Tag: Q & A

Published November 17, 2009

Q & A with Isaac Tobin, University of Chicago Press

To my embarrassment, it wasn’t until his wonderful design for Obsession by Lennard J. Davis that I really began to pay attention to Isaac Tobin‘s work. There was something about the lettering — painstakingly created with pin pricks into thick cardstock — that made me curious about the designer. Who would do that?

But clearly I should have been paying closer attention.

By the time Obsession was published last year, Isaac’s work had already been recognised by the Art Directors Club, the Association of American University Presses, and The Type Director’s Club, and his covers included in AIGA 50/50 and the Print Magazine Regional Annual.

As senior designer at the University of Chicago Press, his portfolio is full of understated, witty designs for books on topics as diverse as American humor, citrus, Iraq, Islam, Italian culture, Victorian illumination, Yiddish and everything in between. And thanks to his imaginative use of type, there is always a lot more show than tell, which cannot be easy with academic titles (and their epic subtitles).

Needless to say, Isaac is more than just one cover. I think his work is remarkable. I hope you agree…

Design by Isaac Tobin

Design by Isaac Tobin

What inspired you to become a book designer?

I grew up in a family of academics and my parents were always working on their books; sending off manuscripts, going over proofs, preparing indexes, and eventually receiving their cover designs. I was always interested in art but designing books didn’t occur to me until much later.

I studied graphic design at RISD and fell in love with typography but wasn’t sure what to do after graduation. Luckily one of my teachers (who worked as a book designer) knew that books would be a good fit for me, and let me know that Beacon Press, one of her clients, had an opening for an assistant designer.

Book design turned out to be perfect for me, and I’ve semi-unintentionally ended up in the familiar world of academic publishing, about as close as I could get to the family business while still doing graphic design. And now I’ve had the privilege of designing covers for both of my parents. My brother is writing his dissertation right now so I may also get to design the cover of one of his books.

Design by Isaac Tobin

Briefly, could you tell me about University of Chicago Press?

The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the U.S. We publish about 250 books a year. About a third of those are trade books for general audiences, and the rest are either specialist or academic monographs. Print runs vary dramatically but I’d say the average is about 1000. And of course we’re most well known for publishing the Chicago Manual of Style.

There are 8 of us in the book design department, and we all design both covers and interiors, as well as typeset illustrated books in-house. Jill Shimabukuro, our creative director, has put together a really strong group of designers and it’s a great place to work.

Illustration by Lauren Nassef; design by Isaac Tobin

What is your role there, and approximately how many covers do you work on a season?

I’m a senior designer, and work on about 30-40 covers per year.

How is working at university press different from working at a trade publisher?

I think the biggest difference is that university press designers normally work on both covers and interiors (and typeset illustrated books too). Most trade designers are much more specialized, and work on either covers or interiors.

Academic press art and production budgets are also probably lower than at trade publishers, but I imagine all publishers are trying to cut costs wherever they can these days.

Design by Isaac Tobin

Could you describe your design process?

It really depends on the book. When I’m assigned a book I jot down my first ideas in crude thumbnail sketch form. These tend to be the most obvious and cliched solutions, but sometimes my first reaction is the strongest and purest. Most of the time I put together a big messy Illustrator file filled with visual research and typeface tests. I like to quickly style the title in lots of different typefaces so I can get a sense of the potential word shapes. Then I start combining and recombining various elements and quickly building crude comps so I can explore lots of different options at once. I like being able to zoom out and see all my different comps in a single window. The hardest part is always when I have to stop generating new ideas and variations and start editing down to a single design.

Design by Isaac Tobin

What are your favourite books to work on?

I’ve gotten to work on a couple of books that focus on the history of a single idea; Obsession and Accident. Both were dream opportunities from a design perspective because they were each about a single, clear, yet abstract subject, and their short titles allowed for bold, expressive typography.

I also enjoy working on the less glamorous academic monographs with small print runs and specialist audiences. They often have really suggestive and interesting subject matters. And because of the lower sales expectations it also tends to be easier to get more subtle or unusual designs approved.

Design by Isaac Tobin

What are the most challenging?

The covers that are asked to communicate too much. Sometimes the title of a book doesn’t clearly define the genre or subject matter, so it is important for the jacket design to define it instead. Sometimes everyone can’t agree on just how a book should be positioned in terms of subject matter and genre, and we have to go through multiple cover designs before the right balance is found.

Lettering by Lauren Nassef; design Isaac Tobin

What was the inspiration for the cover of Obsession: A History?

This book is a wide ranging history of the idea of obsession and the way it has changed over time. Because obsession can be such an important part of the creative process, I wanted to find a way to make the cover itself a result of an obsessive act.

To keep things simple I decided to not bring in outside imagery and work with the title itself. I’m a sucker for the classic typography 101 exercise where you make a word look like its meaning, and the one-word title was a great opportunity. But my attempts to construct the word “obsession” with repetitive typographic elements on the computer were falling flat. My wife pointed out that the computer was making the repetition too easy, and it would be better to make it by hand so the hours of work would be visible in the final product. She had actually been making drawings with pin pricked holes years ago and suggested using that technique. Right away I knew she was right, and could see exactly how the cover would come together.

What was it like collaborating with Lauren on the cover?

Like many of our collaborations, it emerged naturally. I pitch a lot of my cover ideas to her first, and show her all of my comps, so she’s often involved in my work, and in the course of one of these discussions we realized that not only was her idea the right idea for the book, but she was the one who could pull it off. This was a very easy collaboration for me; she pretty much came up with the idea and then did basically all the work. All I had to do was design the typography (in my go to home-made sanserif Attleboro), take the photo at the end, and handle the ancillary type.

