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Category: Design

Published September 7, 2009

Q & A with Alex Camlin, Da Capo Press

Even though I first noticed the chunky Eisner-esque cover design for Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics at The Book Design Review, it wasn’t until much, much later — when Ben Pieratt posted about the elegant redesign of The Harvard Review at  The Book Cover Archive blog back in June — that I registered that it was the work of designer Alex Camlin.

Both Reading Comics and The Harvard Review demonstrate Alex’s incredible attention to typography, his range of his influences, and the amazing diversity of his portfolio. Currently Creative Director for Da Capo Press, I caught with Alex via email earlier this month.

Briefly, could you tell me about Da Capo Press?

By most accounts, Da Capo started as a New York based trade paperback reprint house in 1975. At the time, many mid-to-large-sized publishers licensed paperback rights to reprint operations, rather than publishing their own paperbacks. In the beginning, Da Capo focused on licensing nonfiction, concentrating on music (jazz and blues/roots mostly), military history, and biographies. This continued through the late 90s, until Da Capo was purchased by the Perseus Books Group, who added the imprint to a growing portfolio that included Basic Books, Public Affairs and Running Press, among others. Da Capo was relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1999 to set up shop alongside another member of the Perseus group, the former trade division of Addison Wesley, renamed Perseus Publishing. Since then, Da Capo has evolved to publish its front list in hardcover and paperback originals, in many more categories. In the process, we managed to spin off a sister imprint—Lifelong Books—with a list focused on self help, childbirth, parenting, cooking, nutrition, and relationships. My first day on the job was also Da Capo’s first day in Cambridge, and we’ve been hacking away ever since on a shadowy fringe of the MIT campus. It will be 10 years in September!

How would you describe the role of Creative Director?

I’m basically just a glorified art director. My ‘staff’ has taken different forms over the years. Currently, it’s myself and one in-house art director who handle the entire list by either collaborating with freelance designers/photographers/illustrators, or engaging in some good old-fashioned DIY.

Approximately how many titles do you work on a season?

50-60 titles per season has been the norm for a while now. We publish two lists per year, Spring and Fall. Due to the changing market and current economic climate (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) our list is down-sizing a bit, and we will be closer to 90 titles per year by next Fall.

What are your favourites to work on?

I really enjoy working on books that are a bit off-beat or quirky. Recently, I’ve worked covers for a Karaoke memoir, a history of jetpacks, and a fake autobiography of Steve Jobs. I find that the books with moderate-to-low sales expectations (usually due to their niche subject matter) are the best to work on. Very few people bother to deconstruct what I’ve done, and the off-beat content usually leads to some interesting visuals.

What are the most challenging?

Believe it or not, it’s the parenting, pregnancy, and self-help books. Visually, these categories are so narrowly defined that it’s a real struggle to develop a unique look for a cover. Plus, the editors and authors who are publishing in these categories tend to favour literal interpretations, which can be quite limiting. So you will rarely ever see any of these in my portfolio, because the goal is usually to make them look the same as—but different than—all of the other books on the same subject. One up-side is that I’m intimately familiar with the range of pregnant-lady stock art that’s currently available, so if anyone out there needs some, just let me know!

How are final covers decided upon at Da Capo?

Initial comps are shown to and discussed by a ‘committee’ comprised of the publisher, marketing director, the book’s editor, and myself. We meet as needed, with greater frequency as the catalogue deadline approaches. I try to address all major concerns and present as many revisions as possible before the catalogue is printed. Covers are finalized somewhere between their appearance in the catalogue and their press date, after we field the reactions of the authors, our sales force and—in some cases—booksellers. Our overall process is probably a bit less formalized compared to other publishers.

Could you describe the design process for the Winnie and Wolf cover for Picador?

A.N. Wilson’s Winnie and Wolf is a historical fiction based on a relationship between Adolf Hitler and Winifred Wagner, the heiress of composer Richard Wagner. Their real-life friendship is well-documented, but the book builds on this to imagine a complicated love affair with Hitler’s rise to power and eventual demise as a backdrop. The themes of Wagner’s operas—primarily Parsifal—are referenced, and echo throughout the book. Picador wanted a new cover for their paperback edition, and I was hired by (the eminent and talented) Henry Yee to work on it. I knew immediately that the novel’s quirky-but-dark premise plus historical setting would offer a good range of possible imagery. I submitted four comps:

COMP 1: The first was my take on an interwar-era German poster, using a photograph of Winifred Wagner as the basis for the illustration. My only reasoning for this direction was that it sort of placed “Winnie” on a pedestal, which the narrator seems to do throughout the entire book. Mostly, it was just fun to create.

A series of propaganda photographs, by Adolf Hitler’s personal photographer, of the German dictator meeting ordinary Germans in 1932 and 1933 – around the time he came to power. (Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

COMP 2: I was ambivalent about this direction, mostly because I really wanted to avoid using Hitler’s image on the cover. The beautiful ornamental border comes from the cover to a playbill for a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal. The photograph is a piece of Nazi propaganda which is somewhere between symbolic and metaphoric representation of the love affair (the normally fierce and confident Winnie is observed as being girlish and entranced in the presence of Hitler). It also doubles as a literal representation of a scene near the end of the book. Ultimately, this direction was chosen for the final cover. I made a few adjustments and re-drew the title type for the final version. The photo was a black-and-white image which I tinted using some hand-tinted photos from an old Nazi book as a color guide.

