As Much As It Pains Us to Link to the Post...

They actually have a lit story today. Aren't they afraid that if they keep writing pansy articles about girlie books and ribbons and poor people stuff they might lose money quicker than they're losing staff?




Home

Chip Theory

In honour of the National Post's piece on Chip Kidd, Bookninja links to the Identity Theory interview.




Home

It's Like Looking at an Eclipse, Only More Immediately Painful

The folks at the Literary Saloon are killing me with their worst-book-jacket-ever thread. Worst / Ever.




Home

I don't know what to think about the Oprah-izing of John Steinbeck. My gut reaction is, "Oh forfucksakes this is just godfreakin bullroar wrong wrong wrong!"

Then again, I can't even count how many people, and by 'people' I mean women, have come into the bookstore where I work looking for East of Eden. Here are some actual quotes:

"Do you have East of Eden by John Steinbeck?"

"Do you have anything by...(pause to look at slip of paper)...John Steinbeck? I've never heard of him. Do you know anything about him?

"Do you have East of Eden? I can't remember the author's name..."

"I'm looking for that new John Steinbeck novel. Do you have it?"

"Do you have the latest Oprah book?"

Okay, so people who would obviously never read a Steinbeck novel are suddenly all interested in reading Steinbeck. But is that necessarily a good thing? Well, shit, of course it is. But doesn't mean I have to stop hating Oprah, does it?

The covers look like the boards in a hockey arena! Ya hafto squint and shake your head in order to focus on the author's name. Pretty soon they'll push the author right off the cover.

Hmm. I wonder when the Oprahs and MTVs will move inside the covers - a where's Waldo in the text. Better yet, a million dollars for the lucky person who buys the book with 'Oprah' printed in one of the sentences. People would read then. All the other books would say 'try again'.

I hope they don't start a worst-author-photo-ever thread...

Chip Kidd Can't Save You

Identity Theory interviews the book designer. Again.



Home

So Cool, Kids!

For those of you who like Derek McCormack's work, why not stop by the website of Ian Phillips, whose art graces the cover of The Haunted Hillbilly. You can even order Western Suit, a beautiful chapbook that excerpts part of Hillbilly and has the design for your very own Western shirt!



Home

Maybe It's a Gender Thing

A Guardian judge speaks out on picking new covers for the classics.



Home

What About The Atlantic Monthly? Harper's? Maisonneuve?

Interesting discussion on the evolution of magazine covers. See also the piece on Nabokov and hypertext. (From Maud)



Home

Hoochie-Coochie Covers

"It is a truth universally acknowledged that authors in need of perking up their plots turn to matters carnal because sex sells." Redesigns of famous books might raise a few eyebrows, but from the relatively tame gallery (at the bottom) I can't imagine that those eyebrows would have been on the planet for any less than 80 years. Though the fig one makes me hungry.



Home

The Worst Romance Covers of the Year

Wow. I knew it could get bad, but... (From GoodReports)



Home

Found Type and Tape Covers

Sounds like a Coach House novel, I know, but it's actually some nice pictures of ambient type and homemade illustrations for mixed tapes. (From Scribbling Woman)



Home

Breaking the Rules
The Onion interviews book designer Chip Kidd.


One of the things I learned while majoring in graphic design in college, that I've always taken very much to heart... The teacher one day drew an apple on the blackboard, and then wrote the word "apple" underneath it. He pointed to the whole thing and he said, "You should never do this." He covered up the picture and said, "You either just have the word," then covered up the word and said, "or you just have the picture. But don't do both." It's insulting to the reader, or the viewer, or whoever. I think that's true. So what did I do on the cover for All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy? I showed a horse. I showed a pretty horse.


That cover was my first exposure to Kidd, in a publishing seminar. It's still one of my favourite covers of all time.

Home

Complex Simplicity
McSweeney's has fallen out of vogue with a lot of writers, but the designers still love the Eggers crowd.