Design by Isaac Tobin (using display type Attleboro)

Spread from Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

Do you see any recent trends in book design?

It seems like more cover designers are creating their own lettering and imagery these days. I guess the DIY approach that started with crude and faux-naive hand-made designs has evolved into something more refined and craftsmanship-based. A lot of these custom letterforms and images are being drawn on the computer, but whether handmade or digital they are clearly labored over.

I’m probably too close to the subject matter to be a good judge though. I try not to analyze design trends or how my work fits into them too much. I used to do that a lot and found it kind of crippling, so I’ve been trying to follow my instincts more. My instincts are probably just subconscious recapitulations of the dominant trends, but I’m happier this way.

Illustration Lauren Nassef; design Isaac Tobin

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

I really can’t believe how many great cover designers are working right now. It’s both incredibly inspiring and humbling. The list of designers I love is too long to recite here and you’re off to a great start with this interview series. I don’t know if the field is getting stronger or if the internet is making it easier to see more work. Maybe a bit of both; the internet is breaking down barriers and putting all of us in direct conversation/competition, leading to better work. Design Related has been a big part of this, as have all the cover blogs. I remember when the only way to see new covers was to prowl bookstores and pore over the AAUP and AIGA annuals.

I’m continually inspired by the work my colleagues at the UofC Press are doing. I think we’ve all gotten better over the last few years and keep inspiring each other. It’s always exciting when I go to grab a print from the communal laser printer and accidentally see someone else’s cover. Not all of my colleagues have websites (yet!) but here are the ones who do: Matt Avery, Maia Wright, Natalie Smith, Mike Brehm, and Dustin Kilgore.

My good friends from college Jenny Volvovski and Matt LaMothe started a design firm with another RISD friend, Julia Rothman, and they’re doing amazing work. And finally my wife Lauren Nassef is a constant inspiration. She just completed the second year of her drawing blog where she posts a new drawing every day.

Design by Isaac Tobin

Interior detail from Cartographies of Travel & Navigation

What does the future hold for book cover design?

I’m really not sure.

But E-books are definitely going to change things. I won’t get into the future of text design (except to say e-books won’t really be viable until they support decent typography and don’t strip away all our work in favor of badly justified default fonts) but I would speculate that cover design is going to get less focused on the cover itself and more on what you might call book identity systems. As books are increasingly sold in multiple formats and for different devices, we’ll have to transition away from designing objects to designing open ended systems. In a best case scenario, this could be great and provide lots of opportunities for inventive designs that range from masterfully produced collectible physical books to all manner of online formats. I hope that publishers continue to support cover design and recognize the value that good design can add to their books, whatever format they may be published in.

Thanks Isaac!

Illustration by Lauren Nassef; design by Isaac Tobin (for Kiepenheuer & Witsch)

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

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Published November 10, 2009

Q & A with David Pearson, Type As Image

Penguin Great Ideas

Does British designer David Pearson really need an introduction?

Even if you don’t recognise the name immediately — and perhaps it is less familiar on this side of the Atlantic — then you will almost certainly recognise David’s type-driven design work: Penguin by Design by Phil Baines, Pocket Penguins, Penguin Great Loves, Penguin Great Journeys, Penguin Reference, and, of course, the astonishing Penguin Great Ideas series.

When the first set of Great Ideas titles arrived they looked like nothing else in the bookstore. Each cover was unique and yet they all fitted perfectly within the series. Their thick paper covers, limited colour palette and bold typography were clearly a wink to the design history of Penguin books (and perhaps the Arts & Craft movement) but also imaginative, playful, and starkly modern.

Since then, there have been three more sets in the Great Ideas series with a fifth on the way. David still works with Penguin, but has set up his own firm. He has designed covers for Éditions Zulma, and somehow found the time to help launch White’s Books.

David and I chatted over email…

Illustration by Michael Kirkham; design by David Pearson

How did you get into book design?

Whilst at college I was lucky enough to be offered a work placement by my Typography tutor, Phil Baines. The job was to design a large-scale art monograph for Phaidon Press and Phil walked me through every stage of the book’s production, from styling the edited manuscript through to the final layouts. I even got to run my designs past Alan Fletcher, who at the time was responsible for overseeing Phaidon’s visual output. This seemed like an absurdly privileged position for a student to be in. The first time I went to Phil’s studio he told me off for not aligning the letters on his hot and cold taps so you can imagine how fastidiously constructed my pages became under his tutelage. Before long I began to laugh at Phil’s funny ways and he in turn mocked my special design slippers. A friendship was born, nicknames were awarded and my first experience with books turned out to be an entirely lovely one. Moving into my third year, I knew that book design was for me and began to check Penguin’s website every week for job vacancies. For all sorts of obvious reasons I knew that I wanted to work for the company and made sure that I checked throughout my final year at college, desperate as I was to remain in London afterwards. I got lucky and landed a job as text designer (setting the insides of books) the day after I graduated.

This is a terrible question, but I’m curious: Which came first, your interest in Penguin’s design history, or designing books about Penguin’s design history?

Oh, absolutely the former. I was already an avid collector and the idea for a design retrospective was one that I’d run past my Art Director before it was eventually tagged onto the company’s 70-year anniversary celebrations. I’d always wanted to get into the archives and have a really good poke around and fortunately for me, this gave me the perfect excuse. If I was unaware of the magnitude of the company’s past achievements they very quickly became apparent as I worked my way through the vast isles of books.

The Penguin archive

Experimental layout from the Penguin archive

What was it like working with designer and typographer Phil Baines on Penguin By Design?

