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Category: Miscellany

Published December 23, 2009

Midweek Miscellany

Reading a Book is Reading a Book — Peter Ginna has another thoughtful post on about the Random House e-book rights controversy (which better articulates some of what I was trying to get at here).

A Decade of Fear — David Ulin, book editor of The LA Times, looks back at the last 10 years (and forward to the next).

Book Lovers Never Go To Bed Alone — a Tumblr collection of  bookshelves (via index//mb)

Hello, I’m Robot! — A somewhat surreal — but definitely awesome — Soviet kids’ book at A Journey Round My Skull…

And…

Russian Artists and The Children’s Book 1890-1992 — 512 pages, full color with over 1100 images. Written and privately published by Albert Lemmens and Serge Stommels in The Netherlands. Yours for only $195 plus shipping (seen at The Daily Heller).

And…

Three Designers from Moscow — MyFonts interviews Russian type designers Vera Evstafieva, Alexandra Korolkova and Elena Novoselova.

And… Thinking of MyFonts…

…They’ve just released the rather lovely exljbris slab serif Museo Slab. Regular Museo Slab and Museo Slab Italic are free downloads.

The Book Design Review‘s Favourite Covers of 2009 — All good choices. Go vote. Now.

And… Have I mentioned just how incredible Peter Mendelsund’s new Foucault covers are…? I did? OK. Just want to make sure…

RUSSIAN ARTISTS AND THE CHILDREN’S BOOK 1890-1992.
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Published December 18, 2009

Something for the Weekend

The Pox and the Covenant — A nice new entry in the “metacover” category from DWG‘s midfield general Jason Gabbert.

Book Publishers Have Reason to Resist Amazon — Columnist John Gapper in the Financial Times (via MobyLives):

The idea that book publishers are failing to act in their own interests because they somehow do not want to serve their customers, or because they do not “get” electronic distribution ignores the business reality they face… In any case, why is it illogical for publishers to defend their own business interests against those of Amazon, which is a public company trying to extend leverage over them to benefit its own shareholders?

Not Saving The Newspaper Business Any Time Soon — The Awl does the math on McSweeney’s gorgeous newspaper project The San Francisco Panorama. Hint: it doesn’t quite add up. Although that’s probably wasn’t the point. (via Sarah Weinman. Who else?).

The 50 Best Comic Book Covers of 2009 at Complex — Something for everyone here, including the wonderful Gorey-esque cover pictured above by Skottie Young (via Veer).

The Tempest Wakens — a short web comic for Tor’s Cthulhu Christmas, by the awesome Teetering Bulb team Kurt Huggins and Zelda Devon.

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Published December 16, 2009

Midweek Miscellany

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…

ryan-tym

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?

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Published December 14, 2009

Monday Miscellany

Kitsune Noir Poster Club — Artists Frank Chimero, Mark Weaver, Jez Burrows, Cody Hoyt and Garrett Vander Leun reinterpret their favourite books as prints for Kitsune Noir . (Frank Chimero’s Slaughterhouse Five is pictured above).

And on the subject of posters…

Penguin US have made the jacket art from Graphic Classic Editions of Moby Dick and White Noise, designed by Tony Millionaire and Michael Cho respectively, available as posters.

From Trolls to Truth — Author Ursula K Le Guin reviews Tove Jansson’s The True Deceivers (available in the US from NYRB Books) for The Guardian:

On the patronising assumption that books for children are nice, ie morally bland and stylistically infantile, critics, reviewers and prize juries often dismiss those who write them as incapable of writing seriously for adults… Anyone familiar with Jansson knows it would be unwise to dismiss her or patronise her work on any grounds. Her books for children are complex, subtle, psychologically tricky, funny and unnerving; their morality, though never compromised, is never simple. Thus her transition to adult fiction involved no great change. Her everyday Swedes are quite as strange as trolls…

Quote/Unquote Bookends designed by Eric Janssen (via SwissMiss).