COMP 3: I loved this one, mostly because of the way the illustration (a detail from an interwar-era festival poster) worked with the title. Also, in the book, Hitler is known to the Wagner children as “Uncle Wolf”, and spends a lot of time telling fairy tales and staging puppet shows for them. With the design, I was shooting for the look of a German children’s book from the 30s. Both direction and comp #1 were influenced by posters and other design featured in a great exhibition I saw several years ago at the RISD museum: Graphic Design In Germany 1890-1945, curated by Jeremy Aynsley.

COMP 4: The art depicts a scene in Wagner’s The Twilight of the Gods from a group of fantastic children’s book illustrations by Arthur Rackham. I thought that several themes from the book could be interpreted in this.

In the end, I was happy with comp #2 being selected. I guess it has the best of both worlds: fanciful Wagnerian themes—that are true to the story, coupled with Nazis—that sell books.

How did you become involved in the redesign of the Harvard Review?

The Review’s editor, Christina Thompson, asked me to speak to a class she was teaching at Harvard back in 2000 or 2001. She had recently been appointed editor of the Review and was planning on repackaging it, and agreed to let me submit some ideas for the cover. I started designing the covers at that time, and we finally had the opportunity to reconsider the entire package (cover and text) last year, for issue #35. It was great timing, because #35 featured the work of Kara Walker and Chuck Close (in addition to the usual selection of great writers)—not bad company.

Do you see any recent trends in book design?

Blogs by book cover designers like David Drummond, Kimberly Glyder, Henry Yee and The Design Works Group offer insight into the thought processes and mechanics involved in cover design, and I think this sort of journal-keeping is really validating for the profession. As for visual trends, I’m really enjoying the resurgence of hand-lettering on covers that has been happening for a while now. There’s something very pure, expressive and organic in handmade letterforms that can somehow be infused with style and attitude, but also timeless.

Who else do you think is doing interesting work right now?

Peter Mendelsund, Julia Hasting, Paul Buckley. Gray318 always does great work. Charlotte Strick’s design for FSG’s paperback edition of 2666 raises a bar (if not the bar)—other publishers should take note. One of the most inspiring covers I have seen lately is Carol Carson’s design for My Father’s Tears by John Updike. Peter Mendelsund discusses it here. It is deceptively simple, beautiful and timeless. Carson seems to have made a point of designing all-type jackets recently, which I totally admire. There is a purist inside of me that believes ALL covers should be all-type.

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

I read eye and baseline magazines regularly. The Book Cover Archive is also a great resource, it’s been fun watching it grow as a sort of visual database. As for design heroes: W. A. Dwiggins, Jan Tschichold, Alvin Lustig, Massin, Sister Corita Kent, Alexey Brodovitch, Virginia Lee Burton, Wim Crouwel, Buckminster Fuller, Karl Gerstner, Josef Albers, my mom…the list goes on, but that’s a good cross-section.

What does the future hold for book cover design?

I don’t know. For the most part, people have stopped asking me to “make sure the title can be read in that thumbnail image on Amazon”—probably because someone told them that a 3-D, 3G full-color latte-brewing Kindle is going to be the next big thing. Sadly, too many trade publishers—under pressure from mega-store retailers—are focused on ‘packaging’, and are largely concerned with making covers that fit a certain category, rather than those that offer true insight or interpretation of what’s between the covers. On the other hand, the industry is saturated with brilliant designers who flocked to publishing because of people like Chip Kidd, Louise Fili, John Gall, Paul Bacon, etc. This keeps the practice of cover design highly competitive, and we are all better because of the current standard. When you look at some of the amazing stuff that actually makes it to press in spite of the modern publishing process, it’s encouraging and quite inspirational and hints at a future full of possibilities.

Thanks Alex!

Next week: Coralie Bickford-Smith, Penguin Press

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Published September 3, 2009

Chris Ware’s Cover for Granta 108

Chris Ware’s cover design for Granta 108: Chicago:

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Published August 30, 2009

Q & A with Michel Vrana, Black Eye Design

Michel Vrana, AKA Black Eye Design, has been on my radar since we first crossed paths on Twitter in the run up to Book Camp Toronto earlier this year.

I had hoped to run into the Montreal-based designer in person at Book Camp, but unfortunately, in the dehydrating hustle of the day, I didn’t get chance to introduce myself.

Nevertheless, a few weeks after the event, I came across a series of reissued cowboy books from publisher Gibbs Smith in a Raincoast sales meeting. The witty retro cover designs — with their pop culture references and knowing wink to the distinctive letterpress work of the Hatch Show Print studio — stood out among the more traditional covers in the catalogue.

It turned out that they were designed by Michel.

Small world, I thought.

A little later I found out that Michel also designed covers for Casual Optimist favourite Drawn & Quarterly (also distributed by Raincoast for the record).

And then it seemed Michel’s work was everywhere. Or perhaps it just seemed that way. My love of letterpress, comics, vintage magazines, typography, ephemera and stuff certainly make me notice his work, which often seems to draw on these elements.

Although we still haven’t met in person, we’ve stayed in touch through the electronic wonder of Twitter and email over the past couple of months, and despite some major changes at Black Eye Design during that time, Michel seemed a natural fit for this series of interviews.

You can see more Michel’s work at his design:related portfolio and, of course, follow him on Twitter @michelvrana.

