I love hearing about other writers’ processes, how they perceive of and describe them. There’s always the hope that this will yield some magical secret–or at least a scrap of empathy. And I think it serves writers well to read about how artists in other mediums work through a piece. This post on Henry Sene Yee’s book design blog walks us through his process — including many drafts — in creating the cover design for Columbine by Dave Cullen.
M. S. Corley redesigns the whole Harry Potter series as Penguin classics. Here’s a preview: Thanks, Tori, for the link!
From the Idioms Series comes a beautiful new book called Gateways; it features color reproductions of (and brief design notes for) more than 400 cover designs by more than 50 designers from more than a dozen countries.
Vote at the Book Design Review for 2008’s best cover. I hope this one wins:
It’s not a work of fiction, but some are calling Michelangelo: La Dotta Mano (“the learned hand,” “the wise hand”) the most beautiful book in the world. The 62-pound hand-made volume–which features images of Michelangelo’s work and samples of his poetry, as well as commentary on the artist’s life and work–will be on display at the New York Public Library from Tuesday, December 2 through Monday, December 8. You can also see the book’s marble cover and take a tour of its interior here on FMR’s (its publisher’s) website. It takes six months and Renaissance artisan skills to hand-make a […]
Falling behind on Google Reader, I almost miss awesome things like this contest by Bookninja. The premise is to “rebrand” literary titles with covers and quotes that make them more mass marketesque. If you click nowhere else today, click here to behold the finalists and here to see Bookninja’s own offerings, including Beloved-as-apocalypse. The entires will make you laugh and think about the more serious repercussions of rebranding. Voting is still open; email editors@bookninja.com with your top three picks by Friday. One of my favorite contenders is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road “as parenting book.” (For a higher-res version, check out […]
The Book Design Review is one of my favorite book blogs. Earlier this month, Joseph Sullivan published what he hopes will be “the first of many” interviews on the site. Read about the inspiration and process behind Art Director Lisa Fyfe’s design of Paul Auster’s Man in the Dark (August 2008, Henry Holt).
