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Category: Miscellany

Published May 16, 2009

Something for the Weekend, May 15th, 2009

The Story of God — designer Arthur Cherry discusses his elegant design (which uses Marian Bantjes’ typeface Restraint to such brilliant effect) for the new edition of Michael Lodahlr’s book at FaceOut Books.

A Manifesto — Ted Genoways, the editor of Virginia Quarterly Review, on the future of university presses and journals:

University presidents need to see what articulate ambassadors they have in their journals and presses, what tangible, enduring records they present of the variety and vigor of their sponsoring institutions…[G]reat universities extend well beyond the edges of their campuses. They reach out to the larger world, they challenge and engage the public, and the most effective and enduring way of doing so remains the written word.

HarperCollins Wants to Be Your Friend — Leon Neyfakh looks at publishers and social media in the New York Observer. Ostensibly it’s about the ever so anodyne HarperStudio, but more interesting stuff comes from the other people interviewed:

“I don’t know if it’s a direct response to the fact that publishing is in a very uncertain period right now, or if it’s just an idea whose time has finally arrived, but people right now are really interested in experimenting,” said Ami Greko, a 29-year-old digital marketing manager at Macmillan. “There seems to be a real sense of, ‘Let’s get creative—nothing is set in stone yet, so let’s just try a whole bunch of stuff.’”

Das Buch vom Jazz — The German-language version of The Book of Jazz, illustrated by Cliff Roberts ,  found in a used-bookstore by Today’s Inspiration’s Leif Peng. The black and white illustrations are wonderful.

Moaning Eton-boys & Middle-Aged Hackettes — A great defense of blogging by Nina Power at Infinite Thøught  (via PD Smith on Twitter):

Print media suffers from a lack of space; certainly it is selective, but it is also exclusive — all the stories that don’t get told, the injustices that get covered-up. We may feel we can ‘trust’ print journalists more than bloggers… but the sheer quantity and variety of information online allows for the exposure and discussion of things that might otherwise get ignored.

And finally…

The Tyranny of Data — The New York Times on Douglas Bowman‘s decision to leave his position as top visual designer at Google, and the  limitations of crowd-sourcing design:

“Getting virtually real-time feedback from users is incredibly powerful,” said Debra Dunn, an associate professor at the Stanford Institute of Design. “But the feedback is not very rich in terms of the flavor, the texture and the nuance, which I think is a legitimate gripe among many designers.”

Adhering too rigidly to a design philosophy guided by “Web analytics,” Ms. Dunn said, “makes it very difficult to take bold leaps.”

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Published May 13, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, May 13th, 2009

“Any colour, so long as it’s grey” — New typographic covers for the Faber editions of Samuel Beckett,  designed by London-based studio A2/SW/HK. You can see more from the series at Faber’s Flickr photostream.

The Publishers’ Dilemma — Tobias Schirmer on publishing’s digital future:

[D]igitalization is not about a product moving from its analogue to a digital form. It is a revolution that changes everything. The old business models don’t work the way they used to. Inevitably, publishing needs to think about how it can still inject value somewhere in between the creation of content and its distribution. Not transition but change management is needed.  Acknowledging this is the first step in getting out of the publishers dilemma.

Now is the Winter of our Discontent — Peter Olson, the former chairman and CEO of Random House, is feeling gloomy in Publishers Weekly. I wonder how much of this only applies to bloated multinationals?:

With the recession accelerating changes that are already taking place in the market, the world after 2009 will likely begin to look very different for book publishers, and a likely return to the relative security of the last decade may be wishful thinking.

Tintin and the Broken Records — 600 lots associated with the cartoonist Hergé were sold at auction at the weekend:

The sale in Namur, southern Belgium, dominated by five large hand-drawn pages of original cartoon strips, raised 1,172,000 euros (1.57 million dollars), including charges, — a world record for Herge-associated items and a cartoon strip book record in Belgium, said Thibaut Van Houtte, an expert on hand for the Rops auction house sale.

Titles Designed by Saul Bass — A collection of Bass’ incredible film credit sequences at Not Coming To A Theater Near You (via Grain Edit on Twitter):

One is pressed to cite an example of an active, self-contained, and characteristic credits sequence in film prior to the work of Saul Bass. And…  in regard to innovation, renown, and influence, Bass’ impact in credits design remains virtually unparalleled, even to this day.

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Published May 8, 2009

Somthing for the Weekend, May 8th, 2009

Anything But Saintly — More pulp goodness seen at The Old-Timey Paperback Book Covers Flickr pool.