 Briefly, could you outline the history of Black Eye?

In 1993, I started Black Eye Productions as a comic book publishing company. Inspired by Drawn and Quarterly, I sought to do justice to all the hard work that the cartoonists put into the books I published by making sure they were well packaged and designed. Over the years, I did more and more graphic design, and less publishing, in order to pay the bills, and eventually decided to dedicate myself design full time in 1998.

From 1998 onward, Black Eye Design became a boutique design studio specializing in publication design. I spent much of my time running the studio and art directing and not as much time as I wanted doing what I enjoyed most: the hands-on design. Starting in 2006, I rolled up my sleeves and started doing book design again, though I was really splitting my time between running the company and doing hands on work. In 2009, I decided to shutter the studio and concentrate on book design full-time. It’s really what I’ve enjoyed the most over the years, from those first days as a comics publisher onward.

 

Do have a ‘house’ style? How would you describe it?

I’m sure anyone looking at my work would see a style more than I can. I’m sure the word ‘retro’ applies. Someone once described the work I do as ‘prop design’, where the design emulates something else but that is not always the case. My business card, for example, is set up like a vintage boxing ticket. Two of my most recent fiction covers have the titles incorporated into a matchbox and a postage stamp. So that’s probably a trend in my work.

I try to incorporate, whenever I can, a subtle ‘punchline’ into my covers. For example, the book that has the match box is called The Last Shot; it’s a collection of short stories where many of the characters are stuck at a dead end in their lives, and are looking for that one ‘last shot’ to change things. The cover has a few spent matches, and a matchbox with one last match sitting in it. I like to think a reader is going to look at the title, look at the visual and then it will click and they’ll get that little ‘Aha!’ in their head, and feel like they’re in on the joke.

 The (English-speaking) Canadian book industry is largely focused in Toronto. What are the pros and cons of being a book designer based in Montreal?

It’s a pat answer, but in this day and age, you can be anywhere in the world and succeed as a graphic designer. As long as you get the word out there to the right people, you’ll find contracts. I’ve worked very hard in promoting my studio, and now myself. Not having lived/worked in Toronto, maybe it would be easier to find new projects if I lived there, but it’s hard to say for sure.

Could you describe your design process?

I front-load my process with questions, thinking and pencil sketching, rather than sitting down straightaway at the computer.

When I’m not sure I have enough info from my design brief, I’ll usually ask many questions of my publisher, editor, or art director for the project. I find that that really helps clarify things.

When possible, I also try to get a sample, or the whole manuscript to read. I use Stanza on my iPhone to read manuscripts and annotate them with ideas, as I read. When I don’t have a manuscript, I just start by writing out ideas and brainstorming.

I usually delay sitting down at the computer as long as I can. I sketch out rough thumbnails for myself, and sometimes even show these (very) rough sketches to the art director, editor or publisher I’m working with, to get the discussion going. I find that keeping everything loose and unpolished at the beginning frees me from getting too attached to any one idea, from it becoming too precious, and that keeps creativity flowing. It’s a valuable lesson I learned from designer Jan Wilker at the SVW 2008 workshop.

 What are your favourite projects to work on?

I’m going to be a cliché and say that I love working on all book covers. To me, the fun in visual problem solving remains the same whether it’s a kids’ humour book about Gross Stuff, or a collection of short stories by a budding young talent. That being said, my absolute favourite ones are the ones that require me to push myself out of my comfort zone and try something new. Scary, but fun.

What are the most challenging?

The ones with a short design brief. I’ve come to realize that these seemingly ‘easy’ projects are deceptively so, and the covers often require the most revisions. Now when I get a quick design brief, I try to dig deeper with my art director, editor or publisher to find out more about their goals with the cover.

What are some of the common frustrations working with publishers?

My number one frustration would be that sometimes publishers underestimate their audience. As a culture, we’re a lot more savvy about visual communication than many people assume. We’re all continually exposed to clever ad campaigns, posters, book covers; so let’s not underestimate the intelligence and experience of the audience. For books this seems especially important, since you’re talking about a segment of the population that’s especially literate.

 What do you think makes a good cover design?

Marketer Seth Godin hit the nail on the head for me, when he described the role of a cover as ‘to tee up the reader so the book has maximum impact’. The goal of a book cover is to engage the reader, and get them to pick it up, to interact with it (look at the back cover copy, maybe read a quick passage). That’s the stuff that sells the book. The cover is the invitation, and that invitation needs to be enticing.

Do you see any current trends in cover design?

Illustration and hand-drawn type are definitely a trend these days. And I think that Peter Mendelsund‘s design for Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo opened up the idea of type layered with the image. In fact, dimensional type, or maybe even ‘environmental type’ seems to be a meme in graphic design these days.

Where do look for inspiration?

I’m a big fan of ephemera: retro packaging, book design, comics. I love that stuff. I also try more and more to keep up to date with what other ‘big’ designers are doing, hopefully without finding myself overly influenced by their work. There are so many talented designers, photographers and illustrators online that it’s hard not to be inspired! Of course, if I ever get ‘stuck’ on a design, I find that tuning out for a while is the best way to go for me, knowing that somewhere in the back of my head, the ideas are still percolating.

 Who are some of your design heroes?

