Time & Again is a melancholy short film by Jacques Khouri about a man’s repetitive daily life. It is beautifully done with animated Chris Ware-like sequential panels:
Published June 3, 2010
The Casual Optimist Posts
Published June 2, 2010
Midweek Miscellany
A nice post about the US cover for The Girl With Dragon Tattoo — designed by Peter Mendelsund — and why it is so different from all international versions at the Knopf website:
[Peter] decided to shift away from the more traditional murder-mystery vibe of the foreign editions, instead providing a neon yellow in-your-face punch, a jolt of energy comparable to what Salander brings to the narrative… Knopf’s twist was achieved with the subtle interaction of the Trade Gothic type and a great piece of art in yellow and orange Day-Glo inks. Add a dash of cyan (shades of colors in the blue/green spectrum) to create the green dragon lurking in the background and a tablespoon of black for the title, flap copy, and Stieg’s photo, and voilà!
HP Sauce — Anis Shivani interviews Calvert Morgan, vice president and editorial director of Harper Perennial, for the Huffington Post:
[T]here’s an intensity of dialogue about writing online–and about fiction in particular–that was not happening ten years ago. A lot of the writers I work with are finding like-minded peers and readers, having a forum for discussion now that simply wasn’t available when the only venues you had to get published were little magazines that were distributed to a handful of shops across the country in physical form. We’re passionate proponents of the physical book and we don’t think it’s ever going to go away, but we also know that these online forums… are promoting the interest that these writers have in each other and in fiction generally in a way that can only be good for contemporary writing.
The 11th Plague — In an extract from his new book, My Experimental Life, author A.J. Jacobs gives up multitasking for a month:
Multitasking makes us feel efficient, but it actually slows down our thinking. Our brains can’t handle more than one higher cognitive function at a time. We may think we’re multitasking, but in fact we’re switchtasking, toggling between one task and another. The phone, the email, the phone, back to the email. And each time you switch, there’s a few milliseconds of start-up cost. The neurons need time to rev up.Apparently, multitasking costs the US economy $650bn a year. I’m starting to think this isn’t a problem along the lines of love handles or bad mobile phone service. This is the 11th Plague.
My first day without multitasking… My brain is not cooperating. What the hell is going on? it whines. Where’s my damned stimulation? I sit at my desk and read the newspaper. That’s all. Without checking my emails or eating breakfast at the same time.
This is awful. I feel as if my brain has entered a school zone and has to slow down to 25mph. My plan is to leave my BlackBerry off until noon. I break down at 11.30am.
See also: James Sturm quits the internet.
And finally…
Last Generation of Typewriter Repairmen — Wired visits 3 typewriter repair shops in the Bay area:
3 CommentsTypewriter repair may be a dying art, but it is not a dying business. All three of the shops… seemed to generate a comfortable living for their respective owners, supported by an eclectic clientele of collectors, design enthusiasts, prison inmates and tweenage girls.
In every case, however, the technicians in charge say that there won’t be a next generation to take their places. If they are right, as time goes on fewer and fewer of the old manual machines will remain in working order. That said, crops of amateur enthusiasts have sprung up to save other obsolete technologies from disappearing entirely…
For many people, the limitations of early writing machines, with their mono-font and unforgiving keyboards, are part of their charm. That bodes well for the future of typewriters, even after the last professional repairman hangs up his apron.
Published May 28, 2010
The Distant Hours
Andersen M Studio, the team behind the amazing stop-frame animation book trailer Going West, have produced another stunning short film using intricate paper cut-outs for Kate Morton‘s new novel The Distant Hours (to be published by Pan Macmillan):
(via Creative Review)
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Published May 28, 2010
Agents of Change
There’s a great op-ed by Stephen Page, chief executive of Faber & Faber, in today’s Guardian about the iPad and publishing:
It’s clear that publishers must move faster to establish our compelling and useful role in the modern life of reading. While acquiring new expertise, we must assert the best of our traditional strengths; providing capital (in the form of advance payments), offering editorial expertise, and creating a readership by designing, creating, storing, promoting and selling the works of writers. But that’s not enough. Publishers also have to explain what value they are bringing to the relationship between writers and readers, a conversation that is made far more transparent through digital media and digital texts.
Page goes on to list what he sees as guiding principles for publishing going forward. These include retaining print and digital rights, reviewing royalties, flexible pricing, connecting to readers, and excellent metadata. He concludes:
The iPad launch is not the moment, but that’s because the moment has passed. We need to work with authors in new ways, and keep pace with reading’s evolution, or better still become agents of change ourselves.
It’s a must-read. If you work in publishing, send it to your CEO.
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Published May 28, 2010
Something for the Weekend
The charming illustrated cover for John Waters’ new memoir Role-Models by Eric Hanson, who also happens to be the author of A Book of Ages. Art direction on Role-Models by Susan Mitchell at FSG I believe.
And while we’re on the subject of nice book covers…
Isaac Tobin, senior designer at University of Chicago Press, talks to FaceOut Books about his witty cover for Adrian John’s Piracy. You can read my interview with Isaac here.