Having been given an enormous amount of freedom by the company (to personally manage the project) I found myself in a position where I could enlist an author. Phil seemed like the perfect choice because of his analytical and objective writing style. The last thing I wanted was a blinkered, frothing account of the company’s history because even a cursory glance round the archive revealed some decidedly dark periods. Phil and I keep very similar hours so the book took shape very naturally and it felt strangely normal to work through the night before heading to a pub together the following morning. Indeed, because there was no framework in place for our department to produce books of this kind, I had to rely on the goodwill of my Art Director, Jim Stoddart as I would design covers during the day and then the design book at night. The lines often became blurred and I was once asked to be escorted from the building as it was judged that I had not left for over two days. Phil is currently working on Puffin by Design, a partnering edition to Penguin by Design and as much as I would’ve liked to have been asked to work on it I suspect that we’re both better off that I wasn’t!

Artwork by Phil Baines; design by David Pearson

Your work on Penguin’s Great Ideas series won you a D&AD Yellow Pencil. What was the design brief for books?

Like all the good ones it was a happy blend of strict parameters (most notably in terms of budget) and creative freedom (there being no existing blueprint to adhere to or living authors to appease). The series’ success should be attributed to many different factors: Editor Simon Winder’s original idea was a great one, implying that world-changing thought and writing equates to Penguin, while the finished books seemed to fit a model of what people wanted from the company, a reaffirmation of Allen Lane’s original philosophy; but above all the publisher displayed an unfaltering level of confidence in the project and allowed us to break some fairly established rules in the process.

Artwork and design by David Pearson

Artwork and design by David Pearson

Artwork and design by David Pearson

The fourth series of Great Ideas has just been released. Was it difficult to create interesting new designs that were consistent with the previous two series?

Speaking from my own perspective I’d say that I’ve loosened up as a designer. Looking at my earlier efforts I think I was rather inhibited and it wasn’t until I brought in Phil that I could see the true size of the project’s potential. Phil added pace and variety through his very bold, expressive cover designs and this made me realise that I too could let my hair down a little.

Artwork by Joe McLaren; design David Pearson

Artwork and design by David Pearson

How is running your own studio different from working at Penguin?

There are certainly negative sides to being ‘out of house’. For example, I am no longer in a position to affect the approval of my work. Instead it has to very much stand up for itself, without the highly-sensitive designer attached. That said, I feel much calmer as a result. I may well still be in a honeymoon period but I’m enjoying managing every facet of my business – from doing the accounts to cleaning the windows. The rewards seem so much more tangible as a result.

Could you describe your design process for book covers?

Since the vast majority of what I do is type-driven, a fair amount of time is given over to researching letterforms. I am lucky enough to work just down the road from one of the world’s best typographic resources and thankfully they don’t mind me popping over to waste their time. Typophiles – in particular – can be a particularly unforgiving bunch and so time spent researching is never wasted.


Design by David Pearson


Design by David Pearson

What are your favourite books to work on?

Working within tight constraints is a blessing. There’s nothing quite so daunting as a completely open brief as you never get the feeling that you’re solving a problem, rather just satisfying your own whims. I always feel much more creative when my palette has been limited, either by the client or by myself.

Illustration and design by David Pearson

What are the most challenging?

Very simply, the ones that attempt to house more than one idea or repeat a sentiment. I think that book covers communicate quicker if they are boiled down to their most essential elements or rather, they have the best chance to communicate if they do one thing and do one thing purposefully. Confidence and a clarity of purpose are not found in abundance in trade publishing.

Illustration by Victoria Sawdon; design by David Pearson

Massimo Vignelli says that designers just need 6 typefaces. Should designers limit the number of typefaces they use?

Not at all. I am completely opposed to this view. While I appreciate that it takes time to fully understand and competently utilise a typeface I suspect that they all have a use for something. And doesn’t the use of such a limited palette suggest an unwillingness to shift from a preconceived agenda? This is all well and good if the client is buying into your look and trading from it but I would question whether this is a healthy starting point for someone working in the communications industry. Or, perhaps I’m just not enough of a Modernist to understand such an approach.

What are your favourite typefaces to work with?

I absolutely love Vendôme by François Ganeau and Roger Excoffon. Its over-emphasised, angular serifs brilliantly support its sensuous, bulking forms. I wasn’t in Paris in the Fifties, but Vendôme feels to me very much like Paris in the Fifties. Anything by the peerless Matthew Carter is a joy to use and I recently saved up to buy Martin Majoor’s Nexus family which I seem to be consistently delighted with.

From David Pearson's ephemera collection

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

Like most book designers I have a healthy collection of ephemera; matchbox and travel labels being my favourite, and a huge chunk of my salary is redirected towards book buying. My design heroes are rather predictable, but for good reason I think. Jamie Keenan’s covers always seem so fresh and live long in the memory because they require a level of decoding. Jamie is also one of those rare designers whose work is just as effective on either side of the Atlantic. Hans Schmoller’s meticulous and elegant typography reassures me on a great many levels and I can’t quite manufacture enough situations where I am working with the immensely talented Joe McLaren. Then there’s the Penguin roll call: Curtis, Miles, Gentleman, Games, Marber, Birdsall, Robertson, Aldridge, Pelham and of course, Tschichold.

Design by David Pearson (not yet published/work in progress)

What does the future hold for book cover design?

It feels like this has been pretty well covered by people who are much more future literate than myself. All I can do, as a simple print designer, is live from day-to-day.

Design by David Pearson (not yet published/work in progress)

Thanks David!

You can see more of David’s work at his Flickr page and the David Pearson Design site.