The first designer I was ever aware of was Art Spiegelman. The work he did on Raw magazine, and on Maus has always been influential (right down to my love of the font Metro, which Spiegelman often uses). David Mazzucchelli would also be another cartoonist/designer that’s always impressed me: from his work on Batman Year One to his self-published Rubber Blanket, to his newest Asterios Polyp.

In 1992 I picked up a copy of Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion in London, and it was part of an edition of tiny hardcovers published as Bloomsbury Classics. The design of that first book, and the series, has always stuck with me [see pictures pf the Bloomsbury Classics here and here]. Jeffrey Fisher is the amazingly talented illustrator who worked on the series.

I’m also a big fan of Paul Sahre: I bought Rick Moody’s Demonology completely based on the elegant Paul’s cover: a photo of the multi-coloured ‘Rocket’ candy. I thought the design was brilliant at conveying the idea of the book being a collection of short stories.

Amy King is great, her work shows such variety, but it’s all so well executed. John Gall‘s paperback covers for Haruki Murakami are lovely. Of course, Henry Yee‘s work always blows me away – his cover for The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay is a favourite. And let me not forget fellow Canadian designers Peter Cocking and David Drummond. Not to mention the work of my colleagues on twitter Ingrid Paulson, Christopher Tobias, David Gee.

 What do you think e-books mean for book designers?

It’s going to be interesting to see how new e-book readers shape the reading experience. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that fine typography and graphic design will continue to be important. What I can see in the future is the incorporation of more rich media into book design – childrens’ books with motion graphics, novels with musical cues, or even embedded video. Who knows, maybe we’ll even see book covers with motion graphics on the e-book front? Ultimately, I think it means that books are going to evolve. Down which path I’m not sure, but book designers will have to evolve along with them. Whether we end up with books that act like the publications in the Harry Potter world, or if they’re something completely different.

Thanks Michel!

Next Week: Alex Camlin, Creative Director at Da Capo Press.

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Published August 25, 2009

Megan Abbott Noir Covers

For all my love of clean lines and Swiss modernism, I’m also a total sucker for trashy pulp paperback covers and film-noir movie posters, so when I stumbled across these covers illustrated by Richie Fahey for Megan Abbott‘s crime novels, I thought I should post the series:

Meg Abbott interviewed in 3:AM Magazine.

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Published August 14, 2009

David Pearson’s Flickr

Print designer David Pearson‘s Flickr stream has all the new additions to Penguin’s Great Ideas series, but also his abstract covers for Éditions Zulma, including this one for Pierre Albert-Birot’s Mon Ami Kronos (via the BCA).

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Published August 12, 2009

Q & A with Ingrid Paulson, Ingrid Paulson Design

Holding Still cover

Before setting up her own design studio in Toronto, award-winning Canadian designer Ingrid Paulson was senior designer at McClelland & Stewart, and art director for Key Porter and Raincoast Books.

Although Ingrid worked at Raincoast, we didn’t actually meet until BookCamp Toronto earlier this year. We only had a brief a conversation, but it was just about long enough for me to blurt out that I wanted to interview her, and for the apparently unflappable Ingrid to say “OK” (and sound like she might mean it).

And so I do want to say a big thank you to Ingrid for coming through with such grace and patience, and for providing such wonderful answers to my not-so-wonderful questions.

Could you describe your design process for book covers?

In terms of workflow? The publisher gives me a title information sheet and/or a creative brief, plus (fingers crossed) either a few chapters or the entire manuscript for the book. I always ask to read the fiction, but for non-fiction I can manage well with a concise book description and perhaps the introduction. I submit a minimum of three cover concepts to my contact at the publishing house, and wait for feedback. Then I either redesign and resubmit, or, if I was ‘on to something,’ I tweak one of the concepts until we get it right.

In terms of creative process? Um. Well.

Some cover concepts appear in my head, fully formed, by the end of my first conversation with my publishing contact. Other get dragged out of me kicking and screaming, begging to stay in the dark void of my head. Sometimes I sketch out the covers — wee thumbnails in my moleskine — whereas other times I play a Google Images lotto search using various vague terms that would describe a feeling I want to associate with the book. Sometimes the font is the first thing chosen, or I envision the type at certain sizes and placed in specific places. Other times, the image is driving the cover and the type just has to play catch-up. I’ll envision a book as predominantly red, or dark, or punchy — and that all comes from what the author has written. I’ll respond to textured sentences with textured visuals (perhaps collage?) and bleak will meet bleak. (But not so bleak as to discourage someone picking it up. The bookbuyer is in my thoughts as well, as I try to envision them and their habits, quirks, and book needs.) Needless to say, my brain gets crowded.

And then there are the days when I just stare at a wall and hope against hope I’ll figure out something clever. I haunt a lot of bookstores.

wallis

What are your favourite projects to work on?

The ones I get right on the first try.

I love working on fiction, but it takes the most concentration and, because fiction is so subjective, so evocative of the human condition (both funny and sad), designing a fiction cover can drive me nuts. There is never one absolute visual solution for fiction. Nonfiction, on the other hand, can get formulaic, but I love the simplicity of thought — punchline design, in many ways. So, for sanity’s sake, I prefer to keep a balance of fiction and nonfiction going. Cookbooks can be a blast to design, but I (sheepishly) think that comes from the photo shoot where we all end up eating most of the props (the ones that have flavour, or haven’t been sprayed with any shellac). And then there are the special projects where I’m asked to work on the cover and interior, and I am part of the planning and layout process, where I get to research the images, discuss things with the editors on a page-by-page basis. Those projects are rare, but they keep me happy for a few years at a time.