The Decline and Fall of Books — Nicholas Clee, editor of Book Brunch, dons “The End is Nigh” sandwich-board in The Times:

A Gutenberg-style revolution is not… expected in the next few months. But if you are a lover of well-stocked bookshops, then you should enjoy them while you can.

Poets Ranked by Beard Weight — Or why I <3 the internet (via eightface).

Penguin Automaton made by artist-maker Wanda Sowry to celebrate Penguin’s 70th anniversary and available from Art Meets Matter . Apparently winding the handle “causes the Penguin to drink from a mug, its flippers to waggle and a piece of 70th Birthday cake to rise magically from the table” (via the lovely tweeps at New Directions ).

Good Typography is Invisible, Bad Typography is Everywhere — Stephanie Orma talks to five acclaimed designers about the art of type in the SF Examiner. Interesting to see some conflicting/contrasting opinions in the mix…

7 Habits of Highly Effective People I Know — A nice list from Noisy Decent Graphics Ben Terrett.

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Published May 6, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, May 6th, 2009

Vintage awesomeness — Hella Haase cover seen at the Vintage Paperbacks (Non-Penguin) Flickr Pool.

Make it Good — Jacket copy matters according to a Publishing Trends survey:

Flap copy is especially important for fiction. And title and cover impact are closely related to the impact of jacket copy. If the flap copy defies the expectation created by the cover and title—if, for instance, the cover of the book leads the reader to expect a thriller but the flap copy identifies it as horror—readers are less likely to buy it.

The Common Addiction to Mediocrity — Guy Kawasaki talks to Hartmut Esslinger, founder of frog design and professor at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna (lessons here for the book industry for sure):

Excellent products require more then just a good designer or a good design agency—they require humanistic and cultural vision, courage and discipline in execution.

Which leads quite nicely to Nora Young‘s podcast great conversation with filmmaker Gary Hustwit, director of Objectified and Helvetica, on CBC Radio’s Spark.

Thrift-Store Philosophy — some nice vintage book cover design finds at the always excellent Ward-O-Matic.

Instant Gratification — An interesting Q&A with Patrick Brown of Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena (PW‘s Bookseller of the Year in 2008) on The Big Bad Book Blog:

People greatly underestimate how important browsing is for physical purchases, largely, I think, because it’s lacking in the online world. People come to an ecommerce site already knowing what they want to buy (for the most part). This isn’t so in our store, where people frequently come in for one book and end up leaving with a book that caught their eye on the way to the section or waiting in line at the register. The other thing we provide that I think is invaluable is a physical place for literary culture to happen.

Well-Aimed Typewriter Keys — After 70 years, Little, Brown and Co. have unveiled a new logo  designed by  Lance Hidy.

The Book Depository — who have a great range of books and offer free shipping world wide (and have this great live map), has launched an affiliate program. Can I humbly request someone develop a wordpress widget for it please?

And lastly, The New Yorker‘s The Book Bench blog has a sneak preview of the new Dan Clowes book.

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Published April 28, 2009

Monday Miscellany, April 27th, 2009

Every battle is won before it is even fought — Amazon acquires Stanza. Like just about everyone else, I was completely blindsided by this. But should we have seen it coming?

The Black Series — Paperback covers from 1960’s Swedish crime series “Svarta serien”  illustrated by Per Åhlin seen at Martin Klasch’s blog.

100 Books on Typography — Compiled by Charles Nix president of the Type Directors Club (via Design Observer).

Writing Without Words — Stefanie Posavec’s gorgeous visualizations of text and the writing styles of various authors (via @Ashbury&Ashbury).

The Art of Penguin Science Fiction—  James Pardey is creating an archive of Penguin science fiction cover designs. If I have one complaint it’s that you can’t see larger versions of the covers, but otherwise it is brilliant (via Ace Jet 170).

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Published April 25, 2009

Something For The Weekend, April 25th,2009

Comic Shelves by Oscar Nunez for Fusca Design (via The Ephemerist)

Goodnight Mechanical Dinosaur — Neil Gaiman on Batman in Wired (via LinkMachineGo):

[T]he great thing about Batman and Superman, in truth, is that they are literally transcendent. They are better than most of the stories they are in. That’s just Sturgeon’s Law: “90 percent of everything is crap.” Can you imagine how many thousands, or millions, of words have been written on Batman? Try to read them and you’re looking at 100,000 pages, perhaps a million, and you can assume that 90 percent of it is crap. Yet the 10 percent, and even better the 1 percent of that 10 perfect, is absolutely glorious. That pays for everything.

