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Tag: Miscellany

Published March 20, 2010

Something for the Weekend

An illustration by Pascal Blanchet, author of the charming White Rapids*, for the National Post’s Spring Books Quarterly.

Text Without Context An interesting article on reading and the web by Michiko Kakutani in the New York Times, which discusses books by David Shields, Jaron Lanier, Cass Sunstein, Farhad Manjoo and others (and yes, I appreciate the irony of me of linking an article about the fragmentary nature of reading online and only quoting one paragraph):

THESE NEW BOOKS share a concern with how digital media are reshaping our political and social landscape, molding art and entertainment, even affecting the methodology of scholarship and research. They examine the consequences of the fragmentation of data that the Web produces, as news articles, novels and record albums are broken down into bits and bytes; the growing emphasis on immediacy and real-time responses; the rising tide of data and information that permeates our lives; and the emphasis that blogging and partisan political Web sites place on subjectivity.

The Bkkeepr — Book Oven’s Hugh McGuire interviews James Bridle of BookTwo and Bookkake:

We can berate publishers for making what we think are bad decisions about digital, but to accuse them of cluelessness just inflates a very dangerous animosity. Publishers love books as much, if not more, than most readers. It’s one of the very few industries where this is true almost all the way up. And we should be working together for the best of all possible futures for books and authors and readers.

(And you can read Hugh’s response to the Michiko Kakutani article — which he takes issue with — here)

Route One — Sarah Weinman at Daily Finance looks at indie publishers experimenting subscription models that reach readers directly.

And finally…

Designer Matt Avery talks about his beautiful design for Chicago by Dominic Pacyga (University of Chicago Press) at Faceout Books.

* White Rapids is published by D+Q and distributed in Canada by my employer, Raincoast Books.

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Published March 17, 2010

Midweek Miscellany


Flaunt it — Designer Armin Vit discusses the UnderConsideration book Flaunt: Designing Effective, Compelling and Memorable Portfolios of Creative Work at For Print Only.

How Art Became the Media — Lewis Lapham, editor of Lapham’s Quarterly (formerly editor of Harper’s Magazine), at Guernica magazine (via Bookslut on Twitter):

It isn’t that the country now lacks for painters painting pictures or poets writing poems, nor is it to say that stores of human energy and hope aren’t to be found in the novels of Elmore Leonard or the songs of Bruce Springsteen. It is to say that with the dawn of Reagan’s bright new morning in America, the notion of art as the way into a redemptive future had withered on the vine. Once again, as had been customary throughout most of the country’s history, art was seen as an embodiment of the good, the true, and the beautiful only to the extent that it could be exchanged for money.

George Lois on the iPad in the New York Observer (no, I’m not entirely sure how I missed this last week either):

“magazines will never die because there is a visceral feeling of having that thing in your hands and turning the pages. It’s so different on the screen. It’s the difference between looking at a woman and having sex with her.”

Flying the Coop — Another interesting installment of the National Post‘s ‘Ecology of Books’ series, this time on authors moving from small presses to big publishing. And there’s an interesting follow up from Daniel Wells, the publisher of Biblioasis one of the aforementioned Canadian small/independent presses (via Steven Beattie).

Microdistribution — This is fascinating… The Boulder Bookstore (Colorado) is experimenting with charging self-published authors for shelf-space and promotion (via Sarah Weinman on Twitter):

“Most people will come in at one of the higher fee amounts,” Arsen Kashkashian, the store’s head buyer and the architect of the program, told me. “That surprised us.” In fact, when the store first began charging its consignment authors back in 2007 (the fee-structure idea emerged when the store’s employees found themselves “inundated with self-published books, and there was a lot of work involved and not much reward”), its staff “thought people would grumble and complain” about the charges. But authors, Kashkashian says, have been generally grateful for the opportunity to sell and promote work that might otherwise be seen and appreciated only by their friends/spouses/moms: “‘I want the marketing, I want the exposure. I worked so hard on this project, and you guys are the only ones who could help me with it.’”

And finally…

Four Ways to Combines Fonts by H&FJ, built around a beautifully simple principle: “keep one thing consistent, and let one thing vary.”