What do you think makes a good cover design?

Being able to lure someone into picking up the book and reading the back, which takes about 1.5 seconds of their time. Job done. How to do that? If we in publishing knew, we’d also be able to predict bestsellers. The best I’ve figured out is to keep it a simple visual package — don’t let the type look out of place with the image, don’t use the same colours as everyone else is using that season, stay away from looking too much like any of the other books, but make it look like a book. I dunno. The cover should evoke an emotional pull from the bookbuyer, that moment of ‘yes, that’s interesting and looks like what I want to read.’ That solution changes from book to book.

What are some of the common mistakes publishers and designers make with covers?

For publishers, they’ll try to make their book look similar to someone else’s (bestselling) book, as if to catch the wave. This is not clever, it just means the publisher is out of ideas or is feeling the year-end coming and needs to hook on to a sales-winner. It’s the publisher that took a design chance on a different look — and came out the winner in terms of sales — that is the ultimate winner. The rest end up on the remainder table eventually. Daunting. They don’t call it a ‘gentleman’s profession’ for nothing. (Or ‘gentlewoman’s’. I’m just citing the old, old adage.)

For designers, it is not being able to pitch their cover effectively. If a designer can articulate the reasons for their choices of colour, type, and image, then they have a fighting chance of getting that design through. Otherwise they are leaving it to speculation. I’ve worked both sides of the table — inhouse art director, freelance designer — and I know that it is ten times harder for a freelancer to get that voice heard in the meetings. But inhouse staff can get asked to revise designs far more often than the freelancer, as the perceived economies behind a salaried staff versus a per-project contractor sometimes give the publisher too much leeway on revisions. I’ve been inhouse with a book cover that I simply didn’t ‘get,’ but there was no way to contract out the job, as, due to costs, the publisher refused. It was a painful, long design process for all involved (not just me), and they ended up with something inferior to what they would have gotten with a designer who understood the book. As an Art Director, I could’ve just handed it to a specialist designer and, with a few good notes, gotten something much more suitable for the book.

I guess that leads to a codicil: know when to walk away. Yes, we all want to try new book categories. Just know when to draw the line, so to speak.

British and American book design styles are often seen as quite distinct (with critics and proponents of both!). Is there a Canadian style of book design?

What there is known of Canadian book design is an amalgam of quiet, well-crafted literary press style — usually hand in hand with DIY letterpress style — smashed against a desperate need for full-bleed sepia landscapes (or sleeping sepia people) and egregiously large title type. We err on the side of poetic, which can look like a wash in the stores (or worse — too literary, which could alienate those poor readers still recovering from their English high school reading list). We avoid edgy.

There is some astonishing design coming out of the cracks across the nation — David Drummond comes to mind, as does the brain trust under Peter Cocking at Douglas & McIntyre — and I hope that will win out. Clear, slightly subversive, more in tune with our world-famous sense of humour. Intelligent is the word that comes to mind.

Do Canadian book designers have unique opportunities? Are they accompanied by particular challenges?

Figuring out new and exciting ways to design both hockey and ‘whither Canada’ books, which are a yearly staple on publishers’ lists. We are handy and imaginative with maple leaf imagery and the colour red.

You’re an artist as well as a book designer. Is there a tension between your artistic sensibility and the commercial design process?

Every day, and the design wins. I’ve tried to avoid overlaps, but words are images to me, so lately I’ve been working on art based around words. I try to keep it as three dimensional as possible (since my day work is two-dimensional), but then font choices become a factor and I run screaming. It helps to know that both Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger worked in designer/typesetter jobs early in their artistic careers.

The challenge lies in accepting and separating out design and art from their ultimate goals: design is created to communicate a product; art is created to communicate the world, in whatever form, or whatever scope, the artist chooses. There is no client in art.

How is designing book interiors different from designing their covers?

Interiors are, in many ways, a much more detailed exercise in communication. For a text-only book, I have to make sure that the reader never really sees the design, else it distract from their involvement with the text. For a picture book, the pictures stand tall, so the design should just assist the pictures. But a cover is a marketing tool, and the cover must try, in no uncertain terms, to woo the reader. It must stand out.

poster

Where do you look for inspiration?

Currently? Other designers (book and non-book), as well as music poster design. There is a great revival (when did it go away?) of one-off poster designs for gigs. They are all silkscreened or letterpressed limited-edition beauties. I used to look at rave fliers all the time (when raves were the thing). I look online. I remember stuff my mom — who was an antiquer in the 1970s — used to show me, old ads and magazines. I read a lot (beyond manuscripts), so I end up with this polymathic knowledge of, say, alchemical symbols and Greek demigods. We used to be such a visual culture, pre-literacy, and I think in many ways we’re heading back there. My job is to connect the shorthand symbols of the culture, both old and new. It can fascinate me for hours, why LOLCats is the thing (and then not the thing, but what did the visual say of us?), or looking at, say, a Dutch design student’s incredibly cool/obscure website.

Who else is doing interesting work right now?

I love designers with latitute — ones that aren’t just one-trick (or one-look). Who comes to mind? Coralie Bickford-Smith, Jason Gabbert, Terri Nimmo, David Gee, Gabriele Wilson, Peter Mendulsund… They all have style that can bend to the project. I could go on, but that’s today’s list. It will change and expand tomorrow.