The McSweeney's phenomenon is a force to be reckoned with in American graphic design. It began as -- and still is -- an online journal with an admirably understated visual presentation: while website designers worked themselves into grand mal seizures of hyperactivity in the late twentieth century, McSweeneys.net never abandoned its plain vanilla format. But it was when founder Dave Eggers moved into the world of conventional publishing with McSweeney's Quarterly Concern that the design world took notice.

Home

How do you design a cover for Mein Kampf?
Bookslut has a great article about covers for controversial books. See also, uh, great comic covers.

Home

An old-fashioned kind of designer
Chip Kidd really doesn't like e-books. Why, in his day, book designers didn't even use computers!


"Nothing gives me more delight than the total, utter failure of e-books," he says. "Publishers still throw good money after bad on this crap. I don't always predict things correctly, but I got that one right on the nose. I thought, this is a true waste of money. Books are already interactive. The basic design of the book itself — multiple leaves bound on one side — is a brilliant invention that does not need to be improved upon. People need the physicality of books, even if they're just paperbacks. People carry them around, develop a relationship with them as physical objects."


I think he's wrong. Books will eventually be all digital once they get the publishing infrastructure worked out — it'll be cheaper for publishers and more convenient for readers. And you'd think designers would like the idea of digital books, as there are so many more design possibilities with them. In the future, every book can be a graphic novel! And our society will be solar-powered, and we'll terraform Mars....

Home

Edited by author 10-26-2004 05:22 PM
I don't know if designers like the idea (being one myself). There's a craft to not only designing the right page, but also typesetting it - and the idea behind interior designs is to insure that there is a hint or flavour in the type choices, spacing, dingbats, caps etc. that enhance the book's contents, yet is not so discernable as to distract the reader. You just can't do that with digitized type on screen (I still get dizzy reading longer articles online, what with the high contrast between screen and text, the subtle refresh that tricks your eye, and the scrolling - too much movement!).

Making a book a graphic novel is fine, so long as the novel was intended to be graphically interpreted, but isn't that just stomping on the toes of the author? I guess I've spent too much time with designing books...

To add:

I think that reference books and some of those how-to books would do very well as online sites or encapsulated in some digital form, since more and more people turn to online sources for those answers. THOSE can use good design with full interactivity and searchability. Design then takes on a more active role of navigating the reader through the information, and can inform the content.

But fiction?

Edited by author 10-27-2004 04:17 AM
Ingrid, I agree there's a craft to designing pages as well as covers. And I've got no problem with books as they are. I'm extremely happy with the design of mine, for instance. But I think rejecting e-books outright is narrow-minded and bordering on Luddite. It's like dismissing iPods because of a preference for vinyl. Sure, vinyl has it advantages. But iPods offer a completely different experience, one which is changing the way in which people interact with music. If you're looking for a more bookish example, it's like rejecting the computer in favour of the typewriter. The typewriter has some nice features you can't duplicate on a computer, but....

The problem with e-books so far has been the lack of a decent display technology, which has limited designers and readers alike. But I think we're approaching the point where the technology is becoming viable. The Sony Librie and its "electronic paper" display are getting good reviews, for instance, and it's only first-generation. (I haven't used it myself, so I can't comment from personal experience.) And the versions of electronic paper in the works -- paper-thin colour screens that roll out of devices like PDAs and cellphones, and which can display video as well as text -- look promising.

I also think there's been a shift in the reading experience. I used to get tired reading on screen, but I no longer do. I probably spend 12-14 hours a day reading or editing on computer screens, and it never bothers me now. In fact, I sometimes get irritated when I'm reading physical books because I miss the interactivity of the digital realm, where I can change the font size if I don't like it, adjust the contrast, google a word I don't know, etc. I probably wouldn't read physical books at all, except I have to. But I look forward to the day when I can carry every book I own in a PDA-sized reader, or download a book I want to read immediately instead of having to wait weeks to get it from Amazon (because the bookstores never carry the books I want), or choose between different "mixes" of a book. I think digital just opens up so many more possibilities for the audience -- be it a reading audience or otherwise.

