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Q & A with Alistair Hall, We Made This

I first came across the London-based (and wonderfully-named) design studio We Made This by way of founder Alistair Hall’s prodigious collections of ephemera and found type on Flickr. The chances are I found these either via Ace Jet 170, a fellow designer and collector (and cyclist) who I interviewed last week, or Alistair’s page on Ffffound. It wasn’t until later than I discovered that We Made This also designed book covers and had actually worked with David Pearson on several covers for Penguin’s Great Ideas series.

More recently, We Made This has come to the attention of the literary community for the stylish and witty designs for the Ministry of Stories, and its fantastical shop front Hoxton Street Monster Supplies. The bold, flat typographic designs for the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies store are, of course, characteristic of the work produced by We Made This — taking inspiration from the best of British post-war design and Alistair’s love of printed vintage ephemera to produce something sharp, modern and irreverent but also, somehow, local and warm.

Alistair and I chatted by email.

When did you first become interested in design?

I did art at A-level, and loved it, and the artists I gravitated towards tended to have a fairly graphic sensibility – Jasper Johns, Richard Long, Jenny Holzer, David Hockney. Anything with a bit of typography caught my eye. But I didn’t realise that graphic design existed as a separate discipline, and certainly not as a career. It was never really talked about. So I studied Art History and English at Leeds University, then worked as a production assistant on TV commercials for a year or so. While I was working out what to do next, I was vaguely thinking about moving into films, so I read the BFI book Inside Stories: Diaries of British Film-makers at Work. In the book, the producer Julie Baines talks about going to see the proofs of the poster for her film. It was like a lightbulb went on in my head – “Ah, that’s what I want to do. Make posters.” So in 1999 I went to Central Saint Martins to do the BA Graphics course, and adored it – particularly when it came to the physical making of stuff – screenprinting, letterpress, etching, bookbinding, and photography (this was before digital cameras had really got going).

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Is the joy of actually making things yourself integral to what you do?

Hell yes. It’s like therapy. In fact, it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Running a blog, as I’m sure you know, is hugely satisfying – it generates fascinating conversations with people from across the design spectrum, and from across the planet. But crikey it eats up a lot of time! And having run the We Made This blog for coming up on six years, I think this year I’m going focus on it less, and use some of the time I was spending on the blog to make some actual physical stuff.

Why did you decide to start your own agency? What were you doing before?

When I left college I was lucky enough to get a place at the design studio CDT, which was then being run by the lovely Mike Dempsey (the D of CDT). The studio did a fine mix of branding, print, editorial and environmental work – I spent a year and a half there, and learnt a vast amount. My favourite job there was the work we did for the Royal College of Art’s Summer Shows in 2003, for which I wrote and set a chunk of copy that we used on invitations, leaflets, signage and the catalogue. It was fairly tongue in cheek, but a lot of the students hated it. At around that time NESTA launched a short residential course that helped young creatives to set up businesses, and I got a place on that (as did a few of the students who’d been at the Royal College – there was a distincly uncomfortable silence once I owned up to that bit of work). The course was brilliant, and as soon as it finished, I handed in my resignation and set up We Made This.

What interests you about ephemera?

Well, I guess there’s a few things. There’s that feeling that you’re discovering something that no-one else necessarily knows about – these things aren’t design classics by big name designers, they’re little bits and bobs created by anonymous designers. I suppose I must feel some affinity with that… They’re enormously evocative of different periods, so there’s something there about the joy of wallowing in the past – that can be as much about the language used on them as on the design itself. Then there’s the fact that a lot of it is quite utilitarian, almost un-designed, with function dictating form, which always has an inherent beauty and honesty. Mainly though, I think all designers are just visual magpies – it’s in our DNA to get woefully overexcited about old bits of paper and old signs, and to want to take them home to feather our nests.

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Do you collect specific kinds of things?

No, I’m way too undisciplined for that. I guess I do loosely focus on design from around the 1890s through to the 1950s. I tend to find most of my stuff at the regular Ephemera Society fairs in London – they’re brilliant sales that happen every few months, where ephemera traders get together and sell their wares: old luggage labels, theatre playbills, invoices, maps, all that kind of thing.

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Where else do you look for inspiration?

Well, I think the most important part of the design process is research, and you never really know where that might lead you. If I was being unecessarily fanciful, I’d say it’s a bit like being a private detective – the brief is the case, and the solution to the case is out there somewhere. You just have to know where to look, who to interrogate. But you don’t have to wear a trenchcoat.

I might start with some online research but I try to move to something physical as quickly as possible. Living in London we’re blessed with a vast wealth of fantastic libraries, museums and galleries, and I often find myself heading to them to find specific visual references. The City of London Libraries’ online catalogue is often one of my first points of call – of the libraries it covers, the St Bride Library is particularly lovely, though at the time of writing, it’s open by appointment only.

I have a Ffffound page too, which is useful as an online scrapbook for keeping track of any visual bits online that catch my eye. Though we were discussing in the studio the other day whether one of the dangers of the web is that we’re all looking at the same stuff at the same time. A particular style can become omnipresent very quickly – it’s called the world wide web for a good reason – and it’s possible that regional design styles are rather fading away as a result, and everything is becoming a tad homogeneous. The web is great, but you know, approach with caution.

What was it like working with David Pearson on the Great Ideas series?

Hideous. A really unpleasant experience. Although he comes across as one of the loveliest people you could hope to meet, what a lot of people don’t realise about Dave is that he has borderline psychopathic tendencies that often manifest themselves in verbal, and occasionally physical, abuse.

Actually, it was annoyingly pleasurable. I think he was very skilled at knowing which covers each of us (the series was designed by David himself, Phil Baines, Catherine Dixon and me) would work well on. He pretty much let us get on with it, providing just a few gentle nudges here and there. He has a very thoughtful approach to design – in fact, I think he’d make an incredible art director. (If he can get a grip on the psychopathy, obviously.) Of course, the brief was just a gift. And after the books started selling by the bucketload, I think Penguin were happy to let most of the cover designs sail through.

Do you often get asked to design book covers?

Not as often as I’d like. Designing books is generally a real pleasure, particularly as you have such a concrete thing at the end of it. (Well, you have done historically… more on that below.) But I’m very lucky that I get to work on such a breadth of different types of work – though I do sometimes worry that I’m a jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe I should start focusing a bit more…

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How did you get involved in the Ministry of Stories?

That all came about after I saw the film of Dave Eggers’ inspiring TED talk about his brilliant 826 literacy project. I posted the film on our blog, and asked if anyone was going to be setting up something similar in London. On the back of that post, a few of us got together and chatted loosely about how a London version of 826 might work. Things pootled along gently for a while, until Lucy Macnab and Ben Payne (the brilliant project directors) secured some funding, at the same time as Nick Hornby, who had been thinking about setting up something similar himself, joined the gang.

The Ministry follows the model of the 826 centres: a writing centre where kids aged 8-18 can get one-to-one tuition with professional writers and other volunteers; with the centres being housed behind fantastical shop fronts designed to fire the kids’ imaginations (and generate income for the writing centres). In our case, the shop is Hoxton Street Monster Supplies – Purveyor of Quality Goods for Monsters of Every Kind.

The identity for the Ministry itself grew out of an extensive series of branding workshops where hundreds of names for the project were mulled over. Lots of Post-It notes later, we eventually gravitated towards a group of names that had a slightly tongue-in-cheek air of authority about them. While that was going on, I happened to stumble upon my grandmother’s old post-war ration book, featuring the Ministry of Food logo, which seemed like the right sort of name and look for the project. There was also a fantastic exhibition about the Ministry of Food on at the Imperial War Museum, which was great for visual research.

What was the design process like for the Hoxton Street Monster Supplies project?

Well, it was just a real pleasure really. A stupid amount of work, far more than I’d anticipated, but a real pleasure.