You’re very active with your website, blog, and Twitter etc. Is it important for a designer to engage with people online?

You know, every time I blog (or answer nice questions like yours), I sit back afterward and fear that my opinion is going to lose me a client. There is this balance one must keep when designing, as the client is always right (or deserves the design they get, depending on the outcome), yet what designers put out there does contribute to our visual worldscape. So, I try to contribute.

But I work from home (or, in Toronto parlance, I have a ‘live/work situation’). Blogging keeps me from talking to the wall too much, or thinking that the cat cares when I’m sweating to find the right sans-serif. It has been fascinating to watch how many book designers have joined Twitter lately — we all seem to find each other, this odd subgenre of designers, and I think in the future, that will result in some mind-blowing design (or a great convention in Bend, Oregon). My purpose online is to build community, to share ideas, to groan when needed, and if other non-designers join the conversation, well, then it just becomes this great party.

With the growing popularity of e-books, what is next for book cover design?

Ack! I don’t know. I really don’t. We’ll see what happens. What I do know is that there will always be a role for design, but what that role takes is anyone’s guess.

Thanks Ingrid!

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Published August 6, 2009

Hunger

At the risk of this turning into W.W. Norton Week on The Casual Optimist, I wanted to re-post this gorgeous cover for Hunger by Lan Samantha Chang designed by High Design, with art direction by Albert Tang. It was originally included with my Q & A with Norton’s Ingsu Liu earlier this week, but removed when I updated the post.

W.W. Norton Book Design Archive on Flickr

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Published August 4, 2009

Q & A with Ingsu Liu, W.W. Norton

Having spent a lot of my life in the UK, I wasn’t particularly familiar with venerable New York independent publisher  W.W. Norton and Co. until my stint at Toronto’s (now doomed) Pages Books and Magazines where their books were frequently on tables.

Although I left Pages a few years ago, I was recently reminded of the breadth and quality of Norton’s books — and, of course, their covers — by their decision to archive their book cover designs on Flickr.

In a roundabout way, the launch of the design archive also put me in touch with Steve Colca, Norton’s online marketing manager. He in turn, hooked me up with Ingsu Liu who kindly agreed to talk about the design process at Norton for this week’s Q&A.

Currently V.P. art director at W.W. Norton, Ingsu Liu graduated from the graphic design program at Pratt Institute in 1988 and began her career at Penguin, William Morrow and Vintage Books before accepting a position at Norton in 1997.

Briefly, describe your role at Norton

I oversee the hardcover jacket imprint.

How many designers are on your team?

I oversee two in-house art directors; together we collaborate with various outside freelance designers, illustrators, art researchers and photographers.

Approximately how many covers does Norton require each season?

About 55 to 75 books each season. We do 2 seasons, for a total of roughly 125 books a year.

Is there a ‘house’ style?

I certainly hope not. I believe it’s most beneficial to be diverse, so that each book jacket can have it’s own voice. This helps to keep the list fresh and my job more fun.

Do you approach fiction and non-fiction differently?

It really depends on what the book requires, but the basic process is the same. First I talk to the editor, publisher, and marketing… then drawing from those conversations, the book brief, the author’s writing, the current market place, the comparative titles and what the book is about, I then decide which direction the jacket should go and set out to assign the best designer or artists for that title. My focus is on what’s best for the particular title, everything else comes naturally after.

Which books provide the biggest challenges?

The titles that no one can agree how best to market the book and therefore what sort of jacket it should have. Also, big print runs where there is more at stake. Then, there’s the occasional book where the author’s 6 year old daughter gets to dictate the jacket design.

What do you look for in a cover design?

Craftsmanship, mood… but a strong concept will always rule the day. Also, the surprise factor is pure gold; nothing is worse than the “same design, different day” effect. A design should, at the very least, have its own point of view.

How are final covers decided upon?

After I have decided on who is best to work on the cover design, I start presenting the designs at our jacket committee meetings. There we narrow it down to one final choice. Then — when there is not a six year old involved — the author, the author’s agent, the editor, the marketing and the publisher all have to sign off on one final jacket design. Sometimes, after we finally get all these diverse interests on the same boat, a single book buyer can kill our jacket and we start the whole process all over again.

Do you think there’s a tension between producing creative covers and what will play in the market?

See the last sentence in my answer above. That said, we are constantly being subjected to various subjective opinions. It is my job, when I can, to filter through it all and to use the good advice and to discard the bad… and unfortunately, the folks with the bad advice often have the loudest voice. See Dick Cheney.

Have you any recent favourites?

Obsession: A History by Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago)

Milk by Barbara deWilde (A.A. Knopf)

Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park by Leigh-Anne Mullock

Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Mother (Penguin Classics)

Waiting For The Barbarians by Paul Buckley (Penguin)

Sedaris by David Drummond (University Of Minnesota Press)

The Paranoid Style by Brett Yasko (Vintage)

The list goes on and on, and on….

Do you discern any current trends in American book cover design?

Most obvious is the rebirth of interest in comic artists. Whether it is a whole book or just a jacket image, I never get tired of seeing great comic art. Growing up in Taiwan, I spent countless hours lost in thousands of comic books, it is what inspired my interest in art and has kept my fascination to this day.