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Published March 12, 2010

Something for the Weekend

Big Shit-Eating Grin — George Lois chooses 12 of his favourite Esquire covers at New York magazine. There are more iconic Esquire covers at George Lois’ website and there is, of course, a new book, George Lois: The Esquire Covers @ MOMA, published by Assouline. (NB the image above is not one of Lois’ 12, but it is great).

Objects of Desire — An interesting University College London podcast about the history of books and publishing featuring Professor Henry Woudhuysen, co-editor of the The Oxford Companion to the Book, and Professor Iain Stevenson,  author of Book Makers: British Publishing in the Twentieth Century (available in the US from University of Chicago Press) (via Ernesto Priego on Twitter).

The Dark Side — The Economist on Scandinavian crime fiction:

The cold, dark climate, where doors are bolted and curtains drawn, provides a perfect setting for crime writing. The nights are long, the liquor hard, the people… “brought up to hide their feelings” and hold on to their secrets.

Somebody’s Sins, But Not Mine — A two part interview with Patti Smith about her new memoir Just Kids at KCRW’s Bookworm. Part two is here.

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Published March 10, 2010

Midweek Miscellany

A true miscellany here: letterpress to Gil Scott-Heron with a lot of meat sandwiched in between… This is quite possibly why I blog…

Ditoria — An amazing video about showing the letterpress printing process by Roberto Bolado.

The Cost of Creating — Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig, author of Free Culture (and others), discussing the Google Book Settlement on NPR’s On The Media last month (via INDEX//mb):

[W]e need to once again think about what the balance should be between free access to culture and metered access to culture, because both extremes are mistakes, either the extreme that says everything is free because then lots of people won’t create because they can’t cover their cost of creating, or the regime that says everything needs to be licensed, because in that world there’s a whole range of creativity… that can’t begin to happen because the cost of negotiating and clearing those rights is just so extreme.

Stopping Saying “Innovation” — Scott Berkun, author of The Myths of Innovation, in The Economist (via Frank Chimero):

Worry more about being good because you probably aren’t. If your organization struggles to make half-decent products, has the morale of a prison, and nothing ever changes much less improves, why are you obsessing about innovation? You need to learn the basics of how to make something good, that solves real problems, works reliably, is affordable, and is built by a happy, passionate well rewarded staff that believes good ideas have a chance. If you can make the changes necessary for these basic but all too rare attributes to be true, then innovation, in all its forms, will be much easier to achieve, and it might just happen all on its own.

New Type York — A (beautifully designed) photoblog by graphic designer James Patrick Gibson recording the typographic artifacts of New York City.

And thinking of New York… The NY Times is planning to spin off its Book Review as a separate e-reader product.

The Vulture Gil Scott-Heron

A Wry Return — Sean O’Hagan profiles musician Gil Scott-Heron in The Observer, revealing an somewhat unexpected connection to Jamie Byng, director of Canongate Books. I say “somewhat” unexpected because having lived in Edinburgh just before Byng wrapped up his funk and soul club Chocolate City, it seems entirely reasonable to me now I stop and think about it:

The story of how Gil Scott-Heron’s new album came to be made is a long and convoluted one. It is, among other things, a testament to the abiding power of great music outside the mainstream to spread like a virus across cultures, across decades. It begins back in 1987 in a rented house in Edinburgh when a young student is mesmerised by his friend’s collection of soul and funk music from the halcyon days of the early 70s… “I was just taken aback by the voice, the words, the poetry,” remembers Jamie Byng who, 22 years on, is the director of Canongate Books and still a fervent soul fan… “Discovering those songs was an epiphanic moment for me…” So taken was Byng by those songs that, having bought and rebranded Canongate, he tracked down his hero and, in 1996, republished his two long-out-of-print novels, The Vulture and The Nigger Factory.

And here’s Gil Scott-Heron’s painfully appropriate cover version of Robert Johnson’s Me and the Devil:

Gil Scott-Heron’s books The Vulture and The Nigger Factory were recently reissued by Canongate.