On the Dohle — PW takes a (slightly fluffy) look at Marcus Dohle’s first two years at the helm of Random House.
Allen Lane to Amazon — A nice audio slide-show history of British publishing in the 20th century at The Guardian.
And speaking of Allen Lane…
Puffin by Design: 70 Years of Imagination (1940 – 2010) seen at The Penguin Blog.
And Simon Houpt on Penguin’s 75th anniversary and their iconic brand in today’s The Globe & Mail:
Until a couple of days ago, Keir Hardie had no idea how many Penguin books he owned. For years he’d been collecting them informally, picking up a few at a time at second-hand shops. “Like a lot of fans, I grew up in a house with Penguin Books on the shelves,” he wrote in an e-mail this week, from his home in Inverness, Scotland. It was the books’ iconic design, he explained, that first grabbed his eye. “There was never much of a pattern to anything else, but the uniformity of the Penguins made them stand out.”
Indeed.
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Published May 26, 2010
Midweek Miscellany
Caustic Soda — James Morrison AKA Caustic Cover Critic talks about five great covers (and a few terrible ones) at Flavorwire. The great ones include Charlotte Strick‘s design for 2666 by Roberto Bolaño. Charlotte talked about this cover and boxed set with FaceOut Books a while back.
The Case of Abundance — The formidable Clay Shirky interviewed at Publishing Perspectives:
We are already in a world where most books are incomprehensible to most people –- whether that be content comprehension or the question “why would anyone publish that?” — but we don’t notice that anymore.
What has happened with the web is that there is so much content that we have broken all the old filters. And for now, we are experiencing it as the completely overburdened and chaotic environment that it is. But that doesn’t mean people should stop publishing online. It just means that we need better filters. Because in fact, the over-publishing of content has been a normal problem since the invention of the printing press. It’s just that we had ways of ignoring things we didn’t care about. The problem isn’t getting people to shut up, the problem is creating filters to help people find their way to things they want.
And finally…
I’m probably the last person on the interwebs to discover Erik Heywood’s blog on books, bookshelves, bookstores, and libraries (etc.), but it really is quite lovely (via The Silver Lining).
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Published May 26, 2010
What Is All This?
Fantagraphics Art Director Jacob Covey‘s first foray into designing for prose fiction is this cover for a 600-page collection of short stories by Stephen Dixon, What Is All This?
Incidently, Jacob also did a nice job colouring Gilbert Hernandez‘s cover art for Kristen Hersh‘s new memoir, Rat Girl. The design is by Jaya Miceli at Penguin Books:
You can read my interview with Mr. Covey here.
I colored Gilbert Hernandez’s cover art to Kristen Hersh’s new memoir, Rat Girl. Fairly easy job but it gives me an excuse to plug the book and the design work of Jaya Miceli over at Penguin Books.
Published May 22, 2010
Work with a Publisher!
Published May 22, 2010
Something for the Weekend
A fittingly Alvin Lustig-like cover for New Directions by Rodrigo Corral, seen at Book Covers Anonymous.
An Open Book-Publishing Platform — Book Oven’s Hugh McGuire on WordPress as a book publishing platform. It’s an intriguing idea even if don’t accept Hugh’s belief that books and the web will be indistinguishable in a matter of years. And, to judge by the comments, it something a lot of people have been working on.
Afterlife — With the US publication of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest, Charles McGrath looks at Steig Larsson, the late author of the Millennium series, and his unhappy legacy in the New York Times. Sarah Weinman has more on Larsson and the new book (of course)…
Enticement and Exegesis — Knopf designer Peter Mendelsund (who, incidentally, designed the covers for US editions of the Millennium books) on author David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest, and book cover design:
Book jacket design should concern itself with, in my estimation, equal parts enticement (“Come buy this book”) and exegesis (“This is what this book is about, more or less.”) A good cover doesn’t let one category trump the other. A good cover should not resort to cliché in order to accomplish either. But the real key here, in both categories (enticement and exegesis) is the designer’s ability to work the sweet-spot between giving-away-the-farm, and deliberate obfuscation.
Book jackets that tell you too much, suck. Book jackets that try to change the subject also suck, and are furthermore, too easy.
My interview with Peter about Tom McCarthy’s book “C” is here.
And finally…
It’s a Book, Jackass! — a cute video featuring a tech-loving donkey and a book loving ape for It’s a Book! by Lane Smith, published by Macmillan (via Chronicle Books):
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Published May 22, 2010
Penguin RED
Penguin Press Art Director and designer Jim Stoddart talks about his design for the (Penguin Classics)RED edition of Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola:
Penguin designers Coralie Bickford-Smith and Stefanie Posavec also talk about their designs for series.
There’s more information about the videos and the (Penguin Classics)RED editions on the Penguin Blog and you can see all the covers of all 8 books on Flickr.
You can read my interview with the talented Ms. Bickford-Smith here.
2 Comments
Published May 19, 2010