Of all the jobs I’ve done over the years, I thought telling people I was a book designer was pretty straightforward, like saying I was a cab driver or a hair stylist. Everybody would know what that was. Turns out that’s not the case. Some people say: Oh, you design the book cover. Sometimes, I […]
seven housekeeping tips for a smoother workflow
March 8, 2011 – 8:57 pm
In a previous post I wrote about stumbling blocks to watch out for in your workflow. Today I want to write from the positive side: what you can do to make your workflow go more smoothly with less wasted effort and, most importantly, less chance of making silly errors. 1. Use styles. Styles have been […]
reading a book like a designer – part 2
February 22, 2011 – 3:14 pm
This is an update of a post from 08 October 2009. In part 1 of this post, I used Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Habit as a model for looking at a book through designer eyes, identifying and articulating the various graphic elements that combine to create the reader’s experience of the content. Despite identifying […]
reading a book like a designer – part 1
February 16, 2011 – 12:15 pm
This is an update of a post from 01 October 2009. Of course, we book designers read books like regular people. But, when we are in “design mode”, we look at a book in a different way. We’re not so much interested in specific content as we are in identifying how many different elements of […]
five workflow stumbling blocks and how to avoid them
January 28, 2011 – 4:10 pm
This is an update to a post originally published in March, 2010. Book design and production is a complicated process with a lot of moving parts: text and graphics, multiple people, as well as a fair share of technology gremlins. Some glitches are bound to arise, but many are predictable and thus can be avoided—or […]
10 books to inspire you to make art
December 23, 2010 – 8:07 pm
When I finish a long project I don’t actually collapse but rather wander around in a state of unfocused activity. When that happened yesterday I decided to settle down and read. Not knowing exactly what I wanted to read, I pulled a slew of books off my bookshelves. And because I love sorting things into […]
it’s messy, this creative process
December 16, 2010 – 7:46 pm
Since Thanksgiving, I’ve been working on a personal book project that I’m referring to as my 2011 Inspiration Book. Over the years I have developed pages of material based on various strategic planning systems: year end summaries, goal setting, etc. They have always been written as a business document in Word, printed out on 8.5×11-inch […]
ode to book-as-object
November 30, 2010 – 11:05 pm
I recently completed a book design project: the life story of a colleague’s mother. [Let’s call her Miriam.] The manuscript had been in process for many months; Miriam had seen it on numerous occasions. As the book design and layout progressed, I created .pdf files as review copies for my colleague. Some of these were […]
personal+history: ted grant and the art of observation
November 16, 2010 – 4:34 pm
When you write the history of Canada in the 60s, it will be written with Ted Grant photographs. — Joan Schwartz of Queen’s’ University. I was recently at a screening of The Art of Observation, a documentary on the life and work of Ted Grant, known at the father of Canadian photojournalism. It was written, […]
how “real” women make books
November 9, 2010 – 12:48 am
This is how books have been made since the time of Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. And, despite the changing equipment to execute the various steps, the same tasks need to be accomplished: text and images transferred in some way to the page, signatures bound and trimmed, covers attached. This is why I consider e-books […]