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Published March 5, 2010

Something for the Weekend

Circulation and the City design by David Drummond

New from David Drummond

The Original Spirit — Toronto indie institution This Ain’t The Rosedale Library (one of the 10 best bookshops in the world according to The Guardian) featured at Books@Torontoist, with some nice quotes from owner Charlie Huisken:

“creative knowledge [is] accumulative and comes from many sources… Being an autodidact has served me well”

Books in the Age of the iPad — Craig Mod’s article on printed books and digital publishing caused much of a flutter on Twitter yesterday. I’m not sure that I entirely agree with his thesis — which seems to imply that some kinds of content can be completely divorced from their media — but his website is beautifully designed, and more importantly he makes some interesting points. I especially like his conclusion:

I propose the following to be considered whenever we think of printing a book:

  • The Books We Make embrace their physicality — working in concert with the content to illuminate the narrative.
  • The Books We Make are confident in form and usage of material.
  • The Books We Make exploit the advantages of print.
  • The Books We Make are built to last

In that vein, more on David Pearson‘s beautiful book cover designs for Cormac McCarthy at We Made This. I love that he used rubber stamps…

And finally… Jaron Lanier, author of You Are Not A Gadget, talks about the failure of Web2.0 with Aleks Krotoski of The Guardian:

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Published March 3, 2010

Midweek Miscellany

The “Consummate Amateur” — Graphic designer, collector and archivist JP Williams (who blogs at the wonderful amassblog) profiled at Sight Unseen.

Overcoming Creative Block — 25 Artists, designers, and creators share their strategies at ISO50. I rather like Erik Spiekermann’s pithy list:

  1. Avoid
  2. Think
  3. Research
  4. Collect
  5. Sketch
  6. Deconstruct

    Schriftguss AG — A lovely Flickr set of  type specimens  (via The Ministry of Type).

    And Finally…

    American Psycho in six panels by Claire Murray seen at The Creative Review. Genius.

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    Published March 1, 2010

    Monday Miscellany

    Simenon designed by Archie Ferguson

    Pub Psychology — Archie Ferguson, formerly of Knopf and now art director at HarperCollins, interviewed at the CoveredUp blog:

    Publishing has always seemed a lot more glamorous than it is. And if it ever was glamorous, those days are long, long gone. These days I spend a lot of time answering emails – not phone calls – from far and wide, running up and down the stairs… doing damage-control, and feeling more like I’m a psychologist as much as anything else.

    Virtual City — Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City, interviewed in The New Statesman:

    Manhattan, the great secular-commercial metropolis, the world’s first and greatest city founded on concepts other than religious or national identity – and therefore a kind of science-fiction city, a conceptual project, a place unnaturally subject to the distorting forces of capital, ideology, projection, wish-fulfilment and so on – has become…a place both persistently real and unreal. Or, an unreal place where real people are living out their existence… What’s gone wrong and right in this place has a special amount to tell us.

    The difference between Time Roman and Times New Roman — Because I know you’re curious.

    The Form of a Book — Another lovely, insightful post from A Working Library:

    On the page, the rhythm of the text emerges from both the macro design—the pleasing shape of the page, the proper amount of thumb space—and the micro—the right amount of leading, the evenness of the word spacing, the correct break of a line. On the screen, the rhythm of a text encompasses all of these things and more—the placement of a link, the shift from text to video and back again, the movement from one text to another. The rhythm becomes more complex as the orchestra gets larger, but the desire for rhythm does not subside.

    In order to create this rhythm, the book must be designed and composed for the screen. A beautiful digital text can no more be arrived at by “converting” from a print design than a beautiful print book can be created by converting a Word file. The digital book will never come into its own so long as it is treated as a byproduct, unworthy of attention.

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    Published February 24, 2010

    Midweek Miscellany

    Vintage Dostoevsky, design by Michael Salu

    Precisely and Concisely — The Caustic Cover Critic interviews designer and Artistic Director of Granta magazine Michael Salu:

    Bizarrely, designers looking for employment are often judged by what software they’re able to use. Intellect, cultural awareness and often creativity don’t seem to be values worthy of a resume. There is no substitute for good ideas, the rest are just supportive tools. I have always been quite a craft-led designer, but I am of the generation that studied with a mac in front of them and I think its good to understand the importance of both.

    The Honest Bookseller — Erin Balser of Books in 140 profiles Toronto independent bookstore Ben McNally Books for The Torontoist:

    “I’d rather have a book that sells one copy that no one else will sell than to stock several best sellers you can get anywhere,” McNally says. “That’s what makes this store. That’s why people come… My first responsibility is my customer. When I think a book should be cut by a third or if there’s a subplot that goes nowhere, I have to tell you that… I’m often a very critical reader. When people come and ask me ‘Is this any good?’ I have to be honest.”