Also it’s nice to see so many designers and artists collaborating so that hand-done art is being combined beautifully with all these hi-tech designs and applications. This mix of raw and slick often creates the most interesting packages.

Are they any designers whose work you particularly admire?

Sagmeister, Will Staehle, Evan Gaffney, Louise Fili, Peter Mendelsund, John Gall, Paul Buckley, David Drummond, Patti Ratchford, David High and Gabriele Wilson. The fact is there are too many to list…

Are there any book or design blogs you read regularly?

I mostly still enjoy going to the book stores to be inspired, but Eye Magazine, the annuals from Print, Communication Art, AIGA, and the Type Directors Club are the good old standby’s for me. For blogs, I like FaceOut Books, The Book Design Review, Design: Related,  The Book Cover Archive, and most recently The Casual Optimist. And now that you’ve interviewed me, your blog is totally awesome!

With the growth in e-books, do you think cover design will continue to be important?

I very much hope so. I love holding a beautifully produced book in my hands. But the fact is that one must embrace the future — for it’s coming whether you want it to or not.

Thanks Ingsu!

With special thanks to Steve Colca, Manager of Internet Marketing at W. W. Norton & Co. for arranging the interview

UPDATE:

Since originally posted on August 4th, 2009, some of the images accompanying this interview have been changed. The previous images were my selections from the W.W. Norton Design Archive on Flickr chosen to illustrate the work of some of the designers mentioned in the Q & A and to reflect the diversity of books designed and published by the team at W.W. Norton. To avoid confusion, all the current images were art directed by Ingsu Liu.

Design credit for the individual covers included in this post:

Flash Fiction Forward Design by Rodrigo Corral
The Meaning Of Night Design by Patti Ratchford
Busted Design by Jon Grey
What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire? Design by Evan Gaffney
Stitches Design by Paul Buckley

4 Comments
Published July 24, 2009

Zeitoun

My colleague Jennifer from Publishers Group Canada just handed me a copy of the new Dave Eggers book Zeitoun and, as with all new McSweeney’s first edition hardcovers, it is a thing of beauty.

Unfortunately the image above does not really do the (jacketless) cover justice (and I’m so low-tech that I don’t have a camera here in the office to take a snap for you).

On the finished book, the buildings, paddle, and skin (and the reflections) in Rachell Sumpter‘s lovely (front and back) cover illustrations are accentuated in a bold yellow ochre (which I think you can just make out in the image above).

The front cover is embellished with silver lettering and highlights, and — to finish it all off — the illustrations are offset by a lovely dark red spine that wraps about ¾ of an inch onto the front and back of the book.

No doubt a designer would be able to tell you all the wonderful specs and technical terms for all of this, but I hope — if nothing else — I’ve persuaded you to seek out Zeitoun in your local bookstore and look for yourself.

(Full disclosure: PGC are part of Raincoast Books — the folks I work for — just not the part I work for, if that makes sense).

UPDATE:

A recent Wall Street Journal feature on Zeitoun included this picture of the finished book:

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Published July 21, 2009

Q & A with Nate Salciccioli

Thanks to blogging and Twitter I’ve been lucky enough to connect with a group of people in the book trade that I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise. Their enthusiasm and willingness to share their experiences is in stark contrast to the traditional reluctance of people in the industry to talk meaningfully (or positively) about what they do (without being three sheets to the wind).

Book designers in particular have an amazing online dialogue about their work and so over the next couple of months I’m planning a series of interviews with some of the designers whose projects have recently caught my eye.

First up on the docket is Nate Salciccioli. Nate is a graphic designer at The DesignWorks Group — purveyors of fine book covers since 1996 — and the chap behind the excellent Paradox of Awesome (it’s a long story and you probably had to be there…).

Even though he is only 23 (according to his website), Nate’s work has already been recognized by Print, Graphis, CMYK Magazine and elsewhere.

What attracted you to a career in book design?

Like many things, my career in book design was accidental. I’ll admit that, while in design school, I had neither considered nor seen many book covers. It certainly hadn’t entered my school-addled brain that I would (or could) pursue it exclusively. That all changed when I landed an internship with The DesignWorks Group, which I deem one of the most providential events of my life thus far. Everyone here is such a blast to work with, and I think falling in love with what they do here led to my love of book cover design.

Briefly, could you tell me a little about The DesignWorks Group?

Surely. Our little studio has been in the industry going on 14 years. We work almost exclusively in book cover design, with a few identities, websites, and movie posters thrown in for good measure. All told, there are 6 designers who call DWG home, and some amazing production and management people. From what I’ve gathered in talking with friends, the atmosphere at DWG is pretty unique; we love to collaborate, love to have fun, and LOVE the Shat (for those of you who are uninitiated, that’s William Shatner).

Something interesting is that none of our clientele is local. We work with publishers in NYC, Chicago, Nashville, San Francisco, Colorado Springs, Boston, and lots of other equally spaced out locations. This creates an interesting disconnect, which I think actually has helped our studio reach out through the internet with platforms like FaceOut Books, design:related, and Twitter.

How long have you worked there?

I’ve been working here since July 1, 2007. Has it really been over two years? I’m still waiting for two 30 inch monitors, if anyone is reading this…

Is there a ‘house’ style?

