Books, Design and Culture
I’ve been thinking a lot about personal projects recently and so I found this presentation for 99% by Ji Lee, Creative Director for Google Creative Lab, really inspiring:
(via The Donut Project/SwissMiss)
1 CommentLauren Panepinto, Creative Director at Orbit Books, recently posted this entertaining “Making of the Cover Video” for Gail Carriger‘s Blameless (released in the fall) to the Orbit blog:
Over 6 hours of my onscreen compositing, retouching, color correction, type obsessing, all condensed down to a slim sexy one minute 55 seconds of cover design. Trust me, no one wants to watch it in real-time…and even then I left out the not-as-riveting-onscreen stages of my cover design process, such as reading the manuscript, sifting through… photoshoot outtakes, background photo research, etc. And since this is a series look that has already been established… there weren’t the usual batches and rounds of versions of different designs that happen with standalone or first-in-a-new-series covers. That would be a weeklong video!
And if your interested in steampunk but don’t know where to start, you might want to check out Library Journal‘s list of 20 core steampunk titles (which includes Gail Carriger’s Soulless).
UPDATE:
There is more on Lauren Panepinto’s work on this series at FaceOut Books.
Following up from last week’s Midweek Miscellany post, here is glass gilder John Downer talking about creating that amazing lettering for Reserve‘s window in Los Angeles:
Reserve Glass Gilding by John Downer from Reserve LA on Vimeo.
2 CommentsI’m fairly certain that every architect and designer on the planet has seen Alex Roman’s artful short film The Third & The Seventh already. But I haven’t seen it mentioned on any book blogs as yet, and so for the benefit of other architecturally-inclined book nerds who may not have caught it, I thought I would share it here (although you really should go and watch it in full-screen HD at Vimeo).
Even though it is apparently a full-CG animated piece, the film beautifully captures the light and elegance of the architectural space, and yes, there are even a few books in it…
There is an interview with the filmmaker about the film at Motionographer.
1 CommentA stunning stop-animation film produced by Colenso BBDO and animated by Andersen M Studio for the New Zealand Book Council:
(via Letterology)
3 Comments3000 (ish) photos of Abigail Uhteg making 35 books over a 2 month period at the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY:
(via Jacket Copy amongst others…)
Comments closed“If you do what you love and you find other people who do what they love, you’ll be successful, you’ll do great work, [and] chances are you’ll actually make money miraculously enough. If you combine that with a bit of egotism and a taste for the spotlight you could also become famous, but definitely I promise you’ll be happy.”
Michael Bierut, partner at Pentagram and author of the truly excellent 79 Short Essays About Design (yes, yes, full disclosure: distributed by Raincoast Books in Canada), shares five simple secrets for doing great creative work at the 99% Conference in New York earlier this year:
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And what does this have to do with books specifically? Well, the final thing Michael talks about is a really cool school libraries project…
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Don’t Forget the Rules of Typography — Nice work by graphic designer Evan Stremke (above). Also available as a handy PDF (via ffffinds). (Update: Evan appears to have redesigned his Rules of Typography. The image above shows the original version which personally I prefer. The new version is here)
The Unconference — The National Post reports on BookCamp TO, which takes place Saturday June 6th at the University of Toronto:
“I really think I’m going to get in trouble for saying this, but book publishing needs to stop being so insular. We need to stop just looking at our own industry for inspiration,” says Deanna McFadden, marketing manager, online content and strategy for HarperCollins. “The people who are doing BookCamp in Toronto are all smart people who understand where the industry is and where we need to go, and are really looking at innovative ways for us to keep book publishing alive and healthy.”
I’m going to be at BookCamp on Saturday, so please say hello if you’re there. And I’m still looking for feedback on the role of publishers in the digital age (see my post here). Please leave a comment if you have thoughts.
The London Review of Books now has a blog.
But Thank God I Ain’t Old — In a teaser for forthcoming Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives edited by Peter Terzian, literary critic James Wood waxes lyrical about The Who album Quadrophenia in The Guardian:
Quadrophenia is itself a nostalgic album – it wants to be there, back on those beaches and in those Soho clubs of the early 60s. So when I listen to the album now, nostalgia is doubled, since I am looking back at my own youth, and also back at the Who’s youth, at an era when I was not even born. I become nostalgic for a rebellion I never experienced and for an England I never knew.
Txt Island — A short film made with a few hundred spare pegboard letters by Chris Gavin at TANDEM Films (via I Like):
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