Tea and Cake — Louise Tucker chats to colleague Scott Pack about The Friday Project on HarperCollins’ 5th Estate blog:

It is still the only imprint to specialise in taking great web content and making books from it. That gives us a much wider brief than most people think…

Our future plans are very exciting. Our author deals will now all be profit-share arrangements with us splitting the profits of the books 50/50 with the authors. We are soon to announce some bold eBook initiatives and there is more to come.

Figuring it Out — Type legend Erik Spiekermann, co-author of Stop Stealing Sheep, on the basics of typography.  Not new, but still a great primer/reminder.


Will it sell in Moosejaw? — Book designers Bill Douglas (The Bang), Ingrid Paulson, (Ingrid Paulson Design), Angel Guerra (Archetype Design), Terri Nimmo, (Random House), and Kelly Hill, (Random House), discuss their craft in The National Post (Ingrid Paulson’s cover design for Kate Ausptiz’s The War Memoir of HRH Wallis Duchess of Windsor pictured above).

Wrapper’s Delight — A librarian at the Bodleian Library has found the earliest-known book dust jacket in an archive of book-trade ephemera:

Unlike today’s dust jackets, wrappers of the early 19th century were used to enfold the book completely, like a parcel. Traces of sealing wax where the paper was secured can still be seen on the Bodleian’s discovery, along with pointed creases at the edges where the paper had been folded, showing the shape of the book it had enclosed.

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Published April 22, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, April 22nd, 2009

Blue Prints for a World Revolution — seen at the Antiquarian Bookshop 108 Buddhas, which has an amazing collection of avant-garde journals and books from Japan and Eastern Europe  in their gallery section (via Michelle McCormick’s Inspiration Resource ).

12 Steps to Better Book Publishing — Good stuff from Jonathan Karp, publisher and editor-in-chief of Twelve Books in Publishers Weekly:

It seems likely that the influence and cultural centrality of major publishers, as well as other producers of information and entertainment, will diminish as digital technology enables more and more people to create and share their work. This is exactly why publishers must distinguish themselves by doing better what they’ve always done best: champion books that offer carefully conceived context, style and authority.

The State of the Industry — Neil Nyren, senior VP, publisher and editor in chief of G.P. Putnam’s Sons talks to author  J.T. Ellison at Murderati (via @sarahw).

Poetic Interiors — Some lovely typography for Arrays of Conscious by Chanson Duvall at Beyond the Covers.

Embracing Change — Victoria Barnsley, chief executive and publisher at HarperCollins UK,  profiled in The Guardian:

There are still concerns about the digital future, such as how to continue making money. “There are some very big questions that we still have to answer – the biggest one being value,” says Barnsley. “How to make sure that consumers are going to be prepared to pay for digital content, because a lot of them are getting quite used to getting it for free?”

And yet…

Why newspapers can’t charge for online content — Dan Kennedy elsewhere in The Guardian:

I have no philosophical objection to the idea that news organizations ought to be able to charge for their online content. The problem is that it’s highly unlikely to work – mainly because there are too many sources of free, high-quality news with which they’re competing.

Font of Ill Will — Vincent Connare, designer of Comic Sans, profiled at the WSJ:

The font, a casual script designed to look like comic-book lettering, is the bane of graphic designers, other aesthetes and Internet geeks. It is a punch line: “Comic Sans walks into a bar, bartender says, ‘We don’t serve your type.'”

And finally…

Soldiers of Lead — An introduction to layout and typography for use in the Labour Party  (via Design Observer).

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Published April 17, 2009

Something for the Weekend, April 17th, 2009


Isotype — Gerd Arntz’s amazing pictograms and visual signs for the visual language Isotype at the beautifully designed The Gerd Arntz Web Archive (pictured above).

Jacket(s) — Much as I admire Chip Kidd’s book covers, most of them are just too familiar to re-post here. But I hadn’t seen this ingeniously layered design for Kenzo Kitakata’s Ashes before even though it was published by Vertical in 2003 (pictured above). Seeing it all laid out, it’s really hard to begrudge Mr. Kidd’s reputation for awesomeness.

We like to be part of something — Nick Harkaway on connections:

A paper book has a history. Somewhere, at some time, an author wrote it all down, printed it out, gave it to an editor, who also worked over it. The book was typeset – yes, on a computer, these days, but still — and finally pressed and packaged and distributed. There is a chain of physical events which leads from me to you. With old editions, it’s even more direct. With signed ones, it’s a handshake. We like to connect. And digital books feel as if they’re trapped behind glass. The book is in the machine, and we can’t open the cover and touch the pages.

Black, white and read all over — Creative Review looks at Faber & Faber‘s new editions of 20th Century poetry. The books feature specially commissioned woodcut and linocut cover illustrations.  The new editions are part of the Faber’s 80th anniversary celebrations. You can see more of the cover images at designer Miriam Rosenbloom’s design:related page.