And lastly…

In my total blogging tardiness, Bookslut (inevitably) beat to the punch on this, but Simon Reynolds column on the music of the decade for The Guardian has so much resonance for books and the book industry:

“The fragmentation of rock/pop has been going on as long as I can remember, but it seemed to cross a threshold this decade. There was just so much music to be into and check out. No genres faded away, they all just carried on, pumping out product, proliferating offshoot sounds. Nor did musicians, seemingly, cease and desist as they grew older; those that didn’t die kept churning stuff out, jostling alongside younger artists thrusting forward to the light. It’s tempting to compare noughties music to a garden choked with weeds. Except it’s more like a flower bed choked with too many flowers, because so much of the output was good. The problem wasn’t just quantity, it was quantity x quality. Then there was the past too, available like never before, competing for our attention and affection. The cheapness of home studio and digital audio workstation recording, combined with the wealth of history that musicians can draw on and recombine, fuelled a mushrooming of quality music-making. But the result of all this overproduction was that “we” were spread thin across a vast terrain of sound.”

(Update: links to Tove Jansson’s The True Deceiver added)

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Published December 11, 2009

Something for the Weekend

It’s been a slightly shite week in the book trade this week.

Amidst the plethora of end of year/decade “Best of…” lists and gift guides, it was announced that Kirkus and Editor & Publisher Magazine are going to close (are we surprised? No); B&N’s Nook e-reader turned out to be not be quite as good as it was cracked up to be (are we surprised? No); and Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and HarperCollins upset the usual suspects (for all the usual reasons — only Moby Lives seemed to get that it might be about something else) by announcing their decision to hold back the release of a few e-book editions (are we surprised? No)… Is any of this particularly interesting? No. (Although — for the record — I am grateful to the WSJ‘s Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg  for reporting on the e-book developments, and to indefatigable Largehearted Boy for compiling a comprehensive list of Best of… lists)…

So needless to say, there isn’t much about the book industy in today’s links. Ah well…

Another addition to the weirdly brilliant (or brilliantly weird?) vintage book/pop culture mash-up phenomenon:  Web Services Book Covers by French illustrator Stéphane Massa-Bidal AKA Hulk4598, or Rétrofuturs. They’re sort of like Olly Moss meets Cristiana Couceiro. (First seen at Design You Trust and then just about everywhere else this morning).

The Sixties — Another fantastic new cover by Henry Sene Yee for Picador’s BIG IDEAS // small books series.

Type for the Tube — an interesting history of Edward Johnston’s typeface for the London Underground from its design to current usage.

And finally…

F is For Fail — A really charming “alphabetical odysessy through the creative process” by Brent Barson (via the lovely Aqua-Velvet):

Can I go home yet?

(Have a great weekend!)

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Published December 9, 2009

Midweek Miscellany

Well, oh shit. Go fuck yourself — The pugnacious George Lois in BlackBook magazine:

The design was the idea. I don’t design, if you know what I mean. If you want Andy Warhol being devoured by his own fame in a can of Cambell’s soup, you just put the can there and you have him drowning in it. Case closed.

You’re knocked down by the idea, and the fact that it’s got complete clarity visually. Don’t complicate it with busy work.

That’s the way I do everything. If I was a doing a magazine, it’s not a question of if I’d be having more white space. It’s a question of every third or fourth spread I’d make a spread that would take your breath away — or piss you off. Or something.

“Yoda” — An interview with Dieter Rams at More Intelligent Life (Thanks Ben S.):

We have enough products. If you look at the market you have ten or 20 coffee makers that basically look all the same, doing all the same thing: they are making coffee. We don’t need 20 of these things, we need one good one.

Less, But Better… Less, But Better… [REPEAT].

The View From Toronto — National Post book critic Philip Marchand (formerly of the Toronto Star) talks to Conversations in the Book Trade:

I’m not sure how much “trouble” literature is in. The age of Tennyson was the last period in literature when “serious” literature found a mass market. Ever since, we’ve had a very small minority of readers for “serious” stuff, and a fairly large audience for thrillers, romance novels, detective novels, and so on. Then there’s the Da Vinci Code phenomenon in which everybody, from your dentist to your car mechanic, is reading a certain book – in order to be able to join in discussions about the book on social occasions, if for no other reason.

Frontmatters — Alex Camlin, Creative Director at Da Capo (interviewed here), has started a blog! Yay Alex!

This is Display! — Another site (along with the Alvin Lustig archive) that probably should have been on yesterday’s list of inspiring websites, Display is a “curated collection of 59 (and growing) important graphic design books, periodicals and ephemera.”