27 Comments

Published September 23, 2009

Designer Q & A’s Round One

Monday’s interview with Paul Buckley wrapped up the first round of my Q & A’s with book designers. I’ve been overwhelmed by the generosity of the designers who have participated in the series and I’ve had some great correspondence from designers and non-designers alike who have read the posts. I owe a lot of people a lot of thanks. Thank you. But now the fall book season is well and truly under way now and there’s going to be a (hopefully) short hiatus before the second round of Q & A’s start.

As with round one, I’m hoping to talk to designers who are in different stages of their careers and whose work is interesting and distinctive. I’m very excited about the designers who have already agreed to answer my questions, and I have some ideas about other designers who I’d love to be involved.

Suffice to say it should be good (fingers crossed) — it’s just going to take a little time — so I hope you can be patient while I try and set things up (and juggle life and the day job).

In the meantime, here’s a recap of the great designers I spoke to this summer:

Nate Salciccioli, designer, The DesignWorks Group

Ingsu Liu, VP Art Director, W.W. Norton and Co.

Ingrid Paulson, designer, Ingrid Paulson Design

Michel Vrana, designer, Black Eye Design

Alex Camlin, Creative Director, Da Capo Press

Coralie Bickford Smith, Senior Designer, Penguin Press

Paul Buckley, VP Executive Creative Director, Penguin US

And these two older interviews might also be of interest if you missed them:

Ben Pieratt and Eric Jacobsen, dudes, The Book Cover Archive

Ellen Lupton, designer, writer, editor, educator, Design Writing Research

Thanks.

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Published September 21, 2009

Q & A with Paul Buckley, Penguin US

Photo by Erika Larsen. Design by Paul Buckley

It is not every day that I get an email from the Vice President Executive Creative Director of Penguin US, so it was something of a surprise when Paul Buckley sent me a note a few weeks ago about a book cover design mentioned in my interview with his wife Ingsu Liu.

I had been conspicuously unable to locate the image online and Paul was able to help. But it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss, so I asked the Brooklyn-based designer if he would be willing to do a Q & A about his work as well. Again, much to my surprise, not only did Paul say yes, he managed get his answers back to me in record time (with annotations and links included!)…

Of Mice and Men

How did you come to book design?

I went to SVA on an illustration scholarship, and was very intent on becoming an illustrator. While other parents were giving their kids children’s books, my father was giving me illustration annuals. But I supported myself during my college years working for various NYC design studios as a designer, learning through those around me… and at the same time pursuing freelance illustration assignments as well – basically learning both crafts simultaneously through different venues. Right after graduation I took a 3 month road trip spending my savings, and thus came home to Greenpoint needing an income. A studio manager at one of the studios I worked in during my early college years suggested me to her sister who was working at NAL/Plume/Dutton, as they needed a Junior Designer… I landed the position with a portfolio that was equal parts design and illustration. Though in the beginning I was very hardcore about becoming the best painter I could be, I quickly fell in love with designing book covers and never looked back… within two years we merged with Penguin. Though I’ve become far too busy (and lazy!) to pull out the oils and actually paint something, I did manage to get a few simple ink drawings in the Society of Illustrators this year. I realize these will pale in comparison to 99% of everything else done by the true working pros in the annual, but it was still a kick and an honor to have my work chosen for inclusion.

The World According to Garp

Can you describe your role at Penguin?

I act as a Creative Director overseeing a sizeable staff and many many projects. My Penguin publishing team is very open to me and my guys pitching ideas and we nicely act as an overall creative team, in a way that editorial and art together collaborate to create nice projects — most recently I’m directing a cover design book where we have the authors commenting on their covers, and a new series named Penguin Ink, where the world’s leading tattoo artist’s do covers for me. Recently in the stores is the gorgeous collaboration of Roseanne Serra with Ruben Toledo… this was all Roseanne’s brilliant art direction, and I had nothing to do with it — but it is gorgeous Penguin project that is very much worth checking out.

Art by Duke Riley

Art by Chris Conn

How many imprints do you oversee?

Six

Does each imprint have a particular design style?

Yes, each imprint is very unique unto itself, as each Publisher/Editorial team brings their own style, as does each Art Director. In my group, Roseanne Serra and I collaborate on Penguin paperbacks, and to a lesser degree, with the Viking imprint as well. Roseanne art directs Pam Dorman books. Joe Perez smartly art directs Portfolio and Sentinel, which are brilliant business and political imprints. Darren Haggar art directs Penguin Press overseeing the packaging for literary giants like Thomas Pynchon and Zadie Smith… and while not it’s own imprint per se, Maggie Payette Art Directs our gorgeous poetry series.

The Jan Tschichold Penguin paperbacks are design icons in the UK. Is there a sense of that legacy within Penguin Group USA?

Very much so. We all have quite a few Tschichold books on our shelves. The UK Penguin art department, under the Art Direction of Jim Stoddart and John Hamilton, does an incredibly beautiful job of keeping that legacy alive.

How is American book cover design different from the UK?

I don’t know that it is all that different. In fact, Art Directors over here, and Art Directors over there, are hiring the same art and design talents on each side of the Atlantic.

Do you discern any current trends in American book cover design? Yes… very nicely a resurgence of designers and illustrators who do both the design and illustration; the whole package. Jaya Miceli, Chris Brand, Jon Gray, Gregg Kulick, Jamie Keenan, Rodrigo Corral, Ben Wiseman, Jennifer Wang, Tal Goretsky, etc – these are the folks creating the personally unique covers of today that will be the design icons of tomorrow.

Art by Chris Ware

How did the Penguin Graphic Classics come about?

