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Tag: exljbris

Published January 24, 2010

Something for the Weekend

Slim pickings in a week in which book nerds obsessed about the implications of the rumoured Apple tablet (and PS – if anyone else describes it as the fucking ‘unicorn’ it’s clobberin’ time…), while in a completely unrelated move (snarf!), Amazon announced it was going to allow iPhone style apps to be uploaded and sold on the Kindle (begging the question when does the Kindle become the Pontiac Aztek?) and — faster than you can say bait and switch — they offered self-published authors improved royalties.

But, anyway, here’s more fun stuff for your weekend pleasure…

What To Leave Out? — I Love Typography‘s favourite fonts of 2009, including the lovely Phaeton and Biographer (pictured above), as well as Jos ‘exljbris’ Buivenga’s  Calluna.

The big graphic novels of 2010 according to Publishers Weekly.

And finally… I’ve been meaning to link to this for ages, at least in part so I could post Erik Mohr‘s cover for Monstrous Affections by David Nickle…

Horror Stories — Waaaaay back in November The National Post chatted with the publishers and authors from dark fiction specialists ChiZine Publications :

[W]e wanted to produce beautiful, well-written books. Books you wanted to pick up — and when you did, you wouldn’t be disappointed by what was inside. Essentially, books we ourselves wanted to read…

Genre fiction is notorious for having cheesy, sloppily executed covers with no sense of design or what is attractive to potential book buyers. We’ve been incredibly lucky that Erik has made our books look so good. And by “good” I sometimes mean “disturbing.”

Maybe what we’ve managed to do with CZP is to find a niche that wasn’t being filled…or maybe we created our own niche.

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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 September 25, 2009

Something for the Weekend, September 25th, 2009

Great Ideas — Art director and designer David Pearson discusses his publishing venture White’s Books with Peter Terzian in Print Magazine (above: cover for Emma, published by White’s Books; illustrated by Amy Gibson):

Due to the arrival of eBooks, many prophesied the death of the printed word, but we see it as an opportunity to turn the spotlight back on the traditional methods of book production and to luxuriate in the craft and tactility of the physical book and the printed page. It’s lovely to be designing with longevity in mind as we aim to create objects that will be retained and cherished by their readers.

David Pearson also discusses his work for Éditions Zulma and Penguin. I’m hoping to post a Q & A with David on The Casual Optimist later this fall.

Questions Should Be Answered — Dutch type designer Jos Buivenga, whose quality free typefaces (including personal favourite Fontin Sans) are available from his one-man font foundry exljbris, interviewed in the MyFonts newsletter. Jos’ new typeface Calluna (shown above) looks rather lovely.

The Future of Publishing? — Patrick at the Vroman’s Bookstore blog looks at what publishers do and how they might do it (or something different) in the future. While there is nothing especially new here, it’s an interesting post in part because it’s written from the perspective of a bookstore. The comments are worth reading too, if only for Ann Kingman‘s contributions and hilarity of a certain self-styled “agent of change” having the audacity to accuse someone else of oversimplifying (pot introducing kettle). All of which is a good, solid reminder that I have a related post in my drafts folder than needs dusting off… *Sigh*

And on a related note…

Reimagining the Book — Mark of index//mb is looking for people to help organise a conference on authorship in Toronto.

And just FYI: There is a good chance that this will be the last post for a couple of weeks. Work stuff + Life Stuff + Internet Fatigue means that I need a break from even the gentle rigours of irregularly posting here. Hopefully normal service will resume in October (for what it’s worth…).

Out.

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