The story is that the shop was established in 1818, and ever since then has served the daily needs of London’s extensive monster community. It stocks a whole range of essential products for monsters. You can pick from a whole range of Tinned Fears (each of which comes with a short story from authors including Nick Hornby and Zadie Smith), a selection of Human Preserves, bars of impacted earwax, jars of daylight for vampires with S.A.D.; and a variety of other really rather fine goods.

I was given a fairly free rein by Lucy and Ben, which made things much easier, and right from the start I had a really clear idea of how it was all going to look. Of course, we had the brilliant work of the various 826 stores to use as inspiration, particularly the gorgeous Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co., designed by Sam Potts.

It was quite a full-on process though. For example, for the products: it meant coming up with the initial ideas for what they might be, working out how to produce them, naming them, writing the copy for the packaging, designing the packaging, and then actually putting the products together in the days before we opened. Fortunately we had a fantastic team of incredibly talented volunteers working on that whole process.

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Have you read any interesting books lately?

I’ve just finished George Orwell’s 1984, which rather ridiculously I’d not read before, and which I loved. I’ve been going through a stage of reading some classic literature, so I’ve also recently read DraculaTreasure Island and Huckleberry Finn.  From a more contemporary point of view, I’ve also just read Alan Hollinghurst’s The Stranger’s Child, which was great – not quite up there with some of his other stuff, but still great. I definitely lean toward fiction when it comes to reading.

Do you have a  favourite book?

The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, which is a kid’s book written by Neil Gaiman, and illustrated by Dave McKean, (who also did the brilliant Batman graphic novel, Arkham Asylum). It’s hilarious and beautiful.

As far as Really Serious Grown Up Fiction goes, The Master and Margarita blew me away when I read it. In fact, I think it might be about time to read it again.

On the more populist side, I love Iain M Banks’ science fiction novels, particularly the Culture novels, such as Consider Phlebas.

What does the future hold for books and print design?

Hmm. Just let me get this crystal ball powered up…

Ah, heck, I’m no expert. I’m not sure what’s going to happen next, but as someone who designs covers now and again, I have been having a think about what’s going on right now with books and print. (And it is perhaps useful here to make the distinction between literature, which is the content, and books, which are the containers of that content.) I think for literature, it’s an amazing time, with a whole raft of new ways for readers to experience the written (or typed) word. For books, obviously things are looking a bit more rocky. But I don’t think it’s all gloom and doom.

(I should point out up front that I don’t own a Kindle, nor an iPad, so I’m still effectively a luddite. I don’t have anything against either of those devices really. I already own a Mac, a Macbook Pro, and an iPhone, so I just couldn’t bring myself to rush out and grab another bit of Apple’s admittedly lovely kit.)

I think the two fundamental recent changes are: where you get your literature from, and what form that literature takes.

To set the scene, if we look just a few years back, it used to be that where you bought literature from was bookshops; or you’d borrow it from a library, or from friends and family. It would come in either hardback or paperback form – you could get audio books too, but mainly your literature came in the form of printed ink on paper pages, bound between two covers and a spine, and with some sort of hopefully appealing cover design.

So, to look at where you now buy your literature. More than likely you might go to one of the big three: Amazon, Apple, or Google; or possibly directly to a publisher’s site. You might still go along to a bookshop, where you can browse books on tables and shelves, picking them up, feeling them, touching them, even smelling them. But that’s going to become more and more unlikely.

So, you’re going to buy your chunk of literature. You might still choose to buy it in the form of a printed book. But you’re looking increasingly likely to download it, perhaps to your e-reader, with its monochrome e-ink screen and reflowable text; or perhaps to a shiny tablet, where it might be enhanced with moving images and audio. Or perhaps you’ll download it to your smartphone, either as an e-book, or as a dedicated app.

So if that’s where we’re at, how’s it working for us right now?

If we look at the first bit, the where, then I think the big problem is that no-one has really come up with anything online that beats the experience of browsing books in a shop. Obviously Amazon has all the bells and whistles of recommendations, similar items, suggestions based on your browsing history and so on, but good lord, it’s so cluttered! Apple’s iTunes is cleaner, but is still hardly an enjoyable experience. And publishers’ websites are almost universally hideous. (Canongate are perhaps the exception there, with their canongate.tv site, which at least feels like it’s heading in the right direction.)

Online retail of literature seems to still be stuck at the stage of apologetically showing you little thumbnails of book covers, as if admitting that these rectangles of pixels are just substitutes, and that the actual physical book cover will make up for it. But hey, we might never get that actual physical book cover now! So why not show us big beautiful images for the literature we’re thinking of buying. Maybe if you thought of these images as the equivalent of film posters, then you’d start to think in a different way? This should all be done so much better.

Looking at the second bit, the form our literature takes, how’s that doing?

It seems that the days of the paperback are numbered. E-readers and tablets and smartphones have dug its grave, and they’re just standing around waiting for the coffin to arrive.

The book cover, which as well as a sales tool, used to be a visual catalyst for our memories of a piece of literature, well, that’s been sidelined on e-books. As I’ve already mentioned, when you’re buying online, you’re limited to a small thumbnail. Once downloaded, sometimes you glimpse it on your device as the story first begins, but often you don’t. That seems like a lost opportunity. Surely we can do better? I saw that John Gall recently posted a possible triptych cover for an iPad edition of a book, which is an interesting new idea (unfortunately, it got rejected).

Meanwhile, the outside of your device always stays the same – after all, the device is more a library than it is a book. So the pleasure of seeing what book someone was reading, perhaps on the beach or on the tube, that’s gone. (Of course, if you want to surreptitiously read porn in public, these are happy times for you!)

Also, now that literature has become partially disconnected from its package, it starts to exist more in your head. In some ways, that could be a good thing – more pure somehow, your experience of literature no longer so influenced by the marketing team and the cover designer. But equally, an additional texture (literally and metaphorically) has been removed.

I think e-readers are pretty good, but not yet brilliant, particularly when it comes to page transitions, which are still a grimly disruptive moment in your reading, far more disruptive than turning a physical page. And you’d be more upset if you lost one than if you lost an actual book; and as everyone likes to point out, you can’t really read them in the bath. (But how many people exactly are still taking baths? And of those, how many are reading in their baths? Have they tried reading in bed? It’s far better.)

Tablets like the iPad or the Kindle Fire are great for enhanced experiences, like Faber and Touch Press’s version of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Wasetland, but less good for reading lengthy texts. Just too damn bright. Apps like Enhanced Editions’ version of Nick Cave’s The Death of Bunny Munro are interesting too, bringing lots of extra mulitmedia stuff to the party. But apparently rather costly to develop.

(If I may digress slightly, Apple’s new iBooks Author app looks quite exciting as a cheap way for designers to self-publish work. Yes it means you’re tied to the iPad rather than any other device, but still… shiny!)

From a more philosophical point of view, as Jonathan Franzen recently pointed out, there’s something distinctly unsettling about the the fact that screen based text lacks permanence. If it’s not printed, it may well change – just as in Orwell’s Ministry of Truth in 1984, where historical documents were constantly revised to suit the Party’s needs. Of course, that’s an issue for all digital media. Similarly, you can’t really lend an e-book to a friend. And can you pass on your library of e-books to your children? What will happen to all that digital content in the future?

So, overall it feels like there’s yet some work to be done with e-books before they really live up to their potential. And obviously it means that the satisfaction of producing a concrete ‘thing’ is no longer there, which is a shame. But they’re here to stay, so it’s pointless for us as designers to stick our heads in the sand while lamenting the death of the book. Better to look to the exciting new possibilities.

And, anyway, while e-books are doing their thing, they’ve also thrown fresh light on physical books – we’ve started re-examining why we love their physical form, we’ve started to treasure them again. It’s not a new area (the Folio Society has been creating beautiful high-end editions of books for years), but it’s obviously now an expanding area. You can see this with Penguin’s hardback F.Scott Fitzgeralds, and their Clothbound Classics series, as well as the gorgeous Fine Editions from White’s Books. For book designers, that opens up lots of exciting possibilities.

Gosh, I rather rambled on there. I’m sure far wiser and more people than me will have a much clearer idea of where the industry might be going.