    William Kentridge: Five Themes — Beautiful book design from Abbott Miller and Kristen Spilman at Pentagram.

    Speaking of Pentagram… Pentagram partner Paula Scher has some blunt stuff to say about design in a interview with Pr*tty Sh*tty.

    The Rules — Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, The Guardian asked authors — including Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman, and PD James, Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Sarah Waters, and Jeannette Winterson — for their personal dos and don’ts. (Part two is here).

    On the subject of writing, the wonderful BBC radio series The History of the World in a 100 Objects has recently touched on the history of writing, literature, and mathematics in episodes about the Early Writing Tablet, the Flood Tablet and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. The series is a collaboration with The British Museum. Great stuff.

    Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy
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    Published February 12, 2010

    Something for the Weekend

    [A quick note about the poll: thanks to everyone who voted, left a comment or sent me note this week — I really appreciate it. The feedback has been great. I’m going to shut the poll down at midnight tonight, but please let me know if you have any further thoughts about the direction of The Casual Optimist.]

    Lauren Kaiser’s Little Red Riding Hood seen at Type Theory (pictured above).

    liza-pro-underwareThe Oscars of Type — Ellen Lupton’s list of the year’s top typefaces at Print magazine. “Best Actress” was awarded to Underware’s Liza Pro (pictured above). My interview with Ellen Lupton is here.

    Happiness as By-product — Jessa Crispin founder of Bookslut interviewed by Jeff VanderMeer, author of Booklife (which Crispin was critical of interestingly):

    I was having a conversation with a writer the other day, and he stated that the best things are always by-products. Happiness is a by-product, and I loved that he said that. You can plot your journey to success or happiness or wealth or whatever it is you’re looking for, but if you’re too focused on the end result, you’re going to miss anything good going on around you… Not that we should all sing songs around the campfire and braid each other’s hair, but there has to be a combination of the two, forward motion and goal planning, but while taking a look at the people around you.

    Comics Studies Reader — Jeet Heer on comics and comic scholarship at Books@Torontoist:

    I think there’s a wide variety of things that can be done with comics, and I think we’ve only scratched the surface… One of the interesting things about manga is that kids are reading translated manga that reads right to left. Part of the reason that’s possible is because comics are both words and pictures – half of the translation work is already done. So you can look at a comic book in a language you don’t know and you won’t get everything but you can still get a fair bit of what it’s about. And so they have this sort of function as cultural ambassadors. You can actually learn a lot about a culture just by looking at the comics.

    The New Yorker 85th anniversary covers by Chris Ware, Adrian Tomine, Dan Clowes, and Ivan Brunetti seen at the Creative Review blog (Adaptation by Tomine pictured below).

    Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly (art editor at the aforementioned New Yorker) discuss The Toon Treasury of Classic Children’s Comics with (a particularly gushy) Michael Silverblatt for KCRW’s BookWorm :

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    Published February 5, 2010

    Something for the Weekend

    Book wonks are still abuzz about the whole Amazon vs. Macmillan thing (see here previously) — who won, who didn’t, WTF?, and Rupert Murdoch’s shit-stirring — but I’m reliably informed by someone whose job is looking cool at the photocopier* that it is a really boring topic of conversation, so I’m going to move on…

    The AIGA Design Archives — including the wonderful 50 Books/50 Covers — has been redesigned by Second Story, mercifully moving it away from its previous Flash interface so we can all link to it properly when we talk about it (pictured above: Brooklyn Modern designed by Projects Projects)

    Elements of an Incendiary Blog Post — Painfully on the money (via Kottke):

    This sentence contains the thesis of the blog post, a trite and obvious statement cast as a dazzling and controversial insight.

    This sentence claims that there are many people who do not agree with the thesis of the blog post as expressed in the previous sentence. This sentence speculates as to the mental and ethical character of the people mentioned in the previous sentence. This sentence contains a link to the most egregiously ill-argued, intemperate, hateful and ridiculous example of such people the author could find.

    Coverspy — “publishing nerds hit the subways, streets, parks & bars to find out what New Yorkers are reading…” A cover-oriented variation on Toronto’s Seen Reading (via SwissMiss).

