bu Dhabi’s The National offers this fascinating piece by Peter Robins about typesetting ebooks:
“Designing a printed book is remarkably different from designing an ebook,” says Charles Nix, a partner in the New York publishing firm Scott & Nix and the president of the Type Directors’ Club.
“Printed-book design is about fixed-size pages and spreads. Those are [...]

Imagine you’ve walked into a bookstore, browsing for something new. Besides an explicit recommendation, how do you decide what to read? If you’re like most people, you reach for a book that looks interesting… based on the cover. Mokoto Rich of the New York Times discusses how the e-book era may prevent [...]

You’ve seen it a million times: that iconic tote bag with The Strand logo on it. Recently, The Strand partnered with the School of Visual Arts, TOON Books, Drawn & Quarterly, and Fantagraphics Books to host a tote bag design contest. Over 800 emerging artists submitted their representations of The Strand Bookstore, and [...]

Penguin has put out a neat little series of videos with book designers talking about their favorite fonts. Why? As one designer puts it, “Choosing a font is as personal as choosing what color you might paint your bedroom.”

Have you ever wondered how book covers get designed?
This video shows how Orbit Books’ Creative Designer Lauren Panepinto designed the cover for an upcoming novel. The whole process took over 6 hours, but the video condenses that into just under two minutes:

On Orbit’s webpage, Panepito explains:
Trust me, no one wants to watch [...]

The subtitle of the blog The Hypothetical Library is “Imaginary Book Covers. Designed for Real Authors.” And that sums up this interesting little project nicely. Book designer Charlie Orr collaborates with real authors like Colum McCann, David Lehman, and Thomas Kelly to design covers for books that the authors have not written—and [...]

Did our last post on book covers convince you that cover design makes a difference? Want to try your hand at it? Design blog Venus febriculosa is running a book cover design contest for Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. The deadline is February 26, 2010, and the winner gets $1000.
More [...]

Spotted on the Huffington Post: a gallery of 11 awesome bookcases.
Most are designer prototypes, but a few (like the “Sticklebook” invisible bookshelf) are for sale, and you can make the upside-down one yourself.
(drool…)

Lee just sent me this link (from DesignSponge) about We Are the Friction, a new book featuring stories by twenty-four authors and illustrations by twenty-four artists. But this is no typical collection: its contributors were paired up specifically to inspire work from each other…to illustrate a writer’s story or put words to an artist’s illustration. [...]