Thanks Alistair!

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Q & A with Richard Weston, Ace Jet 170

I don’t know exactly when I first discovered Ace Jet 170. It was a few years ago — at least four because I was reading it before I started The Casual Optimist. And it must have been recommended by someone (I Like? Noisy Decent Graphics?) because I don’t think I can have stumbled across it. But perhaps I did. Certainly, there was little reason for me to be interested in the blog of designer/writer living in Belfast at the time. And yet I started t0 follow Ace Jet 170 religiously. I still do, even as I’ve lost interest in many other well-known design blogs who ‘curate’ stuff.

Admittedly, I share some common interests with Richard Weston, the man behind Ace Jet 170 — Penguin paperbacks, printed ephemera, maps, found type and fatherhood, to name a few — but really it is the tone of the blog as much as  anything that keeps me coming back. “Unassuming” is probably the word for it, but somehow that undersells it. It’s personal, funny, idiosyncratic and occasionally little eccentric. It looks like it comes easily, although I expect it probably doesn’t.

Like Anne Ward at I Like, Richard seems to find everything interesting and yet never really tries to sell you anything. There is little shameless promotion. Just interesting things. And like I Like, Ace Jet 170 was one of the early inspirations for this blog — one of the few I hoped it would be like when it grew up. (It isn’t of course, but how could it be?)

Richard and I are now friends, but in a very modern way. We’ve never met or even spoken to each other (I still don’t know what he looks like), but we stay in what seems like a very ambling dialogue via Twitter, Instagram and Path. I do actually feel quite honoured to finally him on the blog talking at length. We chatted by email.

When did you start Ace Jet 170?

The middle of 2006.

How has the blog developed since then? Is it different from when you started?

I think it is different. At first, I was just trying to catalogue stuff I had stashed away all over the place. In retrospect, it’s not the best way to do that. But as time went by it became somewhere to write as well. It’s a little wordier than it used to be. Of course, it also gained interest from others and has helped me make surprising connections.

What’s your interest in ‘found type’?

Loads of typographers and graphic designers love ephemeral typography. And have done for decades. If you look through old copies of Typographica, there’s Fletcher/Forbes/Gill [Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes and Bob Gill], or Herbert Spencer or Robert Brownjohn with photos of found type.

If you have a love of letter forms, you’re drawn to them aren’t you? My blog, again, was just a useful place to put things. Quite quickly, other people started sending stuff in. That was probably the first kind of feedback I got. It was exciting to find out other people wanted to contribute. So it became an irregular slot on Fridays. Not every Friday. And then of course, I realised Flickr collates “crowd sourced” found type much better. And Flickr pools started springing up. Nothing to do with me. But they show how common the urge is.

In your personal photography you often seem to be looking for the beautiful in the mundane. Is that a conscious thing?

Like the found type thing, it is a compulsion. Something that’s been with me for years – long before I started recording it. I have pretty modest tastes and expectations. I guess I have a fairly humble background. So the little things mean a lot. But it’s an interesting world isn’t it? I mean visually. I reckon you could work down any street and take ten photos of interesting, everyday things. Instagram, of course, monopolises on that. It takes it to the next, natural level where we can all share stuff.

When did you start collecting vintage Penguin paperbacks?

When we lived in England, I found this Penguin Education book, in a box of junk outside a second-hand bookshop. The cover was designed by Derek Birdsall at Omnific. It’s so simple and perfect. He was already a bit of a hero of mine.

A little later, I picked up a Pelican also by Birdsall. It wasn’t in the common style, which was odd. It was less of a big idea like Juniors but beautiful. I was hooked. I soon got to know the Marber Grid that Pelican and Penguin books used through the 60s and into the 70s. It coincided with a glut of covers from emerging talents so you’d find covers by Fletcher, Forbes and Gill; loads by Germano Facetti and then Romek Marber himself; but also Milton Glaser, Massimo Vignelli, Alan Aldridge – all these guys who went on to become the leading lights of their generation. Finding covers credited to names you knew became pretty exciting. You could pick up a design by Abram Games for 50p. That’s amazing. But I also admired the system. The Marber Grid was beautifully constructed and it’s a testament to it that it was used so extensively. It just worked so damn well. And then there’s the whole Penguin business, Allen Lane’s brilliant idea. Inspiring. Oh and I like sets. Penguin do a great set. Always have done. Still do.

Do you look for certain designers or illustrators?

I generally prefer to pick up covers I like. If they’re by designers I recognise, all the better but it’s not essential. You get to know them after a while and that’s fun. You see a cover and you think, hey that looks like a Facetti. And you’re right!

With the Pelicans, I really like the ones that successfully represent the idea behind the book. Some do that more successfully than others. Occasionally the good ones aren’t the aesthetically pleasing ones, but they make a point really well.

With Penguins I can pass them by if I don’t like the illustration on the cover then go into a cold sweat if I find one with a Paul Hogarth cover.

David Gentleman’s covers for the Penguin Shakespeare series are amazing. And the Stephen Russ covers for The Penguin Poets; beautiful and clever within a very restricted format. Great design.

Are there any editions you particularly covet?

There’s a little booklet called Penguin Books, The Pictorial Cover, 1960-1980 by Evelyne Green that was published by Manchester Polytechnic in 1981. I really want a copy. Saw one on Amazon recently but it’s out of my price range. It’s a really low-key publication – typewritten text. It’s hardly a “book” but it’s unique. I harbour a fantasy that one day I’ll find one in the surplus box at a charity book shop and pick it up for 50p.

What else do you collect?

Blimey. So many things. Sometimes I think I collect collections. I have a stamp collection that I love but I’m not a proper stamp collector. A proper one would be horrified with how I store them. I have them on file cards in little Moleskine wallets. And they’re judged purely on looks. I don’t care about their value or country of origin. Actually, the cheaper the better and I think every country produces brilliant and bloody awful stamps designs.

I’ve got tons of books of course, stationery products (staplers, bulldog clips, typewriters), coffee pots, branded espresso cups, vintage light meters, you know, all sorts of nonsense. Some are really small collections.

What have you read recently?

I’m well into the Saul Bass book. Karen, my wife, keeps laughing at me. She says designers aren’t really supposed to read these books. We’re supposed to leave them lying around and look at the pictures every now and then but I love a monograph. It’s an amazing, if slightly cumbersome book. And it’s been a long time coming – I remember the Bass exhibition at the Design Museum in London, must have been around ten years ago. There was talk of a book after that.

By sharp contrast, we read 101 Things I learned in Architecture School, in the UX Belfast Book Club I go to. It’s short, snappy and really good. Interesting glimpse into the life of an architect and great to see universal principles that apply across disciplines.

And then I read From Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor. Have you read it? Has everyone? It’s brilliant. Really captures a less politically correct time.

Haven’t read much fiction for a good while. Lots of work related stuff. David Weinberger’s Everything is Miscellaneous was brilliant too.

What are a few of your favourite books?

Favourites are hard; so much to choose from. I have books that have had a major effect on me and my work. Ruari McLean’s first book on Tschichold and the ancient tomb by Vincent Steer, Printing Design and Layout really pushed me on as a young designer. And John R Biggs’ modestly titled Basic Typography.

Monographs! Like I said before: I love a monograph: Games, Sutnar, Huber, Aicher, Lustig, Schleger, Rand – amazing stuff. Then I like a marketing book too: anything by John Grant. Fiction-wise: trickier still. I’ve read lots by classics like Chandler and Deighton. Graham Greene.

What is the day job?

I work at a multidisciplinary design company called Thought Collective. It’s pretty new, although born out of two companies that came together, officially, at the beginning of 2011. One a “traditional” design studio and the other a web developer. So the company is evenly split now between cross media designers and those concerned with coded matters.

I claimed the rather grand job title of Head of Strategic Design. I write and design. Work out strategies and how to do stuff I’ve never done before. It’s really good.

Is there a thriving design community in Northern Ireland?