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Published December 4, 2009

Something for the Weekend

Gosh! — Limited edition Footnotes in Gaza bookplate by Joe Sacco for Gosh! Comics in London (seen at The Ephemerist).

There is also an interesting interview with Joe Sacco about his new book on the BBC World Service’s The Strand.

How To Be An Artist — Criterion designer Eric Skillman discusses his design process for Eddie Campbell‘s Alec: The Years Have Pants published by TopShelf.

And Eddie Campbell is interviewed by USA Today about the book.

Imaginary Worlds — PW Comics Week talks to Helen McCarthy, author of The Art of Osamu Tezuka: God of Manga:

I don’t know if it’s his themes that make his work timeless, so much as his breadth of interest. He was interested in everything and everyone that lives. He gives every character in his works the respect of allowing them to exist as real individuals; whether they’re likeable or not, they’re real. I think that’s the quality that makes animation director Hayao Miyazaki resemble him most strongly, that insistence that nobody is a stereotype or a cipher, that everybody has equal validity whether they’re a ‘nice’ person or not. Personally, I love his approach to women. He treats them exactly like normal human beings, and so few writers really do that, even in these allegedly liberated times.

There is also a short interview with the author in the WSJ.

Is Publishing Dead? (PDF) — An good interview with Sarah Nelson, former editor-in-chief at PW and now book director for O, The Oprah Magazine, from the 2009 PubWest Conference (via GalleyCat):

I don’t think that digital, per se, is the culprit. I don’t even think that Google, per se, is the culprit. I think that there are a lot of people in publishing who look to those things, to Google, to eBooks, to Amazon and say that they are the devil, and they are killing our business. I think it’s not that simple. I think that publishers need to think about the business model in which they operate and to give advances – and… it’s less true of the small and medium sized publishers, and for that reason, they’re in better shape than some of the big guys – but when you’re giving several million dollar advances on books, you are destined to lose money. And that is only going to become more true if more books are read digitally, because the amount of money you’re going to make on a digital book is a lot less than the amount of money you’re going to make on hardcover.

Judging 2009 by its Cover — Amazon (somewhat ripping our friend at The BDR) have started a Best Book Cover of the Year poll. Please vote for something worthy.

And, as you’ve no doubt seen, Ben has chosen his top 10 covers of the decade at the Book Cover Archive Blog.

And last (but by no means least)…

Advent Books — Crazy Sean Cranbury of Books on the Radio, and Book Madam Julie Wilson have a Christmas book project:

The idea behind it is simple: authors, publishing professionals, bloggers, and booksellers will write short enthusiastic recommendations of their favorite books that have been published in the last year.  We’ll publish a few of these every day, including pics and links for the books… It’s what we’re calling the Digital Handsell 3.0.  Just in time for the Holiday Season.

I don’t think my selection will come as surprise to anyone who reads this blog regularly, but apparently it’s controversial.

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Published November 26, 2009

Midweek Miscellany (Paul Auster Edition), November 25th, 2009

The award-winning Folio Society edition of The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster and illustrated by Tom Burns has just about blown my mind. MUST. HAVE.

James Wood on the novels of Paul Auster in the The New Yorker:

Auster is a compelling storyteller, but his stories are assertions rather than persuasions. They declare themselves; they hound the next revelation. Because nothing is persuasively assembled, the inevitable postmodern disassembly leaves one largely untouched. (The disassembly is also grindingly explicit, spelled out in billboard-size type.) Presence fails to turn into significant absence, because presence was not present enough. This is the crevasse that divides Auster from novelists like José Saramago, or the Philip Roth of “The Ghost Writer.”

(Personally speaking I think I prefer Auster’s interesting awkward failures over the portentous bludgeon prose of Philip Roth, but that’s just me…)

And, if you haven’t had enough Auster for one post, he’s also interviewed in New York Magazine.

The Making of Fantastic Mr. Fox designed by Angus Hyland — New work from Pentagram for Rizzoli.

Covers from Cleethorpes — A brief, but funny, interview with designer David Pearson at It’s Nice That.

“We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die” — Umberto Eco interviewed in Der Spiegel:

The list is the origin of culture. It’s part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order — not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries.