There's no reason that designers and writers in the future can't create old-fashioned text books on digital that differ little from the physical books of today, at least in terms of reading experience. But there's also no reason that designers and writers can't produce new texts -- and new literary/artistic forms -- that can offer readers so much more. New technologies are just opening the doors to new opportunities.

Especially for fiction.

Cheers,

Peter

I rather hope this Ingrid is the Ingrid who designed both of our covers, Pete... The most beautiful book I've ever had. She makes me want to switch publishers just to follow her.

Speaking of design meeting text in an e-environment. You should check out Born Magazine. It's more animation than anything, but the energy between the text and design is positively electric. It bodes well for the future of text on the screen.

George

First, yes, it is that very Ingrid. Since I freelance now, there aren't any worries about switching publishers.:) And both your books are favourites of mine, for different reasons (poetry, fiction).

I agree with you, Peter, about the various possibilities around e-books. I do recall that one sticking point in the first blush of e-books was the price of a module more than the screen, and I always felt that someone should figure out a way to present e-books on an existing platform, rather than asking the public to shell out good money for yet another tech gadget. Or, at very least, anticipate the next gen of, say Blackberry or Palm Pilots and form alliances with them to evolve their screen presentations.

As for design, it does open up newer possibilities for design involvement, in a sense, but doesn't allow for that traditional, hundreds-year old craft of setting a good page. Not if fonts can be changed and resized on a viewer's whim. So it does require a certain amount of flexibility, perhaps abandonment, of the more trad way of designing an interior.

I can't help it for fatigue - my eyes get tired after a full day at the computer. I find it a blessed relief to curl up with paper and ink for a few hours, undistracted.

Newsflash: writer still uses typewriter for novel

Oh, wait, it's on the cover. To me this is interesting simply for the willingness of the editor to take design suggestions... I have a rule: if you don't absolutely hate your cover, don't get involved. But it's still nice to see someone trusting their writer's instincts.



Home

Album cover art

The worst cover art of all time. I clicked onto this page from BoingBoing and actually crumpled over with laughter. It was a giggle that turned into a deep belly laugh and settled back to an all night chuckle. I still think it's an injustice that "Joyce" wasn't in the top five. More here and here.



Home

Hey Joyce, Lorna Crozier called, she wants her hairdo back!

Cover to cover

GalleyCat has an interesting hobby: keeping track of the literary doppelganger.



Home

No Country for Old Men cover
The Rake draws our attention to the cover design of the upcoming Cormac McCarthy novel.

Home

Mondolithic takes on the Martians
One of my favourite websites is Mondolithic, a visual-arts site run by a couple of Vancouver artists. If you read Wired or science magazines, you've seen their work. Their latest project is the cover for The War of the Worlds: Fresh Perspectives on the H.G. Wells Classic, an anthology of essays on the sci-fi, uh, classic. Looks good. Check out the galleries while you're on the site. Some fabulous stuff here, including one of my all-time favourites.

Home

Judging books by their covers

The classics edition.


Home

When someone blows your cover

What happens when two books use the same stock image? Well, if they come to occupy the same space at the same time... ka-blammo! Of course, there's something even worse than finding your image on another book. (And speaking of judging books by their covers...)


Home

Das booken blitzkrieg

Canadian book designers invited to compete in German design competition. Ingrid Paulson is the best designer I've ever not met.


Home

Best book designer in Canada has to be Duncan Campbell at Coteau Books. He's also done the recent covers of grain magazine. Have a look at Spring 2005, the "if" issue for a wonderful example of his talent.

Typographic tours of London
This is worth the trip alone.

Home

>Das booken blitzkrieg

>Canadian book designers invited to compete in German design competition. >Ingrid Paulson is the best designer I've ever not met.

I blush. I just found this wonderful compliment. Thank you.

After You've Blown It
It'll be on the Web as a lesson for other book designers.

Home

Oh my.

I'm almost 100% positive that this must have been contracted to a secular book designer who just couldn't resist. That or else someone's unconsciously crying out for help.

A story sure to make this year's Golden Shuriken Awards.

G

Good thing it wasn't a winter scene...

Undercover

John Updike on book covers.

