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Tag: Typography

Published April 15, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, April 15th, 2009

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

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

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

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

Lets. Move. On…

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Published April 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!

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Published March 27, 2009

Something for the Weekend, March 27th 2009

Alternative Manga — Eric Skillman on designing a template for Top Shelf’s AX: Alternative Manga series at his blog Cozy Lummox.

FiledBy — a social network for authors and their readers, co-founded by Peter Clifton and Mike Shatzkin.

Extended Grey Skies — Henry Sene Yee on designing the cover of David Cullen’s  Columbine:

In the end, I didn’t want to say anything or felt the need to frame the book in any Point-of-View. What really needs to be said? The Publisher had already set the tone for me. As far as the cover copy, there was no author’s name, no descriptive subtitle, no high school, just the word COLUMBINE on the front cover. That said it all.

Router — Jeremy Mickel on the year-and-a-half process of designing his first typeface at I Love Typography:

Several designers have told me how important it is to have a specific use and point size in mind. The idea is that if you try and design a font that’s good for everything, it might not be REALLY good at anything. But if the font works really well for one specific use, then it can probably work well for lots of others.

In search of Chandler — Editorial Assistant Anna Kelly recounts her search for the original jackets of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, Farewell, My Lovely, The Little Sister, The Lady in the Lake, and The Long Good-bye for Hamish Hamilton’s new reissued editions. Chandler died 50 years ago this week.

And finally, I’ve mentioned Tom Gauld’s Flickr page previously but,  honestly, it’s so good who cares? Tom’s just uploaded some of his sketchbooks and needless to say they’re genius. You can see Tom’s books at Cabanon Press.

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Published March 16, 2009

Monday Miscellany, March 16th, 2009

Beyond Miffy —  Caustic Cover Critic on Dutch illustrator and graphic designer Dick Bruna, best known for Miffy, but who also designed some very cool book covers for crime novels (picture above).

Cautiously Hopeful — Literary agent Nathan Bransford, who has been talking about remaining positive in the face of negativity on his own blog recently,  interviewed by Alan Rinzler on The Book Deal blog:

The role of publishers especially is going to change dramatically as there will be tremendous downward pressure on prices and publishers increasingly retrench behind “known” commodities and bestsellers.

Publishers will live and die by their big bets if they aren’t cultivating any small bets that have the potential of panning out in a big way.

6 Projects That Could Change Publishing for the Better — Michael Tamblyn’s  presentation from the BNC Tech Forum is available online.

Open Baskerville — An open source project to create a digital version of Fry’s Baskerville,  originally created by  Isaac Moore a punchcutter at the typefoundry of Joseph Fry in the 18th Century (via Eightface):

With the written word an absolute fundamental component of daily communication, typography and fonts have are vital to providing aesthetic harmony and legibility to our textual works. There are thousands of fonts available, of which only a small number are useful or any good for setting vast quantities of text, and of which an even smaller number are available to be freely distributed and shared. This project aims to help close that hole, beginning with a Baskerville revival.

Optic Nerve — the fabulous Adrian Tomine interviewed at the Creative Review (illustration above).

Why Kindle On The iPhone Matters — Michael Gaudet on the iPhone Kindle app at E-Reads:

What Amazon is finally acknowledging is that E-Books are a multi-device service and that Kindle is not just a device but an E-Book platform. E-Books may be commodities, but reading is a user habit that has always required a distribution service that anticipates the creative ways readers are looking to acquire new content.

Books and Stuff — Illustrator and designer Amy Cartwright, who blogs about vintage kids books and modern design at Stickers and Stuff, shares some wonderful pictures of her favorite books and “the stories behind some of her finds” at the always awesome Grain Edit (including the Cosy Tomato Post Card Book pictured above).

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Published March 11, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, March 11th, 2009

Rare (and not so rare) — Joel Kral‘s fabulous collection of book covers on  Flickr (via Monoscope):

These are some of the rare (and not so rare) books that I have collected over the past 13 years. They range from graphic design, architecture, art, typography, illustration, skateboarding, graffiti, etc.

Literary Fibs — “Miserable writerist” Charlie Brooker responds  to the claim that 65% of us lie about the novels we’ve read in a bid to impress people:

The… irony is that while people lie about having read highbrow novels in order to impress each other, a massive percentage of highbrow novels aren’t worth reading anyway because the authors are too busy trying to impress the reader (who, we now know, probably hasn’t bothered turning up)

Shelved Books — “A blog dedicated to the cover that never happened” by designer Kimberly Glyder.

Day to Day Batman — Chip Kidd, the self-described “Indiana Jones of Forgotten Japanese Batman Comics”,  talks about Bat-Manga! on NPR (pictured above).