We do a handful of what we call Penguin Graphic Classics Deluxe packages every list, and when it was time do one for Voltaire’s Candide, I handed it off to Helen Yentus who was in my group at the time. Helen wanted to work with Chris Ware on it, and off it went with us all happy that he accepted the assignment. When Chris’s sketch came in, it just sort of blew everyone away… Up to that point we’d never had anyone grab editorial control of a cover that way… Chris had gone hog wild and wrote all his own copy and illustrated and designed the living hell out of every square inch of this cover from flap to flap. It took forever to make its way around the packaging meeting table with everyone grabbing hold of it, reading it and laughing out loud. A short time later, our Penguin Publisher Kathryn Court declared that we needed to do more of these. Kathryn really nurtures good art and design and is one of the reasons I’ve been here so long.

Cover by Tomer Hanuka with design by Paul Buckley and Tomer Hanuka

Art by Anders Nilsen

Art by Charles Burns

Art by Roz Chast

How did you match the artists with the titles?

The titles were given to us by the Penguin Classics editorial team, and Helen and I would sit in my office surrounded by comic books and simply have fun matching this artist with that title.

Art by Michael Cho. Design by Paul Buckley

Are their plans to expand the series? What new covers can we look forward to in the future?

We do about 6 a year and I think we are all comfortable with that number at the moment. I just finished White Noise with Michael Cho… Moby Dick by Tony Millionaire just came out, as did Huck Finn by Lilli Carré, and Ethan Frome by Jeffrey Brown. In the near future, I’d really love to do something with Jim Rugg, Jeff Lemire, Mike Mignola, David Small, and I still hold out hope that one day Crumb will actually say to me “damnit you pesky bastard… ok, ok, I’ll do it”.

Art by Tony Millionaire

Art by Lilli Carre. Design by Paul Buckley

Do you still design yourself?

All the time… mostly in the evenings after everyone has gone home and I can focus without the constant distractions of the work day. My greatest hits are posted on my website.

 
Art by David Byrne. Design by Paul Buckley. 
Pigmented foil stamped on linen cloth

Art by Will Eisner. Design by Paul Buckley. 
Art direction by Ingsu Liu & Albert Tang

 Photo by Fredrik Broden. Design by Paul Buckley

Could you describe your design process?

I start each project with the hope that I’m going to do something unusual; and then I try my best to do just that — read the material and find a visually unique way to interpret it. I tend to go either very loud, or very subdued and moody. I do a ton of comps for every cover I work on — sometimes, 20 or more to explore what I’m thinking and all the tangents that come along during the process — I get nuts when freelancers send me two or three comps. I’ll show 3-5 of what I think are the best and receive comments and direction on those from editorial… when discussing why a designer did this or that, I think what people commenting on book covers seem to gloss over is that the publishers and editors have far more at stake than the cover designer — they have committed sums of money and must answer to the house and the author to make this book a success — so they are very strong about what they think the cover should be and nothing is being printed without their full consent.

Here are a few rejects from the pile… I’m not saying these covers are better for the individual book, than what got printed… maybe the books would have tanked with these covers… but they do illustrate how in-house visions do not always sync:

Upper left: art by Paul Buckley. Upper right: various stock.
Lower Left: art by Amy Bennett with descending placards by Paul Buckley.
Lower Right: painting by Keniche Hoshine with added stock image.
(see final cover here)

Various antique endpapers combined with altered ebay images
and antique portrait of feral child.
(see final cover here)

Do you approach fiction and non-fiction differently?

Often, yes. Fiction needs a more peripheral approach where I’m looking to capture a mood to reflect the book’s tone, whereas non-fiction often needs you to stare it directly face on and state precisely what the topic is.

What are your favourite books to work on?

Any title where the Editor and Publisher are open.

What are the most challenging?

Any title where the Editor and Publisher are nervous.

Where do you look for inspiration?

Everywhere. My staff blows me away daily. My wife shows me beautiful work constantly. Editors show me stuff. Blogs like yours so nicely showcase how much great work is out there. Friends deluge my inbox with artist links. Illustrators. Photographers. Fine Artists. Music. Furniture. All talent is inspiring. Cruising Flickr and the web in general has me bookmarking new people daily, and I can spend hours google imaging the most absurd things that always tangent me to the greatest places. I found and purchased an image for a difficult book cover project recently just because I decided to google “leucistic squirrel” after I noticed a few in Prospect Park. I have no idea how we all existed before the internet.

What do you look for in a designer’s portfolio?

A unique talent. Distinction.

Front cover art by Frank Miller. Design by Paul Buckley

What does the future hold for book cover design?

There will be a market that just wants/needs to download the material for reading purposes, and there will be a market that is looking for an object. What Penguin does with the Graphic Classics is a great example– some student will download Gravity’s Rainbow cheaply, while an older Thomas Pynchon or Frank Miller fan with a little more cash in their pocket will want the beautiful book/object. So I believe the cover design market will shrink in that way. Textbooks and travel guides will go digital first as there is no real reason to carry all that in your backpack or pay for all that book production. For digital readers, big budget fiction and non fiction titles will have moving covers, more like mini movie trailers. If Grisham were still with us, his future digital reader cover would be something akin to us looking at a murky black screen… the reader would hear running footsteps and ragged breathing… then a loud shot rings out, and a big red splotch hits your screen and drips to form the title type. Then one blurb after another flies across the screen and after a moment Grisham himself pops up in the corner thanking you for purchasing his new book and asking if you’d like to peruse his backlist titles… and click this link if you’d like to pay an extra dollar to help our troops in North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan or Iraq. Interior-wise, there will be tons of product placement… not necessarily for gratuitous reasons; but because people, places and things are mentioned on every page in every book be it fiction or non fiction; and if folks desire a more interactive read that really helps them get into the book in a different way, then it’s possible there will be quick jump links to everything – for instance… if in this book, the character is having lunch in Balthazar and then running off to the Standard Hotel for an ongoing affair… then why not have Balthazar and The Standard pay a small fee to the publisher to provide these links; this seemingly free advertising? Big money to had there. I reserve judgement as to whether any of this is a good thing or a bad thing… but as publishing goes more digital, I think it’s naive to think these things wont happen to books just as they happen everywhere else.

