by Dan on December 16, 2009
Eye, Eye! — The Creative Review looks at the vibrant work of printing studio/small press Nobrow.
It’s an Anagram! — Indigo’s e-book initiative Shortcovers has become ‘Kobo’. Much fuss has been made about the name (and the slightly iffy redesign), but what’s more interesting is that Kobo is being spun-off from its parent company in an attempt to expand its global reach… The intrepid Mark Bertils and PW have more on the international angle; Wired think Amazon should be worried; and The National Post have a good Q&A with Kobo CEO Michael Serbinis…
Collector’s Items — Vote for your favourite Nabokov cover from John Gall‘s set of individually commissioned redesigns for Vintage.
The Decade of Dirty Design — Steven Heller, author of Handwritten and New Vintage Type (to name just a couple) on the “anti-digital” Oughts (via Charles Brock):
With the increase of the D.I.Y. sensibility, with renewed emphasis on “making things from scratch,” designers were feeling a need to make physical (not virtual) contact with their materials and outcomes…
[Perhaps less "anti-digital" than "post-digital"? Any thoughts designers?]
And finally…
The Hitchcock Collection — a self-initiated project by London-based graphic designer Ryan Tym (via FormFiftyFive):
After recently purchasing a badly designed Alfred Hitchcock
DVD box set, I set to work on creating my own collection of
original covers. Each design features an iconic image related
to the film it represents and includes a bold typographic
title.
I would love to see Ryan design some book covers… Wouldn’t you?
by Dan on December 3, 2009
While The Wall Street Journal recently suggested that e-readers are more eight-track than iPod and Forrester Research predicted that B&N will steal market share from Amazon and Sony in 2010, Joe Wikert, General Manager & Publisher at O’Reilly Media, made the even bolder prediction that Amazon — in the face of stiff competition from other e-readers and multi-use devices like the iPhone — “will completely exit the Kindle hardware space within the next 3 years”.
Although predicting the future is a mug’s game (and Amazon are particularly adept at being at least 2 or 3 steps ahead of the pundits), I think that Joe — an early Kindle advocate — might actually be onto something and Amazon really might be prepared to let the device, if not the format or apps, die quietly.
Does this mean that Amazon made a mistake in launching their own e-reader?
I don’t think so.
If publishers had rushed to embrace the Kindle, Amazon would have completely pwned the distribution of e-books (and had publishers even further over the proverbial barrel).
But even though this hasn’t quite worked out, Amazon are still sitting pretty. The Kindle has undoubtedly increased the popularity of e-books and Amazon — the best known and largest online bookstore — is the natural beneficiary. Even if manufacturing the hardware becomes too much like hard work, Amazon will still sell a lot of e-books and the Kindle will surely have served its purpose as a beachhead…
Kindle and Shortcovers
And on the subject of the Kindle, it’s been interesting to see Indigo, Canada’s biggest book retailer, respond to Amazon launching their e-reader north of the border.
Joel Silver, President of Indigo, — who apparently reads on his Blackberry — discussed e-readers and e-books on Business News Network last week (there’s also an interesting follow up interview with the estimable Jason Epstein) and Michael Serbinis, President of Indigo’s e-book initiative Shortcovers, took a few (slightly uncharitable) pot-shots at the Kindle in a recent interview with The National Post.
But, as Shortcovers clearly demonstrates, Indigo have been preparing for the arrival of the Kindle for a while, and — if you have a spare hour — it worth listening to Michael Tamblyn, their VP of Content, Sales & Merchandising, re-enact his Tools of Change presentation Your Reading Life, Always With You to see where they are going…
So what do you think is the future of e-readers? Any thoughts?