“Modernism,” like “pornography” and “literary fiction,” is a term hard to define, though we all feel we know what it means—Apollinaire and Gertrude Stein, Bauhaus workers’ housing, the enigmatic and erudite complexity of “Ulysses” and “The Waste Land,” the startling distortions of Picasso’s “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon.” Book covers, however, with their ineluctable role as advertisements for the contents of the book, can scarcely attain the proud non serviam of high modernism: art for its own willful, bourgeois-baiting sake.


Home

Best magazine covers of all time

Um, exqueeze me? No MAD? No CRACKED? No Dog Fancy? No Malahat Review? Some list.


Home

Ok, yes, but John in a fetal position's got to be worth something.

Touring the Bat Cave
Chip Kidd's apartment.

Home

Edited by author 12-08-2005 02:58 PM
Judge a book by its cover

Chip Kidd on book design. Guess what? He gets his inspiration from the manuscripts themselves. Amazing.

Home

Revolutionary idea. The only good book designers I know read the manuscripts. The others, well, rely on luck and the visual knowhow of the editors... like flying blind, in my opinion.

Groovy, baby, yeah!

More Esquire covers than you can shake a stoned Go-Go dancer at. (From Boing Boing)


Home

Cover up

Books sell by their covers, now more than ever. Give the gift of snap decisions: buy based on a pretty cover today.

As we walk into any bookshop for an impulse purchase, we base our choice on the same superficial attractions as a Casanova walking into a singles bar. And all the new places where books are now sold — the internet, the bookshop’s three-for-two tables, the supermarket — are making us even more likely to judge a book by its cover.


Home

Yes, nodding my head about the article. Nodding, smiling.

Funny - I've been told its a 3 second timeframe for catching one's eye (the article says 1.5 seconds). Does this mean we are slower to scan in Canada, perhaps less rushed, enjoy our moments in a book store more, prone to lingering...?

But a good cover is especially critical for a lesser-known author than it is for, say, Atwood, since she can sell by name and reputation alone, whereas a new or not-as-well-known author may need that extra boost to grab attention.

Now if we could only get the cover copy to be more concise so that readers could latch on to the idea of the book... more is not always better. Its just more.

Edited by author 12-19-2005 04:54 PM
I find certain publishers' styles "brand" the book very effectively for the 1.5-second-come-hither. I recognize things like distinctive colors, or typeface, or proportional divisions, or banners. Usually, if I liked a book that used a design, I'll look at a new, similarly designed book. Nothing to do with representation or even an author's name or a title.
This makes me feel both "slutty" - do Canadian journalists call us slutty enough? - and like I still have some connection to the notion of supporting a line endorsed by an editor with a vision. I doubt latter is true; in fact, I know it's not because I've seen the cover design for Anne Carson's If Not, Winter aped all over the place. Perhaps some enterprising editor could take advantage of this, though?

As a designer, I know that it helps to give off a message to the readers that yes, this book is similar to that other book (similar, but not a copy cat). It also has to engage their sense of self in some way - their sense of their identity as it relates to books, and characters that interest them, and plotlines, and writing styles... so the design can sit there and not only grab a reader but also reassure them that yes, this is what they want.

I don't know if all readers understand editorial thrust though. Most don't even positively recognize different publishing houses - they just notice the books. But yes, the design can be construed in a similar way for an editor's line of books so that trust is built.

I hate it when designs just mimic bigger hits and don't necessarily respond to the book though. Like false advertising.

"It also has to engage their sense of self in some way - their sense of their identity as it relates to books, and characters that interest them, and plotlines, and writing styles... so the design can sit there and not only grab a reader but also reassure them that yes, this is what they want."

This makes a ton of sense to me. Thanks, Ingrid, for the professional insight. You've explained why the Penguin Classics redesign was so effective for me - those brick-like epics and Victorian novels wrapped black like monoliths. I'm easily swayed by the kind of iconic design that makes the book an object again.

The New Yorker and slow design
Timeless or exasperating? I'll go with timeless myself.

Home

66b8b80999c3f9a6f414cba5d7d315d4

Hello, nice site :)