Thank you very much!

You bet.

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Published September 15, 2009

Q & A with Coralie Bickford-Smith, Penguin Press

Coralie Bickford-Smith was one of the first book designers I mentioned on The Casual Optimist and her distinctive cover designs have featured regularly ever since.

While Coralie’s work for Penguin clearly draws inspiration from the Arts & Crafts Movement and British inter-war illustration and design, it never seems trite or conventional. There is always an asymmetry, angle, pattern, or colour combination that gives it an unexpected twist that lifts it out of the ordinary. Her covers for Penguin’s ‘Gothic Reds’, for example, are amongst the most brilliantly stark, original, off-kilter and unsettling covers of recent memory.

It almost goes without saying that I am thrilled that Coralie agreed to an interview, and I’m using it as a shameless excuse to post a lot of images of her work.

When did you decide to become a designer?

I don’t remember when I heard the term designer for what I wanted to do and it all became clear, but I spent my childhood collecting stamps, letraset, calligraphy nibs, books and making my own edition of the dictionary. All that made a lot of sense once I started studying design at university.

What is your role at Penguin, and where did you work previously?

I’m a senior cover designer for Penguin Press, which publishes Penguin’s classic fiction list as well as non-fiction titles in science, philosophy, history, etc. Before I started at Penguin I worked in various jobs designing whole books, magazines and instore promotions for supermarkets. It was not until a started at Penguin that I settled down and really started to feel creatively fulfilled.

Do you work on particular imprints?

At Penguin Press we have a number of imprints: Allen Lane, Particular Books, Penguin Classics, Modern Classics, Red Classics and Penguin Paperbacks. Our art department shares the titles around so we get to work on different projects and designers are not tied to one imprint.

Penguin is synonymous with British book design. Is there a sense of that legacy within Penguin itself?

Absolutely, it’s great to work for a publisher with such a rich design heritage. The responsibility to live up to that can be quite daunting at times, but you just have to get on with what you do and enjoy it, otherwise it would get paralysing. The reputation means that design is valued within the company, which gives the designers a stronger voice. Not that we get carte blanche — sales and marketing obviously have their say — but there isn’t always the decision to play it safe, we’re given a bit more rope to take some risks and hopefully push things further. So we get to have a lot of fun with design and feel listened to and respected.

Could you describe your design process for book covers?

The first stage of every new cover is nerves and self-doubt: can I do something interesting, visually smart and get across the fundamental nature of the book and help it sell? Nightmare. So I get reading and then try to throw away all my concerns and fears and start getting stuff down on the page, sketching on paper and working things out on the computer. Usually that means trying out a lot of rubbish and having to trust that eventually something will emerge from the process that works. When that happens I can breathe a short sigh of relief and then get on with developing and refining until the cover is finished.

Your work often incorporates traditional Arts and Craft elements like ornamentation, illustration, and hand-drawn type. Is this something you strive for or is it dictated by the nature of the projects?

I suppose those elements are close to being obsessions of mine — I was heavily into William Blake and William Morris as a child. Some projects have quite open briefs so I can pursue a particular vision — the first of my hardback classics grew out of a fascination with Victorian book bindings, which inspired me to experiment with foil-stamped cloth bindings. Other times there will be an element in the brief — illustration for the Boys’ Adventure series for example — that I latch on to and try to get the most out of, with lots of period research and careful commissioning. A lot of the hand-drawn type on my books is commissioned — Stephen Raw is great at period type — but I’d like to develop my own skills in that area as well. John Gray is a constant source of inspiration, the energy in his hand-drawn type is incredible.

What are your favourite books to work on?

I would say the cloth classics right now. I really enjoy the process of getting the best colour combinations and the feel of the end result in my hands. Representing classic literature through patterns is fun there is so much to go on within the text. Life only doing these would be dull though, so I like that I get to work on a variety of titles. I like that there’s always another area in which to push myself as a designer. I think its coming up with concepts I like best. The rush of the moment where you show it to someone and they get it. When you feel that you know you have got it right.

What are the most challenging?

They’re all challenging at the start, when I think I might make a hash of this one. Conceptual covers for non-fiction can be quite a challenge — especially when there’s a late change to the title or subtitle that makes a great design suddenly redundant. It can be hard scrapping a cover I’ve become attached to and has been approved. I just have take a deep breath and remind myself that the cover is there to serve the book and not the other way around…

How is designing for a series different for designing an individual cover?

As you would expect, it’s a more intense process. I always have to have rules that will work across the series, from colour usage to typography. There are often period-specific elements that have to researched and backed up. It there’s a grid it has to work across the whole series and not get tired and boring. It’s a longer process, and the energy and attention to detail has to be maintained to the end. With individual covers its a bit more organic as you won’t have to pay down the line for decisions that might create difficulties if spun out into a series. If it works it works and once you’ve got it you move on.

Do have a favourite set from your recent designs?

Again it has to be the cloth classics as they sit so satisfyingly on the shelf as a set. I tend to pick my work apart after each series is finished and make notes about what I would do next time and how I can improve on the way I approach the typography and the images, well all of it really. I think designers are harsh critics of their own work; there’s a dissatisfaction that motivates us to keep producing new stuff, new approaches.