An Innocent Abroad — Journalist and cartoonist Joe Sacco (Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde) interviewed about his new book Footnotes in Gaza in The Observer:

I’m a nondescript figure; on some level, I’m a cipher. The thing is: I don’t want to emote too much when I draw myself. The stories are about other people, not me. I’d rather emphasise their feelings. If I do show mine – let’s say I’m shaking [with fear] more than the people I’m with – it’s only ever to throw their situation into starker relief.

And on the speaking of comics…

Paul Gravett, author of multiple books on the art form, interviewed by Dazed & Confused:

I like the control I have when reading a comic. I’ve grown impatient and disenchanted with the tropes of a lot of movies and TV, their conventional angles and cuts, their manipulation through music, lighting, special effects and above all, the efforts of acting to make me emote. Comics struggle to make us feel anything at all… They often don’t work that brilliantly, but when they do, the impact of fixed, unephemeral, often hand-drawn images can really surprise me. It’s a primal, even primitive medium, as old as our first cave paintings, and it is still being invented and discovered.

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Published November 18, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, November 18th, 2009

Lusting After Lustig — Designers Charles Brock and Tim Green share their collection at FaceOut Books.

While Amazon announced the Kindle will be available in Canada this week, The New York Times looks at reading on phones:

Many people who want to read electronic books are discovering that they can do so on the smartphones that are already in their pockets — bringing a whole new meaning to “phone book.” And they like that they can save the $250 to $350 that they would otherwise spend on yet another gadget.

No. Shit.

But, on the subject of e-books… Steve Haber, the president of Sony’s digital reading division, talks to TechFlash (via TeleRead).

A History of 16 Science Fiction Classics, Told In Book Covers at i09 (including the brilliant cover for A Clockwork Orange pictured above and yet more covers for 1984).

A Winter’s Tale — Ali Smith (The Accidental) on The True Deceiver by Finnish author Tove Jannson, creator of the Moomins:

If the Moomins are Jansson’s most celebrated legacy – a community of inventive, big-nosed, good-natured beings who survive, again and again, the storms and existentialism of a dark Scandinavian winter through simply being mild, kind, inclusive and philosophical – what will happen when a real community is put in its place? What will the outcome be when Jansson tackles, naturalistically, the life of a tiny hamlet in a dark, wintry landscape – and in a book so close to real local life that the original Swedish publication carried a disclaimer saying it was in no way based on any real place, nor its characters on anybody living?

You had me at “existentialism of a dark Scandinavian winter.”

The Genius — The awesome Tom Gauld interviewed at It’s Nice That. Limited edition letterpress prints of Tom’s Characters for an Epic Tale are available now.

And finally…

UnderConsideration’s Brand New looks at the new logo for The New York Public Library (via Daily Discoveries on Design)

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Published November 14, 2009

Something for the Weekend, November 13th, 2009

Is this a new cover for J G Ballard’s Crash? HarperCollins Canada have a release date of November 2nd, so I guess so. And I would assume The design/illustration is by the immensely talented David Wardle who did the previous covers in this series… Can anyone confirm?

In any case, I think the Warhol/Banksy Elizabeth Taylor illustration fits the book pretty well and it’s a nice counterpart to the Marilyn Monroe on the cover of Atrocity Exhibition.

Moving the Needle — Literary agent Nathan Bransford on the challenges facing publishers in the HuffPo:

One of the big recent surprises in the industry… is a newfound difficulty making a splash… with adult nonfiction. Now, to get an idea of what a huge problem… this is, bear in mind that for many years adult nonfiction was the bread and butter workhorse of the industry. Fiction, except for very very established authors, has always been regarded as something of a crapshoot. Nonfiction, on the other hand, was a source of relative stability, and… healthy margins.

Not so much anymore. Everything is difficult to break out.

Artists’ eBooks — a new project from James Bridle and booktwo.org (now, James, if you could only get my bkkeepr badge work properly…)

I Don’t Know Why — UnderConsideration‘s FPO (For Print Only) looks at the quirky and deliciously creepy There Was An Old Lady by Jeremy Holmes, published by Chronicle Books (and — full disclosure alert — distributed by Raincoast in Canada)

And finally…

The (slightly bonkers) illustrator and musician mcbess has a new book (and vinyl record!) called Malevolent Melody coming out from Nobrow:

(If you haven’t seen the insane mcbess/The Dead Pirates Dirty Melody/Wood animated video, you can find that here if you are so inclined).

