Skip to content

Tag: W.W. Norton

Midweek Miscellany, June 17th, 2009

Claustrophobic and Irrational — I love these elegantly understated designs by Rodrigo Corral and Christopher Brand Jason Ramirez for Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley books published by W.W. Norton.

A Strategy For Authenticity — Don Linn, prolific Twitterer and publisher at The Taunton Press, on O’Reilly’s Twitter Boot Camp and Twitter as a marketing channel:

I’m relatively new to twitter, but what I’ve loved about it since discovering it is its immediacy and its spontaneity. That’s where the joy is and, in my opinion, that’s where the power is (witness #iranelection and related topics). My fear is that the suits will “Clear Channel” (yes, that’s a new verb) this simple little application into nothing but a giant vanilla message board filled with thinly-disguised spam, planned spontaneity.

Cars and Books Sean Rogers discusses Dutch cartoonist (and cover artist) Joost Swarte at The Walrus:

Swarte has some mild fun, on the Walrus cover, with the nutty rush out of the city that clogs our highways every summer. But the assignment also offers Swarte the opportunity to clear-line the hell out of some cars and books, a couple preoccupations that crop up all over his work.

Why Ulysses? — To coincide with Bloomsday , Gary Dexter explains how Joyce’s masterpiece got its title:

The paradox of Ulysses is that one needs to read it to understand twentieth-century literature, but one needs to read twentieth-century literature to build up the stamina to read Ulysses.

The problem starts with the title. Early readers of Ulysses, exhilarated and appalled after 800 pages, were often still left thinking ‘Why Ulysses?’ Ulysses is barely mentioned.

And lastly… I can’t thank the chaps at the BCA enough for the link love . You are gentlemen and scholars.

And thanks to the scarily talented Nate for creating the Paradox of Awesome album cover yesterday afternoon and sharing on Twitter. Hilarious. Or maybe you just had to be there… It made my day anyway…

5 Comments

Something for the Weekend

Das Boot — David Drummond’s cover for Canadian Water Politics Edited by Mark Sproule-Jones, Carolyn Johns, and B. Timothy Heinmiller has been selected for the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers this year. The book is published by McGill-Queens University Press who clearly take pride in the look of their books and have some other rather nice cover designs on their site.

The Long Goodbye — Another long, hard — and somewhat cynical look — at the state of the book industry. This time it’s the turn of Elisabeth Sifton, senior vice president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, in The Nation.

W. W. Norton Book Design Archive — Publisher W. W. Norton have started posting their book cover designs to designated Flickr set (Crime by Irvine Welsh, designed by Darren Haggar pictured above) . I’d love to see more publishers do this (via The Book Cover Archive Blog).

Bird Brained or Brilliant — The contentious issue live-tweeting conferences. I only mention this because it tallies with my own recent experience of live-tweeting Raincoast’s Fall 09 Sales Conference. And because I’m a nerd (via Kate Trgovac on Twitter).

Gigantic Robot — the awesome Tom Gauld is publishing a new 32-page comic called The Gigantic Robot this summer. According to the Creative Review blog it’s “a fable concerning the production of a secret weapon whose promise apparently goes unfulfilled”. Can’t wait.

And finally (on a completely un-book related note)…

Redux — Muxtape is dead! Long live Muxtape! Whereas the late, lamented Muxtape was a place to upload mp3 ‘mixtapes’ (that fell foul of the music industry lawyers), Justin Ouellette’s new site is a platform for bands to share their music. Nice (via ISO50).

Comments closed