Thankfully, no. Our range of clients is so diverse that I think we’d be doing ourselves a disservice to aim towards anything as unified as a ‘house style.’ All the designers working here are deathly afraid of repeating themselves (in a good way). I do have to make a concerted effort to expose myself to lots of different kinds of design aesthetics to avoid getting a NATE look. Which reminds me, I need to stop using Futura…

Is there much collaboration between designers at DWG?

We’re always talking to each other. Many times a day I’m showing different people what I’m working on, and in turn taking a look at their screen. I can’t tell you how valuable this is in keeping my brain from fizzling. As a team, we’ll have brainstorming sessions when someone wants help in coming up with concepts. These concept generation sessions (CGSs??) always enrich the thinking on any given project.

Could you describe your design process?

Ah. You had to ask. Can I plead the fifth? Does ‘Plead the Fifth’ even make sense in Canada?

To be honest, my process varies from project to project. Sometimes I’ll read the book, do some sketches, find something I like, find a great image, create some brilliant typography, and get an ecstatic response from the client. SOMETIMES. More often, I’ll read and reread the given material from the client, roll some ideas around in my head for a while, and struggle for about an hour in Photoshop until I gain some momentum. If that doesn’t work, I run to the local convenience store for an ice cold Coca-Cola. I can’t stress enough the role of caffeine in graphic design.

What are your favourite projects to work on?

I love digging my teeth into a good fiction title. To me, fiction affords the most open-ended challenge: design something unique that gives an insight into the story. It’s more than problem solving. The art director I’m working with at the publisher plays a huge role in setting the tone for the project: Are we going for something brilliant, or for something palatable by Danielle Steele fanatics?

Some of my favorite projects lately have been a book about zombies, a reference series for Barnes and Noble, and several university press projects. I can’t get enough projects for university presses, by the way. Always a fun challenge.

What are the most challenging?

The biggest challenge is trying to continue innovating after several rounds with a project. When your ideas keep getting shut down, you have to find the place in your head that refuses to give up. On the flipside, it can be very rewarding to emerge from a bout like this with a cover that makes everyone happy (including me); it happens like that, sometimes.

What do you think makes a good cover design?

I’ve discovered that a good cover is more than just “oh wow, look at that neato type” or “shee whiz, no title on the cover!” It’s about communication in the end. I’ve admittedly produced designs that I thought looked great, but didn’t speak to the audience at all. If a cover can effectively introduce the book to its intended audience while still looking like a million bucks, it’s a good cover.

Where do you look for inspiration?

I have a morning routine that runs me through the gamut of book cover design sites (of which, happily, there are PLENTY), design inspiration sites, and blogs. I also have a running folder of lovely bits of design I find in different places. FFFFound is a great resource for visual stimuli, as are sites like NOTCOT.org and The Book Cover Archive. Just walking into a Barnes and Noble is a wonderful way to build enthusiasm for book design, as you can actually TOUCH them.

Who else is doing interesting work right now?

Some of my favorites to watch right now are Brian Chojnowski, Jason Heuer, Megan Wilson, Ben Wiseman, Christopher Brand, Jacob Covey, Helen Yentus, and Adam Johnson. There are so many talented designers working in book design, it boggles my mind.

As a young designer, what do you think the future holds for book cover design?

Some older and MUCH smarter people have told me there will always be a market for book cover design. I guess I’ll have to take their word for it. For me, the skills I develop working in books could translate easily to many other graphic design facets, which brings some comfort. I don’t expect to be holding a cardboard sign that says “Have Mouse, will Kern for Food” any time soon.

Thanks Nate!

You can find more of Nate’s work at his website and design:related portfolio.

6 Comments
Published June 30, 2009

High-Rez Himes

After my slightly snarky comment yesterday about publishers and designers making hi-res cover images readily available, Michael Fusco emailed me with said images for his fantastic Chester Himes covers for Pegasus.

Here they are in their full typographic glory:

Worth the wait I think…

You can see more of Michael’s work at his website and design:related portfolio.

3 Comments
Published May 29, 2009

Turning Towards Our Shelves

Ellen Lupton, author of Thinking With Type (interviewed by me here), interviews graphic designer David Barringer about his new collection of essays There’s Nothing Funny About Design over at Design Observer today.

It’s a wide ranging interview — mostly about design unsurprisingly — but a couple of paragraphs about books caught my eye:

I do think that ebooks are a step backwards, however. It’s like the fax. It’s not flexible or useful enough. Handheld computers should have greater power, and the Kindle instead has less. You should be able to access encyclopedias, dictionaries, and other searchable resources, just like we can on the computer or the iPhone. That’s where the real benefit of portable handheld units are. Who cares about downloading Twilight? I care about having access to entire online libraries of reference works, maps, and encyclopedias.

I’ve sort of come to the same conclusion. If e-readers are less convenient than cell phones, less useful than laptops, and less durable than books, what’s the point?

Anyway, David Barringer goes on to discuss our enduring emotional connection with book-books:

I’ve seen many friends who are avid readers turn toward their shelves of books and regard them as they would a photo album of their own lives. We take the contents of books into our imaginations, and our personalities are influenced by them. Looking at the books on my shelves, I feel memories bloom, my own life come back to me. Books are triggers for remembering where we have been, and who we are. A book is like a body part, and when you die and your connection to the book is broken, the book dies a little, too.

I thought that was rather touching…

Link

(NB Full Disclosure: Thinking With Type and There’s Nothing Funny About Design are published by Princeton Architectural Press, who are distributed in Canada by my employer, Raincoast Books)

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