Books, Design and Culture
Another heart-rending, all too relatable, illustration by Chris Ware for the October 11th issue of The New Yorker:
After last year’s killer Halloween cover, Ware is fast becoming one of the most incisive commentators on modern parenting.
Acme Novelty Library #20 by Chris Ware is available from Drawn & Quarterly next month. (Full disclosure: D+Q are distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books)
(via The Ephemerist)
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There are two new books about designer Alvin Lustig available this month — Born Modern: The Life and Design of Alvin Lustig by Steven Heller and Elaine Lustig Cohen (Chronicle Books*) and Purity of Aim: The Book Jacket Designs of Alvin Lustig by Ned Drew and Paul Sternberger (RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press).
The Death of the Book has Been Greatly Exaggerated — Tech columnist Christopher Mims on the “irrational exuberance” around e-books (via MobyLives):
Tech pundits recently moved up the date for the death of the book, to sometime around 2015, inspired largely by the rapid adoption of the iPad and the success of Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. But in their rush to christen a new era of media consumption, have the pundits overreached?
I’m calling the peak of inflated expectations now. Get ready for the next phase of the hype cycle – the trough of disillusionment.
The Secret Life of Shepperton — A photo essay on Shepperton, the suburban town south west of London where author J. G. Ballard spent most of his adult life. The photographs are accompanied by text from Ballard’s own novels, autobiography, interviews as well as observations about the town and its history (via 3:AM).
And finally…
The Wonderful 36 Pages features This is Silly! by Toronto-based artist/illustrator Gary Taxali:
* Chronicle Books is distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books.
Comments closedLost Libraries — With the personal book collection of David Markson ending up at The Strand bookstore in New York, Craig Fehrman examines the fate authors’ libraries for The Boston Globe (via The Second Pass):
Most people might imagine that authors’ libraries matter — that scholars and readers should care what books authors read, what they thought about them, what they scribbled in the margins. But far more libraries get dispersed than saved. In fact, David Markson can now take his place in a long and distinguished line of writers whose personal libraries were quickly, casually broken down. Herman Melville’s books? One bookstore bought an assortment for $120, then scrapped the theological titles for paper. Stephen Crane’s? His widow died a brothel madam, and her estate (and his books) were auctioned off on the steps of a Florida courthouse. Ernest Hemingway’s? To this day, all 9,000 titles remain trapped in his Cuban villa.
Fehrman expands on this article — and the reasons we should not have been surprised that Markson’s books found their way to The Strand — at his blog.
Eating Each Other is Wrong — Evan Scnittman, Managing and Director of Sales and Marketing at Bloomsbury, argues that e-books don’t cannibalize print:
The most important lesson I can convey to book publishing professionals is that they must understand that those of us who have made the transition to ebooks, buy ebooks, not print books. Ebook reading device users don’t shop in bookstores and then decide what edition they want; ebook device readers buy what is available in ebookstores. Search an ebookstore for a title and if it doesn’t come up, it doesn’t exist – no matter how many versions are available in print.
Ebooks aren’t a better value, ebooks aren’t more attractive nor are they a threat to the print version of any immersive reading book. This isn’t the same as paperback versions vs hardcover – where the platform and convenience are the same – the timing and pricing are the key ingredients. Books that aren’t in ebook form are do not exist to ebook reading consumers. There is no cannibalization if in the mind of the buyer if there is no version available to them.
The Forgotten Mimics — In the 11th installment of The National Post’s ‘Ecology of Books’ series, Mark Medley talks to to some of Canada’s foremost literary translators:
“We’re not robots,” says [Lazer] Lederhendler, 59, who won the Governor General’s Literary Award for his translation of Dickner’s last novel, Nikolski. “We have a way of reading a book. We have a way of using the language. We have our own vocabulary, our likes and dislikes in terms of this phrase or that phrase. It’s a kind of balancing act between observing the fact that you’re at the service of someone else’s work, but at the same time it’s an artistic mission.”
Four Decades of Art — A mini-documentary about illustration in The New York Times Op-Ed page, featuring interviews with art directors and illustrators.
And finally…
Type designer Matthew Carter and writer David Simon (creator of The Wire) were recently named MacArthur Fellows. The Fellowship is a $500,000 (US), no-strings-attached grant for people who have shown exceptional creativity in their work and promise to do more (via How Magazine):
Comments closedA fascinating 54-minute documentary about news and data visualization by Geoff McGhee:
(via Information Aesthetics)
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Sadly I missed the book launch earlier this week, but Toronto-based artist and illustrator Gary Taxali talked to the Torontoist and The National Post about his new kids book This is Silly!. You can see more of Taxali’s amazing book covers here.
Artifacts — Maximus Clarke has a fascinating conversation with William Gibson about his new novel Zero History :
I reach instinctively for something without knowing why, and place it in the narrative, and if it strikes a resonant chord with me, I’ll leave it there… But I myself have wondered why I do that — why I depict a universe of man-made objects, with people walking among them (laughs). My best answer is that it’s the way I perceive things. And I also suspect that the narratives of objects are more available to us when the objects themselves have become slightly decrepit. So I think my interest in old things, and worn things, isn’t about nostalgia in any conventional sense; it’s about the revelation of the narrative of how that object came to be in the world, and what it once might have meant to someone.