Isn’t that enough? — Jeff Gordiner, Editor-at-Large at Details magazine and author of X Saves the World, interviewed at The Raleigh Quarterly (via@RonHogan):

Other than Philip Roth, though, almost everybody’s writing too much. Blogs, chat rooms, Twitter, Facebook status updates —there’s a wordy data glut going on, and it’s made me more reverent than ever of strategic silence. I’m fond of the J.D. Salinger approach — just evaporating from public view. Is it wrong that Salinger hasn’t left us with 30 or 40 books?

Snooty British traditions and  New York brashness — the National Post talks to Nicole Winstanley about Penguin Canada’s new imprint Hamish Hamilton Canada. This is the 4th installment of the Post‘s  ‘The Ecology of Books’ series. Part one is about literary agents, part two looks at literary journals, part three is a fascinating profile of McClelland & Stewart’s Ellen Seligman.

The Periodic Table of Typefaces —  (pictured above)

And finally, Alan Taylor has launched  ‘meta-blog’ Big Picture Notes to accompany the Boston Globe‘s brilliant photo blog The Big Picture.  Great stuff.

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Published March 6, 2009

From New Typography to Swiss Style

As the cover of Emil Ruder’s Typographie (pictured above) suggests, Felix Weidler’s vast collection of modernist book design in Germany and Switzerland 1925-1965+ is a remarkable archive. It not only includes covers, but interior photos, and notes. Brilliant. (via davidthedesigner).

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Published March 3, 2009

Monday Miscellany, March 2nd, 2009

Apologies for a delayed entry in the Monday Miscellany category, but here we go (better late than never)…

Eric Carl‘s Flickr photostream has some nice classic sci-fi and fantasy book covers (the rather fine looking Death of a Doll and New Writings in SF 5 pictured above). (via but does it float)

Re-envisioning the American small press — Fiona McCrae, director and publisher of Minneapolis independent Graywolf Press, profiled in PW (via @sarahw):

McCrae believes the publishing business is changing in favor of smaller presses, which can have close contact with their audiences and realistically support the smaller sales that typify many literary books: “I think that’s been true for a long time, and it’s just getting truer and truer and truer. There’s still obviously a layer in which we don’t compete, and it’s not our job to”

Rearrange, Rewrite, Redefine and Reimagine — Chicago-based indie Featherproof Books would like you to “remix” parts of their forthcoming titles, starting with Tour of the Drowned Neighborhood a short story taken from Blake Butler’s Scorch Atlas (via @R_Nash).

Overdue! — The Central Library in Atlanta, the last building by “Modernist master” Marcel Breuer, is under threat according to Jonathan Lerner in Metropolis Magazine (pictured above).

A fair share — In the final installment of a 3-part series for the Globe and Mail on the publishing industry in Canada, James Adams looks at the thorny issue of digital rights.

Wild Hair, Wilder Ideas —  The Guardian profiles Alan Moore (and — on a related note — novelist Lydia Millet’s somewhat ill-considered assessment of Watchmen for the WSJ)

From Caveman to Spray Can: A Graphic Journey — Mike Dempsey’s gently meandering history of graphic design which not only features one or two books, but also the lovely Gill Sans typeface (picture above) which was used on the early Penguin paperbacks (via Noisy Decent Graphics).

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Published February 27, 2009

Something for the Weekend, Feb 27th, 2009

The 5 Rules of Book Cover Design Book — John Gall, VP and art Director at Vintage, talks about designing books at Barnes & Noble (video). There is also a nice print interview with John Gall from 2007 at STEP Inside Design magazine and another interview with the designer from the same year  at fwis Covers website (which is worth it just for the immortal line: “I want a telepathic dog.”) (John Gall at the Book Cover Archive— Pragmatism: A Reader designed by John Gall,  pictured above)

Fear, panic, and a little bit of hope — Sarah Weinman discusses the perilous state of  the publishing industry on NHPR’s Word of Mouth.

Chapters-Indigo‘s move into e-books, Shortcovers, goes live to much curiousity and twittering. The Globe and Mail has the basics, The National Post’s The Ampersand rounds up some of the reactions, but O’Reilly’s TOC seems to sum up the general mood: “A Good Start, But Room for Reader Improvement”. Michael Serbinis, the executive VP, writes about the first day on the Shortcovers blog.

(NB – I’ve sort of been ignoring the Kindle2 stuff as it’s not available in Canada, but — just to have some balance — E-Reads has a nice round up of the coverage).

Influence the future — Anthro Goggles lists the first 4 SF books you should read if you work in social media.