Yes. It’s a microcosm. Belfast in particular is an intensely populated, compact area. I think the Irish connection fuels the creativity of the region. So there’s some great things going on. There’s a significant web design/development community and loads of design companies. The degrees of separation seem fewer so it’s fairly easy to get to know other designers.

Are you still interested in print design?

Definitely, although I don’t do much. From where I’m sitting print feels more treasured than it was, say, ten years ago. There are loads of great books being published and things like letterpress are way more accessible than they used to be. I feel there’s a great focus on craft.

How do traditional ways of thinking about design apply to digital design?

For a spell, while I was acclimatising to working on more digital projects, I thought it was a major shift. But then it dawned on me that much of what I’d learned to date was still extremely relevant. There are universal design principals that transcend medium. And the parallels between the development of intelligent marketing activities offline and user experience focus online are striking.

I don’t know if you know the Claude C Hopkins book Scientific Advertising? He wrote it just after he retired. Around 1923. Hopkins has been described as the ‘Father of Modern Advertising’ and [David] Ogilvy said something like, “you shouldn’t work in advertising until you’ve read this book seven times” – like he would. It’s antiquated in many ways. But also, with a little imagination you can discern from it techniques and approaches that are still very active today. Especially online. I’m talking about strategic marketing scenarios. If nothing else, it illustrates how principals cross over mediums. And can be timeless.

And then there’s all that fundamental human stuff (hierarchy of needs etc) that has nothing to do with the specific channels by which messages are delivered.

So, “traditional ways of thinking” apply well. What’s new is some of the language used and the complex mechanical ways in which ideas are expressed and realised.

What does the future hold for books?

I think the near future is looking pretty healthy. It feels like we’re in some kind of print renaissance for crafted, tactile print-based experiences. There’s some great stuff being made.

But I do think that one day, once we’ve all got used to reading on devices and the experience has become much more rich and fulfilling, that print may well vanish. If it does, it’ll be when we’re happy for it to die; when other forms provide what we want and need. Perhaps in the future we’ll think of digital files as artifacts when their content delivers a sensory experience we can currently only guess at.

Or perhaps we’ll stop caring about the artifact like we care less about the Album or CD sleeve; when we treasure the content more that the object. I’d be very happy if that doesn’t happen in my life time.

Is that a bit of a depressing point to finish on? It’s not meant to be. Rich digital experiences are exciting. Who knows what the book of the future will be like. You can be pretty sure it’ll exceed expectations.

Thanks Richard!

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Kurt Weidemann 1922-2011 | GestaltenTV

GestaltenTV have posted an 16-minute interview with influential German typographer and graphic designer Kurt Weidemann who died at the age of 88 on March 31st, 2011:

Weidemann helped form the graphic identities companies such as Mercedes-Benz and Porsche, as well as designing books for the Büchergilde Gutenberg and the publishing houses Ullstein, Propyläen, Ernst Klett and Thieme.

Jürgen Siebert has written an obituary of Weidemann for FontFeed:

Weidemann was a disputatious designer. He disseminated his knowledge in numerous specialized books and countless presentations and talks. Legendary are his 10 Thesen zur Typografie, published in 1994 in the book Wo der Buchstabe das Wort führt. Ansichten über Schrift und Typografie. This resulted in his appeal: “God protect us from the vagrant creativity of the typomaniacs.” Weidemann never could reconcile with the immense variety of different typefaces. During a discussion at Swiss Mediaforum in 2010 he literally said: “There are ten, maybe fifteen very good typefaces, which I can agree with at least. There are 30,000 on the market, of which 29,990 can be sunk in the Pacific Ocean without causing any cultural damage.”

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Michael Wolff: Obsessively Interested In Everything

As a follow up to Monday’s post Is This A Good Time?, here’s designer Michael Wolff discussing curiousity, appreciation and imagination as part of Intel’s Visual Life series:

(via Quipsologies)

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Is This a Good Time?

Is This A Good Time? is a series of interesting video interviews on topics as varied sustainable design, social anthropology, formal semantics, collaborations, and intersections. I’ve just started working my way through them, but I very much enjoyed designer Michael Wolff’s thoughts on creativity:

When you’re speaking you can’t be thinking and when you’re thinking you can’t be speaking.

If anyone has any further information on the series (the website is a bit cryptic), please let me know.

(via Eightface)

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Chip Kidd: A Drinker and a Crier

Chip Kidd, book designer and associate art director at A.A. Knopf, profiled at Stodgy is Sexy:

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Q & A with David Drummond, Salamander Hill Design

“I haven’t changed my mind about modernism from the first day I ever did it…. It means integrity; it means honesty; it means the absence of sentimentality and the absence of nostalgia; it means simplicity; it means clarity. That’s what modernism means to me…” — Paul Rand

There is something of a Modernist tendency in the design of David Drummond. It is not in a strict adherence to the grid or Accidentz Grotesk (or anything quite so obvious), but rather in the thought and purpose underlying his work. There is always a clarity and assurance to the concept and composition. There is never erroneous detail or ornament. Form most definitely follows function. To describe David’s work this way, however, is something of an injustice. His designs are far wittier (and much less pedantic) than one thinks Modernism ought to be.  But then again, whoever said Modernism couldn’t be funny or irreverent? Not Paul Rand.

Perhaps it is simply better to say that David’s designs are the epitome of good ideas well executed. Their apparent effortlessness make it easy to underestimate his work. It is only when one tries to imagine how the cover could have looked otherwise that you truly realise his originality and what he has rejected or removed to get to his apparently simple designs. It should not be a surprise that Paul Rand is inspiration. After all, it was Rand who said:

“Simplicity is not the goal. It is the by-product of a good idea and modest expectations.”

Somehow that seems to get to the core of David’s work.

I am absolutely thrilled to post this interview. David’s work has received awards from AIGA, Communication Arts Magazine and Print Magazine and he is one of the finest book cover designers working today.

We corresponded by email.

How did you get into book design?
I was working in Montreal for an ad agency when I got a call from McGill-Queen’s University Press.  On the recommendation of my sister, whose book they were publishing, they were interested in looking at my portfolio. That was the catalyst to start breaking out on my own.

When did you open your own studio?
I opened Salamander Hill Design in 2001

Approximately how many publishers do you work with?
I just checked the folder on my computer titled “Presses” and there are about 40 in there. Some are very active and some not at all. It kind of goes up down. Some of them are self published authors as well. There are maybe about 10 that I have longstanding relationships with that feed me with work pretty regularly.

How many covers do you work a season?
Hard to say really. I have so many that are all at varying stages of production. Right now, if I count the books on my list, there are about 30. What I have come to realize is that it is really important for me to always have a lot of work on the go. It helps to keep me in the zone where I can do my best work. I really do think the creative faculty is like a muscle that you have to keep flexing.

You were previously an art director for a marketing and communications company. Has this informed your book cover design?
This is going to sound funny but I wouldn’t really describe myself as a book cover designer. My approach to cover design is pretty much the same that I apply to any area of visual communication. I see the project as solving a visual problem, whether it is a book cover, illustration, logo or package design. Even though I have always entered work in book cover design competitions through the years, it has also been equally important for me to enter competitions like Communication Arts Design Annual to have the work judged in the larger context of graphic design as a whole.

Do you still do corporate identity work and packaging design?
Lately I have been getting back into identity work more and more. I guess I must have been missing it. Last year I decided to branch out and do some illustration work for magazines and that has been really exciting. The tight deadlines and fast turn-arounds force you to make decisions faster. I really hope to develop that more this year. Just last week someone e-mailed me about doing a poster for film festival in Italy. It always amazes me when a job like that lands in your in-box out of the blue.

Could you describe your book cover design process?
In a nutshell: present the cover brief to yourself as a problem that has to be solved. Then I try and bombard my brain with images from all kinds of sources to see if I can trigger something. For me it is about finding the visual hook. If that doesn’t work right away I tend to put it aside and take my dog Beau for a walk. I am sure all the local farmers that pass me on the road in their pick-up trucks must wonder about me and my dog walking far from home in all kinds of weather but I would honestly say it is an important part of my creative process.

