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Clutching at Straws

Some time back in September 2009, The Casual Optimist turned one-year-old. I didn’t actually notice until later — I had other things going on at the time — but I’ve been thinking about it a lot recently, especially since Joe Sullivan decided to put The Book Design Review on hiatus.

Compiling The Casual Optimist is an amazing experience. I learn something new every day and I meet some incredibly talented, smart people because of the blog. But for better, or worse, The Casual Optimist hasn’t exactly grown as I imagined it would and I often wonder if I spend to much time on the wrong things in one way or another.

The posts about the book trade — the posts that take longest to write — seem to generate the least interest (at least in terms of traffic and comments). The most popular posts by-the-numbers are the interview with designer David Pearson (which I totally get by the way!) and the list of inspirational vintage cover sites. It makes me curious who is visiting and why.

With this in mind, I thought I would hold a straw poll to find out what you want to see more of here. I promise there is no ulterior motive — this is not about boosting traffic, selling ads, or anything sinister — I really am just curious. And I want to make the site better as we move on to Year Two.

So please take a look at the poll if you have a minute (FYI: you can check more than one answer and submit the form more than once). Or, if the poll doesn’t really work for you, leave me a comment, ping me on Twitter (or Facebook), or drop me a line by email if it makes more sense. I’d love to hear from you.

Thanks. :-)

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Reasons to be Cheerful

 

They’re here and I’m back — officially one year older, and a father of two. Mum and the twins, born a week before my birthday, are doing well.

The new Raincoast website is close to being on schedule (thanks to Monique at Boxcar, Al, Tony, Jamie and Siobhan at Raincoast HQ) and daily coffee consumption — while still exceptionally high — is back to a more sustainable level. I still have that grid for Amazon to do though…

But back to the Optimist business: I missed a lot of great stuff while I was away, so expect posts every day this week (starting Monday) as I try to catch up. The interviews with book designers will hopefully return in November.

Thanks to Mark for the pep talk a couple of weeks ago, and thanks to the people who emailed and left comments while I was away.

It’s nice to be back.

11 Comments

Always in Beta

I’ve been having a few nagging design problems with The Casual Optimist, and thanks to my friend Ehren, I’m hoping to address them over the next couple of days with a new wordpress theme.

I would like to apologise in advance if things temporarily go a bit wonky.

Always in beta right? Always in beta…

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