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

The internet is a huge and readily accessible resource. I can spend ages going from site to site just soaking up inspiration. I like to collect objects that I see in junk shops/ebay/charity shops. Bookshops too of course – I really enjoy the Oxfam book shops, so many gems to be found. As for design heroes, there are many. The Williams I mentioned earlier — Blake and Morris. Then there’s so much inspiration in the Penguin back catalogue, form people like Romek Marber and Alan Aldridge. In current book design, John Gray and David Pearson often come up with things that make me think wow, look what you’ve done, that’s amazing. There are also many outside of the book world I admire, such as Orla Kiely. I love her use of colours, and also the 70’s vibe. I have a thing for 70’s orange plastic, and her stuff reminds me of that, its really comforting.

What does the future hold for book cover design?

Covers are still a lot of the time the only piece of marketing material to attract the customer so I don’t think that is going anywhere fast. We might go through a wave of utter tripe as everyone gets all excited about 3D or animated covers, and the novelty of technology takes precedence over good design. Electronic books are inevitably going to impact physical publishing, but the printed book is a very successful technology in its own right and I don’t think it will be entirely displaced. For all the advantages of ebooks — portability, interactivity, production and distribution savings — there’s something potent about the physical object that will always have a strong appeal. I like to think that as the volume of physical books declines, the average quality of the design will increase, because books will have to work harder to justify their physical presence.

Thanks Coralie!

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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 4, 2009

Q & A with Lincoln Agnew, Harry and Horsie

Children’s picture book Harry and Horsie by Katie Van Camp has mostly been in the news because the eponymous Harry happens to be the very real son of TV host and comedian David Letterman (who also provides the foreword to the book).

But what caught my eye were the illustrations by Calgary artist Lincoln Agnew. The illustrations, which bring to mind 1950’s advertising, cereal boxes, comics, vintage toys, pop art, and Bill Watterson’s Calvin & Hobbes, give the book a distinctive retro look.

I managed to catch up with Lincoln by email and ask him a few questions about his work.

Briefly, could you tell me a little about yourself?

No.

Hahahahaha…. I kid….. apparently I think I’m funny.

I’m just an artist trying to find my way with as little compromise as possible. I go to sleep when I am tired, get up when I’m awake and work on any project i deem “fun” during the hours in between. I’ve gone into debt trying to maintain my “artistic integrity” and on the days that I become too hungry to care i give in to my belly and use a steel scrub brush to bathe off the guilt…. after i finish my steak dinner.

Is Harry and Horsie the first children’s book you’ve illustrated?

Yes, the first of many i hope…. i really enjoyed the process. I had no idea what i was doing but was inspired by the challenge.

How did you become involved in the book?

A great friend of mine, Alan Rosales introduced me to Katie at a New Years party in Montreal long before she decided to write a book. We spoke for about ten minutes before she grew tired of my jibber jabber and moved on. Years later he heard that she was looking for an illustrator and recommended me for the job. Katie and I then started tossing ideas around over email for the next few years but we didn’t reunite face to face until we both arrived in New York to celebrate with our publishers. She was taller than I remembered.

How did you create the images? Could you describe your process?

My process is clumsy at best, I fumble around with rough outlines, scanners, photocopiers, pencil crayons, ink pens, sandpaper and computers. It’s a struggle, nothing really comes easy and there’s only a small window of time before the love turns to hate.

The illustrations have a wonderful retro feel. Where did you look for inspiration?

It all started with the toys, while I was doing up some rough sketches for the story I figured the rocket ship should look like a vintage tin toy from the 50’s. That initial research inspired the look of everything to follow.

Where else can we see your work?

It’s around. I do freelance design, illustration and photography for magazines, studios, bands and clothing companies. I vary my medium and style to fit the project…. so very little of it looks like the book.

Can we expect more children’s book illustrations from you in future?

Absolutely! Katie and I learned a lot during the initial process so we are eager to apply our new found knowledge to create something bigger and better than the first! We are currently working on a second Harry and Horsie adventure with the lovely people over at Balzer and Bray/Harper Collins.

Thanks Lincoln!

And special thanks to Melissa Zilberberg, Marketing and Publicity Coordinator at HarperCollins Canada, for helping arrange the interview.

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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 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 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 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 April 1, 2009

Q & A with Ellen Lupton

“Ellen Lupton makes this industry smarter. If graphic design has a sense of its own history, an understanding of the theory that drives it and a voice for its continuing discourse, it’s largely because Lupton wrote it, thought it or spoke it.” — Katherine Feo, AIGA

Dedicated to raising design awareness, Ellen Lupton is the Director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) and curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

A regular columnist for ReadyMade Magazine, she has contributed to Print, Eye, I.D., and Metropolis, and writes regularly about design at both Design-Your-Life and her own website Design Writing Research.

Her books include the indispensable introduction to typography Thinking with Type, DIY: Design It Yourself, D.I.Y. Kids, co-authored with her identical twin sister Julia Lupton, and Graphic Design: The New Basics, co-authored with Jennifer Cole Phillips.

Design Your Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things , another collaboration with her sister Julia, will be published by St. Martin’s Press later this year.

But, not content with being an author, curator, designer, and educator, Ellen recently became a publisher, founding Slush Editions to independently publish the novel Sexy Librarian by artist Julia Weist.

Sexy Librarian also features as a case study in Ellen’s latest book Indie Publishing— a guide for independent authors written, researched, and designed in collaboration with graduate students at MICA — published in December 2008 by Princeton Architectural Press.