I tend to like showing one concept whenever possible. I would say this is true for all of my design work. It shows the client that you have taken a stand and believe in the solution. That doesn’t mean you haven’t produced many different concepts along the way. I am sort of brutally self critical and if something isn’t working or if I am forcing it too much I put it aside and start again. I work with a lot of different clients with different protocols and some of them require that multiple concepts be presented up front. When that is the case I still try and make a strong case for the one I believe in.

I think the key to doing your best work is having a great client relationship. My brother is a poet and he compares publishing a book of poems to launching a pebble off the Grand Canyon and waiting for the sound of it hitting the bottom to come back to you. That is a bit the way I feel when I start working for a new client when you aren’t familiar with their approval process. Sometimes you launch your design out there and then — silence. I have a relationship with most of my clients where I know they want to be surprised by a solution. It does set the bar high each time but I need that challenge.

My wife works as a horse groom for a big show barn and gets up at 5:00 in the morning to get ready for work. Consequently I start my day around the same time. It’s funny — I live in farm country and basically keep farmer’s hours. The lights are also on in the neighbouring barns when I start my day. I focus on idea generation in those early hours and leave the more mundane production stuff to later in the day when my energy is flagging.  The Tron, Inception, Dark Knight soundtracks come in handy at that point to keep me going.

What are your favourite books to work on?
Hard to say really. For the nonfiction stuff I love working on covers that have a great title that presents the subject in a new way. That really tends to help get the ball rolling.

What are the most challenging?
Books on the economy/Wall Street, Canadian Federalism, the Supreme Court, Native Peoples. I say this because I have done so many of them and each time you have to find a new way of presenting it. So far I have always managed to find a new take on it. I keep going back to the well and so far it hasn’t gone dry.

Do you see any current trends in book design?
Not a big fan of trends. Whenever I have been asked to judge design work for competitions the work that always grabs you are the ones that present a strong concept with a clean and simple execution. I think that is the key to producing work that is timeless.

Where do you look for inspiration, and who are some of your design heroes?
I look for inspiration pretty much everywhere. Paul Rand is a big design hero of mine because he kept on creating right to the end. I pretty much knew early on in my career that, because I’m such an oddball, the path of becoming creative director in a big agency was not really an option — not much of a schmoozer.

For me it has always been about the work.

Who else do you think is doing interesting work right now?
So many designers really. I would probably choose designers outside of the book design world like Montreal design firm Paprika — their work never ceases to surprise me.

What does the future hold for book cover design?
I truly feel privileged to get up in the morning and find a new design brief for a cover design in my in-box. Doing this type of work is a perfect fit for me and I hope to continue doing it for as long as it lasts.

And lastly… You (somewhat famously) live in a rural municipality in Quebec with a population of less than 500 people. What can you see from your studio window?
I live in a big rambling farmhouse built in 1825 on about 140 acres of land in Elgin, Quebec. The back fence line is the American border. Our farm sits at the base of the Adirondacks just where the Chateauguay Valley begins. My office is on the second floor with a view out the back. The view is always changing. Depending on the time of the year there are sheep, cows, horses, wild turkeys, deer, and an assortment of barn cats outside my window.

Wonderful! Thanks David.

David’s work can be seen at his blog and at the website for Salamander Hill Design.

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Q & A with John Gall

John Gall is Vice President and Art Director for Vintage/Anchor Books, an instructor at the School of Visual Arts, and the author Sayonara Home Run! The Art of the Japanese Baseball Card.

Previously Art Director at Grove/Atlantic, Gall has been interviewed about his work by Step Inside Design, Design Bureau, and Barnes & Noble (video). He garnered even wider attention in 2009 when he commissioned a roster of high-profile designers — including Rodrigo Corral, Carin Goldberg, Chip Kidd, Paul Sahre, Megan Wilson and Duncan Hannah —  to redesign twenty-one Vladimir Nabokov book covers within the confines of specimen boxes (read more about the designs at Print Magazine).

I have wanted to interview John for a long time, but as he talked about book design extensively elsewhere and regular readers are more than likely familiar with his work already, I was waiting for the right subject. It was his colleague Peter Mendelsund, who suggested that rather than discuss his book covers, I should ask  John about his collages. John Gall makes collages? Yes, indeed he does. And, needless to say, they are very good.

I met John in Toronto in December last year, and we corresponded by email.

When did you first start making collages?

It’s something that I’ve been doing sporadically since forever. And when I say sporadic I mean, years or decades between doing anything.

Do you create them digitally or by hand?

All hand done. One of the reasons I do this is to get away from the computer, drop the design think and work with the hands. Its kind of liberating to not have the ability to resize things on the fly. I sometimes use a digital camera to keep track of the permutations since my brain no longer can.

Can you give me a sense of their size?

8 x 10 on up to 18 x 24

How do you chose your titles?

The titles come from things I may be thinking about, or reading, or songs I may be listening to at the time I am making them. Then I make an anagram. It now takes me a lot of time to decipher the original source and many times I cannot. Strangely, when I posted “Hot Elves,” I got a ton of hits, which made me briefly consider naming everything after comic-nerd fetishes.

Who are your artistic influences and where do you look for inspiration?

I like the same old dead people as everyone else: Kurt Schwitters, Marianne Brandt, Georges Hugnet, Rauschenberg, John Chamberlain (not dead yet!), etc. People working today who make me incredibly jealous: Fred Free, Mark Lazenby, John Stezaker, James Gallagher, Lou Beach and family, Wangechi Mutu, Clara Mata, Robert Pollard, Nicole Natri, Paul Butler, Charles Wilkin and a bunch of people I’ve met on Flickr who’s real names I do not know.

Not sure how influential any of these folks are but they do inspire me to get off my ass and get to work.

Is creating a collage a similar process to designing a cover?

Yes and no. In both cases you are moving things around on a page until they look “right”. For me, when I am doing the collage work I am eliminating the concept (and most of the time the typography) so it is reduced to forms on a page.

Graphic design is a total left brain/right brain thing. A combination of logical carefully considered thinking and intuitive personal expression. For the collage work I try to put the logical aside and exercise the intuitive muscle.

Has making collages informed your designs?

When I am stuck, I sometimes find myself thinking “What can’t I do on a book cover”? Its chance to make the wrong path and see where that leads. Force myself to make the wrong decisions. Trying to leave thoughts of what looks “good” out of the equation. Nearly impossible, but that is the goal. The hope was that these notebooks could fuel design ideas. Not so sure if that is still the case. They’ve become a thing unto their own.

Have you ever used one of your pieces in a cover?

I used them on a poster once. Attempted to use them on a skateboard design. A couple of people have tried to use them on book covers, to no avail.

Was creating a series of collages from recombined book covers cathartic?

Not really. More like, “hmmm…its 12:30 AM, I’ve spent all day working on book covers and now I’m tearing apart old covers to make new covers. Lo-ser”.

That said I’ve since started up this series again and will be posting them shortly. But I can only do these when I am away from work for a spell. Generally its like, “enough with the book covers already, is Food Jammers on yet?”.

Where do you gather your source materials from?

Most of what I work with comes in the daily mail: catalogs, magazines, etc. I intentionally try not to work with anything that is too vintage or too inherently beautiful—though I do break this rule all the time. My thinking is that all the great collage artists of the past used source material that was lying around in the trash or purchased at the local five and dime. Today we look at a Cornell piece or a Schwitters piece and marvel at the incredible printed material they had to work with. They were working with the Foodtown circulars and Bass Pro Shop catalogs of their day except, well, OK, more beautiful.

Do you still collect Japanese baseball cards?

The collecting has tapered of quite a bit since the book was published. I’m much more selective now. but if I see something particularly beautiful up for auction I’ll probably go for it. I’m not a super smart collector though. I tend to buy what I like and not what will be valuable.

Do you collect anything else?