The Disappointment Brokers — I going to go out on a limb and say this is another must-read for book-industry types from Poets & Writers — Literary agents Anna Stein, Jim Rutman, Maria Massie, and Peter Steinberg have a fascinating conversation about their profession and the state of the industry:

here’s the silver lining: [The industry’s] unhealthy enough that it’s an exciting time. It’s broken enough that publishers and agents and everyone has to change. Everyone has to rethink what they’re doing. So we have a group responsibility, and an opportunity, in a way that the industry has probably never seen before.

The Legacy of Modernism — Spiegel Online celebrates 90 years of Bauhaus (via @PD_Smith).

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Published April 15, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, April 15th, 2009

The #amazonfail shitstorm — from Amazon’s awful “ham-fisted”  glitch (a phrase so dirty it’s probably de-listed from their own searches) to the seething self-righteous indignation on Twitter — has been enough to make me want turn off the internet and go back to bed. But if you need  an overview of the whole sorry story, business reporter Andrea James has done a very thorough job following it for Amazon’s local newspaper the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and summaries, shivering with schadenfreude, can be found in the New York Times, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, and the National Post.  No doubt the other major dailies were all over it too…

Former PW editor Sara Nelson at The Daily Beast , Evgeny Morozov at Foreign Policy, and the Vromans Bookstore Blog offer some alternative perspectives.

But I’ve got to say I agree with Jessa Crispin at BookSlut: “I’m bored with this.”

(UPDATE: Clay Shirky has written perhaps the most thoughtful post on #amazonfail I’ve read to date: The Failure of #amazonfail)

Lets. Move. On…

Straight Up — Knopf designer Peter Mendelsund who moonlights as art director of Vertical Press and blogs at Jacket Mechanical,  interviewed at the always ace FaceOut Books (Smell Man by Munenori Harada, designed by Peter Mendelsund pictured above).


Contact — Filmmaker and writer Adam Harrison Levy on William Klein’s recent appearance in New York and the importance book-signings (William Klein: Buicks, 2 tiered, New York, 1955, Howard Greenberg Gallery, pictured above):

A book signing is a manifestation of an urge to recover something that we, as a culture, fear losing — namely the hand of the artist in the age of mechanical (and digital) reproduction. Now more than ever it seems that we want to get close to creativity: to hear the voice and see the skin and experience the physical presence of the person who made something that we deem to be meaningful. Is this because so much of our lives now is mediated through a screen?

What Went Wrong? — An interesting article (and something of a mea culpa) in the Boston Globe about the mistakes and missed opportunities made by newspapers underestimating the impact of the web.

In Perpetua — MyFonts strike up a ‘dialogue’ with Eric Gill (1882 – 1940), stonecarver, graphic artist, type designer and writer:

If we insist on the ornamental we are not making the best of our system of manufacture, we are not getting the things that system makes best. The process by which a railway locomotive has become the beautiful thing it now is, this process must be welcomed in all other departments of manufacture. … And ornamental typography is to be avoided no less than ornamental architecture in an industrial civilization.

We Love Typography —  “FFFFound for all things type, typography, lettering, & signage” created by I Love Typography in collaboration with Kari Pätilä.

And finally, I would like to pass on my condolences to the friends and family of Derek Weiler, editor of the Quill & Quire, who died at the weekend, aged 40.

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Published April 10, 2009

Something for the Weekend

The Alcuin Society announced the 2008 Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada this week. Utopia/Dystopia by Geoffrey James, designed by George Vaitkunas, published by Douglas & McIntyre, (pictured above) won first prize in the pictorial category. A full list of the winners is available here (PDF).

The Hidden Revolution — Inside Higher Ed discusses an article (sadly not available online) by Sandy Thatcher, director of the Penn State University Press, about digital publishing at university presses:

Thatcher’s argument, in brief, is that the peculiar challenges faced by university presses have given them an incentive to use digital resources in ways that put them somewhat ahead of their peers in the world of trade or mass-market publishing. Given the small market for most scholarly titles, academic publishers were in a unique position to benefit from short-run digital publishing (SRDP) and print-on-demand (POD) technologies.

Ten Grids That Changed the World — Swiss Legacy reviews Hannah B Higgins’ The Grid Book:

Charting the evolution of each grid, from the Paleolithic brick of ancient Mesopotamia through the virtual connections of the Internet, Higgins demonstrates that once a grid is invented, it may bend, crumble, or shatter, but its organizing principle never disappears.