And on a somewhat related note, an interview with J.G. Ballard from the Winter 1984(!) issue of The Paris Review:
I would say that I quite consciously rely on my obsessions in all my work, that I deliberately set up an obsessional frame of mind. In a paradoxical way, this leaves one free of the subject of the obsession. It’s like picking up an ashtray and staring so hard at it that one becomes obsessed by its contours, angles, texture, et cetera, and forgets that it is an ashtray—a glass dish for stubbing out cigarettes.
The Black Arts — Book cover designers discuss their devious techniques for winning a clients approval with Peter Mendelsund and Peter Terzian:
Yes, a good design should speak for itself—but what if the client isn’t listening? Well, that’s when designers employ methods that are not taught in design school. Psychological methods. Machiavellian methods. Used-car-dealer methods. Manipulation. Intimidation. Seduction.
The PDF is here.
And Peter T has clearly been busy. The editor of Heavy Rotation: Twenty Writers on the Albums That Changed Their Lives has an article on books about album cover art at BookForum.
And finally (and on the subject of music)…
Finding Our Way — Radiohead bassist Colin Greenwood reflects on the digital “pay what you think it’s worth” release of their album In Rainbows in 2007 and the band’s distribution options for their new songs:
I buy hardly any CDs now and get my music from many different sources: Spotify, iTunes, blog playlists, podcasts, online streaming – reviewing this makes me realise that my appetite for music now is just as strong as when I was 13, and how dependent I am upon digital delivery. At the same time, I find a lot of the technology very frustrating and counter-intuitive. I spend a lot of time using music production software, but iTunes feels clunky. I wish it was as simple and elegant as Apple’s hardware. I understand that we have become our own broadcasters and distributors, but I miss the editorialisation of music, the curatorial influences of people like John Peel or a good record label. I liked being on a record label that had us on it, along with Blur, the Beastie Boys and the Beatles.
(via Subtraction)
Comments closedA clever book trailer for Steven Johnson’s new book Where Good Ideas Come From :
(via Kottke)
2 CommentsDesign consultancy IDEO present three visions for the “future of the book” (none of which include print of course):
Any thoughts?
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Mambo for Fonts — Flora Mambo is a new font from the P22 Type Foundry based on Jim Flora’s hand-lettering for the 1955 Mambo For Cats RCA Victor album cover.
Character — Type designer Matthew Carter profiled in The Boston Globe:
Around 1994, he started developing Verdana, a revolutionary font for having prevailed over technical constraints of that time, like coarse computer screen resolution. To hear Carter recall it, it was a pivotal moment: People were on the brink of reading as much — or more — on screen than on paper. And that transition has had a profound effect on the design process.
Carter also talks about his work in this short video for the Globe (via Eightface):
The Paris Review has made it’s entire interview archive — from the 1950’s to the present — available online (via The NY Observer).
An Education — James Bridle of BookTwo and Bookkake interviewed at Publishing Perspectives:
“There’s still a reluctance in the industry to give [e-books] their own space. They are still subsidiary to the traditional book forms… There still an incredible lack of understanding about them and the people who are doing the educating are Apple and Amazon, which means they are taking the market very quickly and we’re kind of letting them do that.”
The Likely Lads — Authors Lee Rourke (Canal) and Tom McCarthy (Remainder, C) in conversation at The Guardian.
And finally…
Writers from The Guardian and Observer newspapers talk about the books that sparked their passion for literature:
Comments closedAs is no doubt clear from recent blog posts, I have a huge amount of respect for the work of designer Massimo Vignelli and so I really enjoyed this recent interview with Debbie Millman for the new series of Design Matters.
Vignelli, however, does not want for ego, and so I was struck how humble British designer and cycling enthusiast Paul Smith is in this fascinating and inspiring conversation with designer Mike Dempsey by comparison:
Egos aside, it interesting that the lives and careers Smith and Vignelli seem share some unlikely common threads — from their early apprenticeships and life-long partners, to their sense of design, tradition, and detail.
Comments closedThe Casual Optimist turns two today. Hardly a major milestone by all accounts, but I did want to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has supported the blog over the last couple of years.
The Casual Optimist is still here because of all of the people who have told me to me stick with it. I genuinely appreciate all the people who have given me pep talks and lent technical assistance; the designers who have given me the benefit of the doubt and agreed to be interviewed; the folks who have reached out via email, Twitter and Facebook; and, of course, the countless bloggers and journalists who keep me in material. Hopefully you all know who you are…
Lastly, it is also my wedding anniversary this week and I can’t thank I. A. A. enough for her continued patience and understanding over the last eight years. I don’t say that enough.
10 CommentsBYUN is the first film in a series called This Must Be the Place by Lost & Found. The series explores the idea of home — what makes them, how they represent us, and why we need them. I can’t wait to see the rest of the series…
(via Coudal)
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