I’m trying not to acquire to much stuff anymore and am getting ready to purge. I collect old snapshots, the occasional flashlight and I’ve recently acquired a hankering for old high school yearbooks. I’ve also been trading and collecting collage work.

Your collages are included in the recently released Graphic: Inside the Sketchbooks of the World’s Great Graphic Designers. How did that come about?

The author Steven Heller, asked me if I had anything that I’d want to contribute. I told him I keep two kinds of notebooks, one that is basically a to do list and idea book. The others are the collage notebooks. They were much more interested in those. By the way, its a beautiful book.

Untitled, James Gall (2008); Untitled, Owen Gall (2008)

You’ve collaborated with your kids on some collages. Can you tell me about ‘Dad’s Drawing Class’?

Kids are the best. The great thing about collage is that anybody can do it, but its hard to do well. Kids are naturals. They have no preconceived notions as to what looks good, just do what they like. So they are free to do whatever they want—that is, until they get old enough to become self conscious..

Dad’s Drawing Class is something I like to do with my kids while we are hanging out on vacation without cellphones and video games. We’ve done collage, some drawing exercises. I even had them drawing typographic forms one morning. My wife is also very creative and influential in this regard. She teaches a nature drawing program for children.

Where can we see your work next?

I had a couple pieces in a group show last year and some of my work will be in a book coming out next spring called “Cutters”. Showing this work is not something that I am actively pursuing. I’m not so convinced of its worthiness. I have a flickr stream, a typepad blog and if you find yourself wandering around in my attic any time soon, you will probably see some work.

Thanks John!

Images:

  1. The Eye by Vladimir Nabokov, designed by John Gall
  2. The Enchanter by Vladimir Nabokov, designed by Megan Wilson and Duncan Hannah
  3. The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov, designed by Rodrigo Corral
  4. Paper Souls, John Gall (2008)
  5. Less Bravos, John Gall (2008)
  6. Shack Wine, John Gall (2010)
  7. Yeast Grippe, John Gall (2009)
  8. Limeade Fans, John Gall (2009)
  9. Cover Combine #13, John Gall (2011)
  10. Cover Combine #8, John Gall (2011)
  11. Cover Combine #4, John Gall (2009)
  12. Amendable Boy, John Gall (2010)
  13. Spray Degree, John Gall (2010)
  14. Untitled, James Gall (2008)
  15. Untitled, Owen Gall (2008)
  16. Gas Diode Zoom, John Gall (2008)
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Q & A with Clare Skeats

Hugo Wilcken’s Colony (published in 2007 and mentioned previously here) is almost certainly the novel I’ve talked up most this year. The cover, something like a jaunty vintage travel poster to a malarial Heart of Darkness (nauseously appropriate for a postmodern novel about a French penal colony), was designed by London-based print designer Clare Skeats.

Specializing in book design and art direction, Clare has a a great eye for partnering distinctive typography with bold creative imagery. Her covers often seem to use elements from the past, but always feel dynamically contemporary.

I’m really happy to have had the opportunity talk to Clare about her work. We corresponded by email.

How did you get into book design?

After graduating in 97, I tried, and failed to get a job as a junior designer at Penguin. They did offer me work experience though — so I moved to London to do that, and basically never left.

Have you always run your own studio? Where were you previously?

No. I stayed at Penguin for 4 years (they did eventually employ me!), then during a brief period at Random House, an opportunity arose to work for UK clothing designer Margaret Howell. It was great to step away from books for a bit and be part of a completely different industry. I was involved in virtually all aspects of the company; from designing Fashion Week press invites to drawing up manufacturing specification manuals. During my time there I was also working freelance — so after two very busy years, I left Margaret Howell to become full-time freelance, which is where I am now.

Could you describe your design process?

I’m lucky in that a lot of my clients allow me to just read and then make all the suggestions. I work in a number of ways; completely independently, or collaboratively with an illustrator or photographer. If I decide that illustration is the most appropriate response, I spend time identifying the right style and finding relevant practitioners. I’ve worked with Kazuko Nomoto (aka Nomoco) a great deal, and I found her initially as I had Andy Warhol’s Vogue illustrations in my head for Lolita. I’ll suggest say 3 or 4 illustrators to the client, along with a rough idea of the brief and composition. I then refine the brief and collaborate with the chosen illustrator.

Whether I’m working on my own, or collaboratively, I spend a lot of time researching — it’s a process I’ve always loved. For Somebody to Love I had to research embalming as the book is about a transsexual mortician who falls in love with one of her, um… clients. I wanted the cover to reflect the surgical and beautifying themes so I started to research embalming tools which lead me to those 18th-Century engravings of surgical instruments. Also used to great effect on this Simian Mobile Disco record cover designed by Kate Moross:

I needed to commission illustrations of modern instruments but retain the engraving reference and I initially proposed a wood engraver to the client, but the idea scared them. So I had to find a vector illustrator who could approximate an engraving style. I found Fred van Deelen who did a brilliant job. What I loved about Kate’s record cover was the way the central black circle (or maybe its a die-cut?) was working as a device to hold the type. So I shamelessly adapted it to my own needs for my cover.

When I started working on Potty!, I read the author’s autobiography which lead to a fun afternoon poking around the posh country outfitters shops of St. James and Saville Row — I took lots of photos and produced a mood board which helped me to get the sample spreads and art direction approved. I teach on the foundation course at Central St Martins and I’m always banging on about research — mostly because I can’t understand why a student wouldn’t want to do it!

My client for Potty!, wanted an illustrative component to the design and I was wary at first as I think illustration can often look like a whimsical add-on in some cookbooks, which wouldn’t be appropriate at all with Clarissa. The book is about one pot cookery so I decided to make the pots the stars and commissioned scraper-board maestro Joe McLaren to produce them — there are 24 in total and this is my absolute favourite:

Do you prefer to use unconventional typography and hand-drawn lettering than more classic typefaces?

Not particularly — the enjoyment comes from finding the right type style for the job, and that could be making lettering out of cake decorations, or typesetting a whole book — each offers their own sense of fulfillment. Working with the wildly varying content of books offers wonderful opportunities to work with typefaces that wouldn’t normally get considered for most commercial print jobs. I hate snobbery in design — if Dom Casual is right for a job, go with it!

Do you ever create the type or letters yourself ?

I wouldn’t have the confidence to create digital type from scratch, its such a skill in itself — adapting existing fonts is about as far as I go. I’ve hand-drawn lettering quite a bit though — I like to use a dip pen and drawing ink which creates a really nice line. I used this for Lolita, Tom Bedlam and Just in Case, to name a few. Another Meg Rossoff cover I had rejected features lettering that I drew on damp paper to create a cloud-like effect when reversed-out of the sky.

I can’t walk past an art supply shop. The ‘STEINBECK’ stamp in Of Mice and Men comes courtesy of something called Fabfoam, which you’ll find next to the sequins and glitter in the ‘hobby craft’ section.

How do you approach designing a series of covers?

Find the longest combination of title and author, and then work backwards from there! If your design can accommodate One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn then you know you’re on to a good thing. I think a successful series style has enough consistency and rigour to be easily recognised but has enough flexibility within it to future-proof against unforeseen issues. If there are too many variables within a series style, it lacks identity — and if there are not enough, it looks dry and undynamic. The nice thing about designing the Vintage Classics series design was that I knew the images would be really diverse so I could make the rest of the cover quite restrained and structured.

What are your favourite books to work on?

Its always a thrill to get asked to do a classic. I did Animal Farm very early in my career at Penguin and I’ve always regarded it as a huge privilege — especially as I was so junior at the time. I recently had to re-do the artwork to fit the new Modern Classics grid, so I’m really honoured that it survived a series re-design!

I also like first-time authors (as there’s no baggage), and books about really odd subjects: invisible dogs, menopause, suicide, unicorns … bring it on. I’d like to do more books for young adults, but they usually get rejected!

What are the most challenging?