Ellen kindly replied to my questions about design and indie publishing by email.

And for the sake of full disclosure, I should make absolutely clear that several of Ellen’s books are published by New York’s Princeton Architectural Press who are distributed by Raincoast Books in Canada. But, for the record, that only explains why I have her email in my address book, not why I chose to interview her.

I have also interviewed Ellen previously for the Pages bookstore in Toronto.

How would you define ‘indie publishing’?
Indie publishing is author-driven. The traditional publishing industry is controlled by publishing professionals — editors, marketing people, promotional staff, and the publishers in charge. These are all skilled people. In our book, we use the term broadly, to encompass everything from handmade zines to print-on-demand books to offset publications distributed by the authors to small imprints created by design firms who wanted to get into the content business.

How is it different from the traditional publishing industry?
Because it’s author-initiated, indie publishing side-steps the traditional barriers of the publishing industry. It gets beyond the gatekeepers. Now, those gatekeepers act as guardians of quality to some degree, but they also contribute to a homogeneous and profit-driven publishing industry that many authors find hostile and hard to penetrate. Indie publishing often serves niche or local markets that can’t be addressed by mainstream publishing.

What are the benefits of publishing yourself?
If you have had difficulty breaking into the mainstream publishing world, going independent is liberating. If you end up producing a successful book, the profits can be substantial, but this shouldn’t be the main motive to get into publishing. Few authors make substantial bucks on their books — regardless of who publishes them. For most of us, writing and producing books is a labor of love.

What are the risks?
Most forms of indie publishing cost money, and that’s a risk. When you work with a commercial publisher, they foot the printing bill. Publishers also provide essential services like editing, proofreading, design, distribution, and marketing. The indie publisher has to take on all these tasks alone (or find friends to help out). It’s not easy, especially the distribution part. Self-published books are still viewed as less legitimate than commercially published books, although this is starting to change.

Do you see indie publishing as part of a wider D.I.Y. movement?
We are seeing more independent production in all creative fields — music, art, theater, design, etc. Younger creative people are interested in creating new institutions and networks outside the official art world or music/literature establishments. They are comfortable using technology to disseminate their ideas.

How has the internet affected the development of indie publishing?
The internet allows indie publishers to reach potential readers outside the bookstore system. Today, anyone can set up an Amazon Marketplace account or sell publications directly from their web sites. Print-on-demand publishers like Lulu and Blurb produce books when someone buys them, sending the finished book directly to the customer. These technologies are creating new possibilities for authors, especially those whose work is directed at narrower, smaller audiences.

What advice would you give someone publishing their first book?
Love your book. Get advice from lots of people in order to have the best possible content. Consider the different avenues that exist for publishing your work, including mainstream publishing as well as independent ventures.

Think about your audience and the best way to reach them. And think about your own primary goals for publishing a book. For example, an artist having a gallery exhibition might use a print-on-demand book as a tool for building his or her career via grant applications, networking with galleries and curators, securing lecturing and teaching opportunities, and more. A well-designed, carefully authored book has many functions. Selling copies to lots of people is just one of them. You might use a book as professional portfolio for landing a job or attracting clients — maybe all you need is a few copies.

What are some of the common mistakes people make designing books?
It’s important to use good software. The industry standard today is Adobe InDesign, which is available for both Mac and PC and can be easily learned via software manuals or technical workshops. Programs like Microsoft Word or Publisher are extremely cumbersome and will ultimately be frustrating to a person trying to design a refined and elegant book. Choosing a good typeface is also important. Avoid Times Roman, which was originally designed for newspapers and is so widely used as to be banal. Beautiful, high-quality typefaces such as Garamond often come bundled with layout software and computer operating systems. Keeping your design simple and consistent from page to page is a rule of thumb for any book design. You also need to “unlearn” some habits from high school, such as leaving two spaces between sentences — this is not done in formal typesetting, and it will make your book look amateurish.

What do you look for in good book design?
Beautiful type, elegant margins, consistent pages.

Have you ever bought a book just for its cover?
Of course! Cover design is extremely important. A cover is not only a billboard advertising your book on a shelf, it’s also an online logo for your book that needs to look great at 100 pixels high. Getting help from a good graphic designer on your book cover is a worthwhile investment.

What will be the impact of e-books on publishing?
I believe that e-books are going to be very, very good for authors. By lowering the cost of publishing, e-books will make it easier for more authors to get their work published and to reach specific audiences who want their content. What I’m less sure about is how e-books will affect graphic designers!

Are we finally seeing the ‘End of Print’?
I do believe there is a sea change going on. After decades of unsuccessful attempts at creating electronic book readers, suddenly the time seems right. I don’t think print will disappear, but I think we will see less of it. It remains a tactile, permanent, stable medium that users can feel a personal attachment to.

What role do you think print-on-demand will play in the future?
Print-on-demand is where digital media and print meet. I think we will see a lot more of this as prices go down in the future. Ultimately, it is a more sustainable way to publish and involves less financial risk, but right now, it is too expensive for large-scale endeavors.

How will e-books and print co-exist?
E-books are great for disposable reading — magazines, casual fiction, newspapers. Perhaps every physical book in the future will come with an e-book supplement. I often want to quickly reference a book I read, and e-books would be great for that. Personally, I collect books, but I don’t need to keep the latest Richard Price book on my shelf forever.

As a designer, do you feel an attachment to print?
I am very attached to print. I don’t want to see it disappear in my own lifetime, that’s for sure. I love the tactility, permanence, and scale. But I do find myself reading more and more online.

Thanks very much Ellen!

4 Comments

Tag: Q & A

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