Also: The Grid Book reviewed in The Guardian.

The Need for Balance — Novelist Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware on fatuous articles about self-publishing:

For most writers… the path of self-publishing offers substantial downsides and pitfalls… and successes… remain few and far between. These hard facts are way less sexy than the vision of a brave new technological world that makes it possible for (a few) authors to bypass the traditional route to success–but they are no less real. In my opinion, journalists who write about this issue have a responsibility to cover both sides.

Taking the Internet and Printing it Out — Ben Terrett (Noisy Decent Graphics and Really Interesting Group) talks about publishing Things Our Friends Have Written on the Internet — a newspaper collecting some of the best blog posts of 2008 — with Nora Young on CBC Radio’s Spark.

This week’s Spark also has a neat interview with YouTube remix genius Kutiman. If you haven’t seen/heard Kutiman’s Thru You music project, check  out The Mother of All Funk Chords.

“God Damn That’s A Good Looking Blue” — Winston Eggleston talks about his father, the photographer William Eggleston (whose work was recently used for the cover NYTBR):

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Published April 6, 2009

Monday Miscellany, April 6th, 2009

Gregg Kulick‘s design for Being and Time (pictured above) seen at The BDR (of course). You can see more of Gregg’s work on his website.

Try before you buy — Matthew Baldacci, VP of of marketing and publishing operations at St Martin’s Press, talks to Book Business about ‘Read-it-First’, a free email service that allows subscribers to sample books before they decide to buy them (via Joe Wikert).

Can ‘Curation’ Save Media? — Steve Rosenbaum at The Business Insider:

Curation is the new role of media professionals.

Separating the wheat from the chaff, assigning editorial weight, and — most importantly — giving folks who don’t want to spend their lives looking for an editorial needle in a haystack a high-quality collection of content that is contextual and coherent. It’s what we always expected from our media, and now they’ve got the tools to do it better.

City of Juxtapostions — a short Q & A with Portuguese designer and illustrator Cristiana Couceiro (mentioned previously here for her New York Times Book Review cover illustration) at Untrendy Graphics:

Lisbon is deliciously decadent, ripped in time, full of vintage elements. And I let myself get lost in those little details. In shops that closed down, but which still hold, intact, beautiful examples of typography and logotypes on the shop windows. On neighbourhood hair-dressers and groceries. Lisbon seems to fluctuate between the old and the new.

The Fox — A beautiful cover design  seen at Sci-Fi-O-Rama. Apparently the illustration was originally used for 1967 movie adaption of D.H. Lawrence’s novella (via The Ministry of Type).

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Published April 3, 2009

Something For The Weekend, April 3rd, 2009

On a very wet and miserable day in Toronto, it only seems appropriate to start with a couple of books about the rain and then move on to some steaming hot coffee before all the usual book miscellany…

Stickers and Stuff lauds Helen Borten’s lovely illustrations for Franklyn M. Branley’s book Rain and Hail (pictured above). And  Andy Smith shares some of his illustrations for his silkscreen book The Rainy Season on his blog (pictured below).

And, while were on the subject of Andy Smith, he’s posted some of his book jacket work  on Flickr (via Beyond the Covers).

The Daily Grind — Benjamin Obler, author of Javascotia, on his 5 Favourite Cups of Coffee in a Day at the Penguin blog:

It’s so obvious, I know, but the morning cup — the first — morning cup — is like the pioneer. The self-sacrificer. Without it, there would be no others… Even on a regular day, it’s a workhorse.

Head On — Indie heartthrob Richard Nash talks to Interview Magazine (via Booksquare):

It is very complicated for an unknown writer to reach an audience of readers given the vast numbers of unknown writers out there. How do people find out about it? So I believe in the role of intermediaries. People always look to trusted friends who might be more expert or knowledgeable in a given area for advice about things… The question is, who are going to be those people. The model is going to shift from kind of a gatekeeper model to an advisor/service model.

Mr. Nash was also interviewed by BookSlut back in March.

I watch you read — Julie Wilson,  AKA Seen Reading and publicist for Canadian publisher Anansi,  is now blogging for Walrus magazine.

Atomized — Mark Coker, CEO of e-publishing service Smashwords, talks about e-books and iPhones with Maria Schneider at  Editor Unleashed.

Bite-Size Edits — The Book Oven launches “a tool that makes proofreading easy and might just be the most fun you’ve ever had spotting typos with your clothes on.” The Book Oven blog has more. (NB Bite-Size Edits is still in private alpha, but  I have a couple of invitations so email/DM me or leave a comment below if you would like to be involved).

And finally, Carny Kill as seen at Pop Sensation (words fail):

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