Without a doubt, it’s the BIG book. The one the publisher has paid huge sums for at Frankfurt as it’s ‘going to be the next … (insert name here)’. The amount of emphasis placed on the role that the jacket is expected to perform is enormous and yet if the book becomes a bestseller its widely regarded as being down to good writing and good reviews. But if it fails, its regarded as being the fault of the jacket. Its this widely-held belief that allows high street booksellers and supermarkets to assert so much influence on the design — so what should be an exciting job can turn into a fairly unrewarding experience for the designer.

Do you prefer working with illustrators or photographers? Or does it depend on the project?

I do enjoy the camaraderie on shoots — the Potty! shoot was great fun — but publishing cover budgets are usually such a feeble match for photographer’s fees that I find I’m constantly looking at ways to cut costs which just becomes a bit boring after a while. The preponderance of headless women on book covers is testament to the fact that there’s rarely budget for a model, hair or make-up. And yet, interestingly, the expectation from the publisher for a Merchant Ivory film still remains pretty high — even if the budget doesn’t.

I love the spontaneity of working with an illustrator — of making the most of their skills and seeing how they interpret a brief. When I saw the physical object that I commissioned from Helen Musselwhite on The Still Point, I gasped (in a good way)! Being able to hand-pick such talented people to work with is a huge privilege — it’s a part of my job that I will always love.

Do you see any recent trends in British book design?

Yes, I think production specs (particularly on hardbacks), have been steadily increasing in a bid to get the public excited about the physical objects again, so we’ve had a glut of cloth-and-foil, sprayed edges etc. There’s been a lot of patterns and a return to traditional typographic sensibilities, and a rediscovery of our British design heritage. Mid-century modern references are still enjoying a bit of a moment…

Where do you look for inspiration and who are some of your design heroes?

My earliest design hero was Charles Schultz. I was obsessed with Peanuts when I was a kid and copied the way that the characters wrote — I loved the way their handwriting appeared above their heads, I thought it was genius!

I was also a huge Roald Dahl fan and consequently grew up with the scratchy inky gorgeousness of Quentin Blake‘s illustrations.

No surprises here, but I greatly admire the work of designers like Saul Bass, Abram Games, Alan Fletcher, Alvin Lustig and Paul Rand — the wit and brevity of their work is so impressive. Slightly more decorative demi-gods include Eric Ravillious, Edward Bawden and Osbert Lancaster. Sorry for the lack of anyone female — or indeed, alive.

What does the future hold for book cover design?

Hopefully the impact of ebooks will be a positive; there’s a lot of books out there that really don’t deserve to see a printing press.

Thanks Clare!

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Gil Scott-Heron Redesigns by Stuart Bache

Born in Chicago, April 1, 1949, poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron is perhaps best known for the politically infused bluesy soul and proto-hip-hop he created with Brian Jackson in the early 1970’s.

Although recently troubled by drug addiction and in and out of prison for drug possession, an apparently resurgent Scott-Heron released his first studio album in 16 years, I’m New Here (XL Recordings), in February, and two of his novels — The Vulture (1970) and The Nigger Factory (1972) — were reissued (for a second time) by Canongate Books with new cover designs by talented UK designer Stuart Bache.

I recently talked to Stuart about Gil Scott-Heron and the redesign…

How did you get into book design?

I fell upon book cover design by shear luck. In late 2005, after a stint of travelling, I decided it was time to think about my career. I found, applied and was surprised (and ecstatic) to be given the job of Junior at Hodder & Stoughton and moved to London.

When did you discover the work of Gil Scott-Heron?

I first discovered Gil Scott-Heron way back in school. We had been reading and discussing To Kill a Mocking Bird in English Class and I remember taking a real interest in the subject, which my teacher at the time picked up on and loaned me both The Vulture and The Nigger Factory.

How did you come to design the covers of his books?

It was a great pleasure to be asked to design the covers for the reissues. I had already been doing some work for Canongate and so when the Art Director asked if I had time to come up with ideas for the reissues I jumped at the chance. It was a fairly short deadline, but I believe those to be the best kind, great for creativity (and a few extra grey hairs).

Could you describe your design process for the covers?

The brief asked for them to be fresh, streetwise, graphic and contemporary. I designed a few covers for each title, with different images and branding styles, which were then passed on to Canongate for their prefered direction.

The final The Vulture cover centred around John Lee (the young lad who is murdered) and the title cried out to be used in some sort of graphic function. The Nigger Factory relied heavily on an image that both showed and did justice to that moment in US history. It also needed a graphic so I added the stripes to represent the flag, but the use of red paint strokes shows the heat and anger involved too.

What is the typeface?

The typeface I used is Futura, probably light. I have a thing about Futura, Century Gothic and the like. It’s the perfect circles of the ‘O’ and ‘C’.

Are they a departure from your usual design work?

These covers stand out for me, especially compared to my usual style. I take a lot of pride in my work but I’m never usually proud of it — I always see something I could have done better. But the Gil Scott-Heron’s showed I could do something completely different…and in a short timescale too.

What are you working on currently?

At the moment I’m working on another title for Canongate called Super Cooperators and Aline Templeton’s new thriller Cradle to Grave for Hodder & Stoughton. This time of year tends to be quiet, too quiet really, but these are nice titles to be getting along with. Cradle to Grave gives me the opportunity to play with my homemade textures and brushes in Photoshop, and Super Cooperators is, once again, going to be something very different from the rest of portfolio.

Where do look for inspiration and who are some of your design heroes?

Ever since I’ve been freelance I have had a renewed enthusiasm for design, I notice everything and I’m hardly out of bookshops — I see books all the time that I think ‘I wish I’d designed that’. It really keeps you on your toes and gives you the incentive and the push to do better.

I owe a lot to Hodder & Stoughton, their Art Department has some of the best designers in the industry and I learned an awful lot during my time there — and if they had never given me the chance I wouldn’t be writing this now.

Thanks Stuart!

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What Is All This?

Fantagraphics Art Director Jacob Covey‘s first foray into designing for prose fiction is this cover for a 600-page collection of short stories by Stephen Dixon, What Is All This?

Incidently, Jacob also did a nice job colouring Gilbert Hernandez‘s cover art for Kristen Hersh‘s new memoir, Rat Girl. The design is by Jaya Miceli at Penguin Books:

You can read my interview with Mr. Covey here.

I colored Gilbert Hernandez’s cover art to Kristen Hersh’s new memoir, Rat Girl. Fairly easy job but it gives me an excuse to plug the book and the design work of Jaya Miceli over at Penguin Books.

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Q & A with Ferran López, Random House Mondadori

I came across the work of graphic designer Ferran López after stumbling on his wonderful book cover blog The Jacket Museum.

Based in Barcelona, and currently working at Random House Mondadori — the Spanish-language joint publishing and distribution venture between Random House and Italian publisher Mondadori — Ferran’s eye for typography and background in photography is evident in his sharp book cover designs.

Although I want to interview more designers who work outside of Canada, UK and US at The Casual Optimist, the opportunity doesn’t often present itself because of my almost total inability to speak any other languages. But when I noticed that Ferran publishes his blog in both English and Spanish, there was absolutely no excuse not to speak to him!

I’m really happy to be able to include Ferran’s answers in both English and Spanish in this interview, but I have also posted all the questions and answers in just Spanish for those who would prefer to read it that way.

And I do want to say a big thank you to Ferran for both his patience and for providing the translation…

How did you get into book design?

Merely by chance. Although my training is photography and I was a photographer for many years, more and more my jobs were getting closer to the world of graphic design. At the end of the year 2000 I was working as a freelance designer and moonlighting doing digital photography manipulation and retouching. Around this time I met Marta Borrell, the Art Director at Random House in Spain (before the joint-venture with Mondadori). She was looking for a graphic designer to work in-house on trade book cover design. Even though I had never tried book design, I was enthusiastic about the idea because I love books. Marta liked my portfolio and my enthusiasm. She took a chance on me and (I like to think) it turned out all right! We have been working together for a decade now.