Jacket Copy — An interesting interview with David L. Ulin, book editor of the Los Angeles Times (who folded their standalone book section 6-months ago), in PW:

Ulin takes a realistic, broad-ranging view of how book coverage will be presented in the future. “I’m committed to both print and Web. There are two readerships, and I’m not sure they’re the same. My main interest is, how do we get the most book coverage to the most people?” Ideally, Ulin would welcome a return to the stand-alone book review. “But we don’t have one now, and we’re not going to have one,” he says.

modernism 101 : from aalto to zwart — “We specialize in rare and out-of-print design books and periodicals. Our carefully-selected online inventory spotlights both famous and forgotten modernist architects, photographers, typographers, and industrial designers in all their published glory.” How could I not link to this? Even if you can’t afford the books (which I can’t) you can at least look at the covers! (The Twentieth Century Book by John Lewis pictured above). (via ISO150)

And on a related bookporn note, Grain Edit has some rather nice pictures of Typographica, the design journal edited by Herman Spencer…

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Published February 19, 2009

Midweek Miscellany Feb 18th, 2009

 

Typographic Trees — I saw pictures of the latest collaboration between artist Gordon Young and design studio why not associates a while back, but a mention in the latest issue of Creative Review is the perfect excuse to post a couple of images of these lovely sculptures for Crawley Library in West Sussex. It’s probably worth mentioning that (unsurprisingly) why not also do a nice line book design.

An interview with Allan Kornblum, publisher at nonprofit literary publisher Coffee House Press, is the latest installment in Scott Esposito’s How to Publish in a Recession series  at Conversational Reading:

Now with Borders on the brink, and former readers becoming would-be writers and self-publishing books instead of reading books, a major shake-up was inevitable… The recession isn’t the only factor driving changes in writing and publishing. Writers on the one hand, and book and magazine publishers on the other, are both trying to figure out what the changes in information technology will mean. Will books get shorter, so they can be read on a cell phone? Will nonfiction migrate to ebooks, while literature stays on the printed page? Will backlist titles become downloadable PDFs? Will future desktop printers include binding equipment?

Funeral in Berlin — Possibly the most badass cover ever (pictured above) and part of the amazing collection in the Penguin Paperback Spotters’ Guild Flickr pool (first seen at FFFFound). And funnily enough it is apparently Len Deighton’s 80th Birthday.

30 Novels Worth Buying for the Cover Alone — “A book must stand out on the bookstore bookshelf yet cover designers rarely receive the recognition that authors do.” And  in “appreciation of these unsung artists”, Beth Carswell chooses her 30 favourite fiction covers for AbeBooks.

MinuteMen — a retro-Nintendo-style-arcade-kung-fu-kick-punch-jump-game promoting the new Watchmen movie. Smartass viral marketing if you like that kind of thing. And if you listen closely, that sound you hear is Alan Moore’s teeth grinding away in Northampton. Buy the book.  (via GalleyCat).

How do you define good design? Gary Hustwit, director of Helvetica, interviewed about his new film Objectified at the Dwell Magazine blog:

If it didn’t exist, would anyone really miss it? Would it leave a hole in anyone’s life?

If we asked ourselves this question in publishing more often, how many books would actually get published? And would publishers be in the mess they’re in now? Answers on a postcard please.

And finally, Spy Vibe — a blog dedicated to 1960’s spy style! This is so cool I can’t even be bothered to find a tenuous link to books or publishing (although there surely is one)…

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Published February 16, 2009

H.N. Werkman

Every day,  Eric Baker,  of Manhattan-based design firm Eric Baker Design Associates,  spends 30 minutes before work looking for “images that are beautiful, funny, absurd and inspiring”, and each Saturday he posts his selections to the Design Observer.

Eric’s selections for  14th February were all drawn from a great collection of images that Miguel Oks has posted to Flickr,  including  some amazing sets of 20th Century avant-garde books.

The covers pictured here are by the brilliant Hendrik Werkman (H.N. Werkman)  for the literary typographic journal Next Call , and are taken from the Dutch Books set.

Yale University Press published a lovely book by Alston W. Purvis on Werkman in 2004 as part of their Monographics series.

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Published February 13, 2009

Something for the Weekend, Feb 13th, 2008

Apologies for the rant about the Globe and Mail this morning (note to self: don’t blog without coffee). Hopefully a highly-caffeinated design-heavy post for the weekend will make up for it…

First off, Jenny Griggs’ gorgeous typographic designs for Peter Carey’s backlist (pictured above) described by the great man himself as “A triumph!!!!!! Fucking fantastic!!” (Jenny talks about her more recent papercut designs at FaceOut Books)

M.S. Corley re-images the Lemony Snicket (pictured above) and Harry Potter series as Penguin Classics (via the BDR)

Metacovers — Joseph at the BDR looks at books on book covers (see above!).


The Way Through Doors — written by Jesse Ball; stunning minimal cover design by Helen Yentus for Vintage. Not quite a ‘metacover’ but I still love it (pictured above — seen at the Book Cover Archive of course)

Holey Font! – “How much of a letter can be removed while maintaining readability?” EcoFont has tiny holes and uses up to 20% less ink. Based on Verdana, and developed by SPRANQ in the Netherlands, it’s free to download, and free to use. And it seems to work.

And lastly, The Book Depository Live — Watch what books people buy from The Book Depository around the world in real time. Very cool. (via @paperbackjack)

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Published January 23, 2009

Things We Didn’t See Coming

Love this simple, elegant cover solution for Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steve Amsterdam (seen at JACKET MECHANICAL):

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