director of Hey, Hot Shot!:
for all the possible flaws in the trade publishing model, one thing I always liked about it is the collaborative process. It defies the auteur model; the author is almost never the sole creator. I suppose that this could sound like the ex-editor making a case for the value of his role in an industry that is really undergoing massive and fundamental changes, but I stand by the principle: all content benefits from editing. The author, whether a verbal or visual one, is almost always too involved with the material to see how it can be best adapted to another form. And the design and production processes are also critical to making the best book possible; one thing [that] I think is in danger of getting lost in self-publishing is the production potential. The physical aspects of books make important, and often subliminal, effects on the reader, but we are getting a much more homogenized offering through the current self-publishing models.
Final Crisis — A short Q & A with Chip Kidd about designing comic book covers at the NY TImes‘ ‘The Moment’ blog.
And finally, thinking of comics, Will Kane (The World of Kane) recently posted some mind-blowing pop-art pages from French comic “La Vie Privée de Dyane” drawn by Michel Quarez, published in 1968 (pictured below). Also check out Will’s post on Quarez’s 1967 Mod Love.