Casi por casualidad. Mi formé como fotógrafo, aunque desde hace muchos años mi trabajo, por vocación, fue acercándose cada vez más al diseño gráfico. A finales de 2000 trabajaba como diseñador free-lance y en manipulación digital de fotografía. Fue entonces cuando conocí a Marta Borrell, la directora de arte de Random House en España (por aquel tiempo previo a la joint-venture con Mondadori) que estaba buscando un diseñador para la división de libros Trade. A pesar que nunca había trabajado con libros estaba entusiasmado con la idea, ¡me encantan los libros!. A Marta le gustó mi portfolio y mi entusiasmo.  Apostó por mi y creo que la cosa resultó bien. Llevamos ya una década trabajando juntos.

Briefly, could you tell me about working at Random House Mondadori?

It reminds me of a sequence from Billy Wilder‘s “One, Two, Three”. The pace is frantic and the procedures are complex at times, but, although it sounds like a cliché, it is impossible to think of a team of better professionals. Almost everyone in the workplace is young (even the CEO is younger than me!) and this translates into passion. There are 13 of us In the Art Department and sometimes we seem like family or better yet a clan. We suffer a lot, but always together! Just kidding! But at times, when someone is under a lot of pressure or creatively blocked, there is always someone to lend a hand, or at least have a coffee break with.

Se parece mucho a una secuencia de «Uno, Dos, Tres» de Billy Wilder. El ritmo es frenético, los procesos a menudo complicados pero, aunque suene a cliché, es imposible imaginar un equipo de mejores profesionales. Es una empresa joven (¡Hasta la Consejera Delegada es más joven que yo!) y creo que eso se traduce en entusiasmo.

En el departamento de diseño somos 13 personas, a veces parecemos una familia o incluso un clan. Sufrimos mucho, pero siempre juntos. Es broma; pero a veces cuando alguno de nosotros está bajo mucha presión o bloqueado siempre hay alguien con quien compartir el proceso, consultar o al menos con quien tomar un café.

What is your current role there?

At the moment, I am responsible for the Design of the Trade Commercial and the Paperback divisions. In the Paperback Division my job is basically coordination and support. As a designer, my job is mainly centered in book covers for Commercial Trade, bestsellers, novels and mass-market non-fiction for the “Plaza & Janés” and “Grijalbo” imprints.

Also, since its establishment in 2004, I’m also in charge of the “Caballo de Troya” imprint, an experiment: a small independent publisher within a huge publishing company.

Actualmente soy responsable de Diseño de las divisones Trade Comercial y Bolsillo. En la división de bolsillo mi función principalmente es estratégica y de apoyo. Como diseñador mi trabajo se centra en las cubiertas de los libros de Trade Comercial: best-seller, novelas y no ficción de carácter masivo, en los sellos Plaza & Janés y Grijalbo.

También, desde su fundación en 2004 me encargo de Caballo de Troya, casi un experimento: un pequeño sello independiente que vive dentro de un gran grupo editorial.

Approximately how many covers do you work on a season?

About 100 new books a year.

Unas cien novedades al año.

Could you describe your design process?

I don’t follow the same procedure with every book. Some times, I read the briefing and I start visualizing the cover, the message, the photo or the illustration that seems to fit the book. Other times, I need to read, comment, draw, write, web-surf, look out the window and make several trips to the coffee machine to obtain what I want to transmit visually. At times, nothing seems to work and then I begin creating an idea by a typographical approach to unblock myself.

No sigo el mismo proceso con todos los libros. A veces, tal como leo el briefing, empiezo a visualizar la portada, el mensaje, la fotografía o la ilustración que a mi parecer encaja. Otras veces necesito leer, comentar, dibujar, escribir, navegar, mirar por la ventana y hacer varios viajes a la cafetera para conseguir saber lo que quiero que visualmente transmita. En algunas ocasiones ningún método parece funcionar y entonces para desbloquear empiezo a creando la imagen desde la aplicación tipográfica.

What are your favourite books to work on?

Novels where I can’t help getting infatuated with one of its characters. Also books where I can give the cover a hidden meaning or a wicked twist. And finally, those low stream books with a small print-run where I can use daring images.

Aquellas novelas en los que me enamoro perdidamente de alguno de sus protagonistas (a veces es inevitable), los libros en los que se puede esconder una segunda lectura o un giro perverso en la portada y finalmente aquellos libros minoritarios con un corto tiraje que permiten utilizar imágenes más arriesgadas.

What are the most challenging?

Books with complex plots and/or multiple sub-plots. Those where the parties involved in the process of approval (editors, marketing staff, sales, etc.) have diverse ideas of what should the cover reflect. And off course, those books which the sales expectations are extremely high…The pressure is on!

Los libros con tramas laberínticas o con múltiples mensajes y subtramas. Aquellos en los que las distintas partes implicadas en el proceso de aprobación tienen visiones muy distintas de lo que debe comunicar la portada. Y por supuesto aquellos en los que las expectativas de venta son muy altas: The pressure is on!

When you’re working on translated books, do you look at the US or UK covers, or do you try to avoid them?

We always take the original cover into consideration. When a new book comes up, we review the original cover with its editor and the marketing department to see if it would work in Spain. With some authors, for instance, Stephen King or Terry Pratchett, we don’t even consider changing it — their fans would never forgive us. In any case, whether we use the original covers or not, they always help us as guide to which way we want to go.

German and Italian cover versions are always good reference.

An interesting example is the case of Ken Follet’s “World Without End”. We had both US and UK editions and I designed an adaptation combining the best elements of both. Now, we have the best of them all!

Siempre tenemos en cuenta la portada original. Cuando se presenta el libro valoramos en conjunto con edición y marketing si la portada puede funcionar o no en nuestro mercado. Con algunos autores, como Stephen King o Terry Pratchett ni siquiera nos planteamos el cambio, sus seguidores no nos lo perdonarían. En cualquier caso, utilicemos la portada original o no, siempre nos sirven de guía. Las ediciones alemanas e italianas también son dos buenos referentes.

Como caso curioso, para la edición española de «El mundo sin fin»  de Ken Follet compramos la portada estadounidense y la británica e hice una adaptación combinando lo mejor de ambas. ¡Ahora nuestra portada es la mejor!

Where do you look for inspiration and who are some of your design heroes?

Design books, movie and TV series imagery. Supermarket shelves and flea markets. Second hand book shops and record stores. Obviously on the Web (piece of cake!). Besides book cover design blogs, Ffffound!, But Does it Float, Grain Edit and Some Random Dude are among my favourites.

Spain’s very own Daniel Gil is perhaps responsible that I am working in this field. When it comes to contemporary designers there is a bunch of good ones: Rodrigo Corral, Henry Sene Yee, David Wardle, John Gall, Juan Pablo Cambariere, Peter Mendelsund, Darren Haggar…My list goes on…

En los libros, en el cine y en las series de televisión. En las estanterías del supermercado y en los mercadillos. En las tiendas de discos y libros de segunda mano. En Internet (¡es tan fácil!); además de los blogs de diseño editorial, Ffffound!, But Does it Float, Grain Edit y Some Random Dude son mis sitios favoritos.

El español Daniel Gil es quizás el principal responsable de que ahora mismo yo esté haciendo esto. En cuanto a los contemporáneos hay un buen grupo de excelentes diseñadores: Rodrigo Corral, Henry Sene Yee, David Wardle, John Gall, Juan Pablo Cambariere, Peter Mendelsund, Darren Haggar… Es imposible no dejarse alguno…

What does the future hold for book cover design?

Obviously, things in this field are going to change, but I cannot imagine how. It is completely unforeseeable. In any case, I think covers will always be a great vehicle to sell books, no matter what the medium is. We will just have to wait and see how it will affect our way of working, our tools and our approach.

Las cosas van a cambiar, de eso no me cabe duda, pero me cuesta imaginar como. Es imprevisible.

En cualquier caso creo que las portadas seguirán siendo un argumento excelente para vender libros, sea cual sea el soporte. Si esto es así habrá que ver como afectará a nuestra manera de trabajar, nuestras herramientas y nuestros procesos.

Thanks (gracias!) Ferran!

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