Update: Thanks to Deanna McFadden of the Tragic Right Hip and HarperCollins Canada for confirming with her UK counterparts that the Ballard cover was designed by David Wardle.

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Published November 12, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, November 11th 2009

The Nabokov Collection — Art Director John Gall on the Vintage Nabokov redesign at Design Observer:

Nabokov was a passionate butterfly collector, a theme that has cropped up on some of his past covers. My idea was also a play on this concept. Each cover consists of a photograph of a specimen box, the kind used by collectors like Nabokov to display insects. Each box would be filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins, selected to somehow evoke the book’s content. And to make it more interesting… I thought it would be fun to ask a group of talented designers to help create the boxes.

John’s short essay is accompanied by a great slide show of the specimen boxes (above: The Luzhin Defense by Paul Sahre; below Speak, Memory by Michael Bierut).

And Joseph at The BDR has a nice follow up post, with a couple of nice vintage Nabokov covers.

So, do the specimen boxes (lovely as they are) work as covers? You tell me…

Amazon releases a Kindle app for PCs. But who cares? Hmm… I don’t know if I ‘care’ as such, but I do think it’s significant. Is it one more nail in the plastic coffin of single use devices? There’s more on the app at the Washington Post…

And while we’re on the subject of e-books…

The Internet Isn’t Killing Anything — From Russell Davies:

Something That’s Growing Is Not The Same As Something That’s Big.

Something That’s Declining Is Not The Same As Something That’s Small.

…Worth remembering I think.

Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009 — The New York Times choose their favourites (accompanied with a lovely slide show). The New Yorker‘s Adam Gopnik talks about the selection process with Sam Tanenhaus on the Book Review Podcast (pictured above: Tales From Outer Surburbia written and illustrated by the awesome Shaun Tan).

And finally…

A sneak peak at the new Krazy & Ignatz cover by Chris Ware for Fantagraphics.

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Published November 6, 2009

Something for the Weekend, November 6th, 2009

Wild Woodbines — The Creative Review profiles illustrator Tony Meeuwissen who designed the brilliant cover — based on a pack of cigarettes — for Keith Waterhouse’s Billy Liar pictured above (NB: David the Designer has more on this wonderful cover if you’re interested).

There is an exhibition, Tony Meeuwissen: 50 Years in Illustration and Graphic Art at the Subscriptions Rooms, George Street, Stroud (UK) from December 5th – 19th if you’re in the neighbourhood.

The Wonderful Wizards of Lodz — Vintage Polish kid’s books at A Journey Round My Skull.

In Praise of Chapbooks — Bryce Milligan, publisher/editor of Wings Press, at Publishing Perspectives:

I do not think that the average reader—no matter how happy he or she is with their voluminous digital libraries on their diminutive screens—will be satisfied to never have access to a true literary artifact, something tangible that connects them to a favorite author. It makes perfect sense that larger printed works violate both our economic and our evolving green sensibilities, but small artifacts of the author may remain a necessity, if only a psychological one.

He’s Just Like Me But >choke< EVIL! — Comics Alliance list their favorite comic book clichés.

Can you put more balloons in your stories? — Hark! A Vagrant: comics by K. Beaton (thx Sio):

And also in comics news… 70 Things You Didn’t Know About Marvel in The Times (via largehearted boy‘s Twitter).

Public Gothic — Having already ‘fessed up to slab-serif obsession earlier this week, I might as well tell you that I’m also slightly obsessed with vintage ephemera — especially luggage tags — so I’m very intrigued by this new typeface from Antrepo even though I’ve no idea how I’d use it or been able to download it!

And speaking of typography, ephemera, and luggage tags, take a look at Alistair Hall’s (We Made This) Flickr Set while you’re at it:

And finally…

Barack Obama Names Alan Moore Official White House Biographer:

“As evidenced by his epic run on Swamp Thing #21–64, Moore’s deft hand with both sociopolitical commentary and metaphysical violence makes him an ideal choice to chronicle my time in office”

Oh come on…. It would be awesome.

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