    Context and Connections — A great interview with illustrator, graphic designer and writer Frank Chimero:

    There’s value to… knowing what your peers are working on, but it’s not a day-to-day concern. You’d probably get further checking a food blog every day, because it triangulates your interests and you’ll naturally come towards it wanting to make connections to what you’re doing and what you already know. Sure, you want your knowledge of the field to be deep, but it’s optimal to have your interests wide and varied. It’s makes your consumption more nourishing too, because all of a sudden you get context!

    And finally…

    Agent of Chaos — Bonkers and awesome, Werner Herzog (not really) reads Curious George:

    (No really, it’s not Werner Herzog).

    * Nic: I love you man.

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    Published February 3, 2010

    Midweek Miscellany

    A Wall in Palestine — more quiet mastery from Henry Sene Yee who excels in projects that require maximum discretion and minimal commentary. Like his cover design for Columbine,  A Wall in Palestine is notable for what it leaves out. An early contender for cover the year. You heard it here first.

    Making the World Fun to Look At — The Cleveland Plain Dealer has (what is believed to be) the first interview with Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin and Hobbes,  since 1989:

    I think some of the reason “Calvin and Hobbes” still finds an audience today is because I chose not to run the wheels off it.

    I’ve never regretted stopping when I did.

    Amen.

    Seven Things Publishers Need to Remember — A nice post by Kobo Books exec (and compulsive list maker) Michael Tamblyn on e-books and pricing:

    A reader should never have to worry about “leaving books behind” or “losing their library”. If you can’t download it and move it somewhere else, it’s worth less. Seriously. They’re books, not Atari 2600 video game cartridges.

    (But I’m waiting for the “7 Things E-tailers Need to Remember” post Michael. When’s that coming? You can post here if you want)

    The Lost 1970 Man Booker Prize — Commemorating novels missed out because of rule changes in 1971. Bonkers. But kind of great.

    Problem Solver — Ian Shimkoviak of The Book Designers interviews the legendary Carin Goldberg for their new blog CoveredUp:

    I’m not a sentimentalist. The e-book is inevitable. And they make sense. The publishing industry can’t sustain the old/current model for making/selling books. It’s wasteful and unsustainable. They have to embrace change. Good content will continue to be created whether it’s represented on paper or on a screen.  And there will always be a market, albeit small, for beautiful picture books. The role of the graphic designer is shrinking but it’s in our court to get involved in the next wave of imagery and ideas.

    And finally…

    Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City (which I liked, but wanted to like more), interviewed on KCRW’s Bookworm (via the incroyable Largehearted Boy):

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    Published January 27, 2010

    Midweek Miscellany

    The Backwards Novel Seen Backwards by Tom Gauld.

    I also love Tom’s Lost Fairy Tales for a promotional concertina booklet made by his agent Heart (surely there’s a full length book to be had here?).

    Ways of Reading from A Working Library:

    Every book alights a path to other books. Follow these paths as far as you can.

    Lovely.

    Back to Basics — Booktwo.org‘s James Bridle on the Apple tablet (what else?):

    I’ve spent several years urging publishers to get on board with new technologies and try new things, but equally I hope there’s space for a lot of publishers to get back to concentrating on what they do best: acquiring, editing, producing and publishing books… [W]e should probably stop scrambling to get on the latest bandwagon (vanilla Books-as-Apps, I’m looking at you), and concentrate on the basics: ebook production, metadata, integrated marketing, quality and consideration. There is a lot to be done, but this or that device will never be the be-all-and-end-all of the future of publishing.

    I think James has a point. But honestly, no one I know (and that is an admittedly limited sample) believes “this-or-that device” will magically “save” publishing. Surely it is only bloggers in need of straw men and ‘journalists’ paid to hyperventilate who say that kind of shit?

    Moving (swiftly) on…

    Modern Myths — Will Self on H. G. Well’s The War of the Worlds in The Times:

    The War of the Worlds is one of those books that demonstrates our culture’s surprising ability to continue the manufacture of myth. I say surprising, because one would think, with all the technological reproducibility of art now at our disposal — from raw print, to film, to digitisation — that there would be no room left for that hazy instability within which myth thrives.

    (Pictured above: The NYRB edition of The War of the Worlds with illustrations by Edward Gorey)

    And finally, completely unrelated to books…

    Dear Coffee I Love You… Yes, yes, I do. (Pictured above: What I’d Rather Be Doing)

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