Author: India

A-lines are always in style

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five A-frame designs from Print magazine's Flickr slideshow

Brainiac Josh Glenn takes issue with Steven Heller’s facile assertion that although “The human leg has evolved continually over many eons, adapting from an underwater propeller to its current form . . . on book covers and on film and theater posters, the leg has evolved very little.”

I hate to quibble with the master, since I’m a fan of Heller’s books. But this time he hasn’t put his best leg forward. Even a cursory glance at the leg-scenarios on display in Heller’s Print essay — and at Print Magazine’s A-Frame photoset at Flickr — indicate that the A-Frame is forever evolving.

The Flickr set is not entirely work-safe, but do check it out if nobody’s looking over your shoulder. Much excellence therein.

Now I just have to think of some excuse to put an A-frame illustration on the front of Nextbook.org . . .

Fore-edge books

India4 Comments

Had you heard of fore-edge paintings? I hadn’t. From Karen at hangingtogether.org:

During Merrilee’s and my visit to the Boston Public Library last Friday, Tom Blake and Maura Marx introduced us to the results of the BPL’s digitization of its fore-edge books—books with paintings on their edges that can be viewed only by looking at the sides of the book. Some are “double fore-edge” books – one painting is visible when the leaves are fanned one way, and another painting appears when fanned another way.

The BPL has posted a CC-licensed Flickr set of fore-edge paintings with detailed captions. Love!

Thanks, Dylan!

Photo: [View of London Bridge.] posted by the Boston Public Library; some rights reserved.

Patience is bitter, but its fruit extremely sweet.

India2 Comments

heart-shaped cakes

The production editors notes are in grey pencil, the copy editor’s in red, and mine in purple.

It is at this point of the book production that I start to imagine opening the window and jumping out.

Awesome cookbook author Rose Levy Beranbaum (The! Cake! Bible!) describes one of her least favorite stages in the making of a cookbook: Book Production Phase 6 Copy Editing. Notable for the all-too-rare shout-out to her production team:

I feel doubly blessed to have the support and encouragement of Ava Wilder, head of production at Wiley who cares so much about all these details. And triply blessed to have Deborah Weiss Geline as the most amazing copy editor of all time.

Sing it, sister! Poorly copyedited cookbooks can waste not only trees and time, but also chocolate. [Shudder]

Photo: Valentine’s Cakes at Pasticceria Gelateria Italiana by LexnGer / Lex; some rights reserved.

So I guess there’s no Klingon italic, either

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Mandragoras

The term “Roman” is customarily used to describe serif typefaces of the early Italian Renaissance period. More recently, the term has also come to denote the upright style of typefaces, as opposed to the word “Italic”, which refers to cursive typefaces inspired by the handwriting of Italian humanists. Thus Linotype offers fonts called Sabon Greek Roman and Sabon Greek Italic, (designed by Jan Tchichold), based on 16th century models. But by using terminology which is typically associated with Latin type and evokes the history of Italian typography, Linotype makes a careless statement. “Greek Roman” and “Greek Italic” are contradictions in terms, mixing two very different histories.

—Peter Biłak, “A View of Latin Typography in Relationship to the World,” Het Wereld Boek (Amsterdam, 2008), reprinted at Typotheque

Huh. Now that you mention it, yes, that sounds stupid.

Photo: Mandragoras by sp!ros; some rights reserved.

“If I spike you, you’ll know you’ve been spoken to.”

India4 Comments

Camberwell Carrot

So, the other day, I was asked to set up HTML for an e-mail that someone else—let’s call them Agent B—is sending. Today Agent B sent us a preview of the e-mail, with the Agent B logo added at the top and the usual “Click here to unsubscribe, etc., etc.” at the bottom, but the middle of the message—my part—has become completely verkakte in the process. So I looked at the code and found that my nice, clean, valid HTML had been run through MS Word’s garbagealator. For example, this—

<p>Sunday, May 18, 2008<br />
11am to 5pm<br />
The Times Center<br />
242 West 41st Street</p>

—was converted to this—

<p =
style=3D'mso-margin-top-alt:0in;margin-right:7.5pt;margin-bottom:12.0pt;
margin-left:7.5pt'><font size=3D3 color=3Dblack face=3DHelvetica><span =
lang=3DEN
style=3D'font-size:12.0pt;font-family:Helvetica;color:black'>Sunday, May =
18, 2008<br>
11am to 5pm<br>
The<span class=3Dapple-converted-space> <st1:place =
u2:st=3D"on"><st1:placename u2:st=3D"on"></span><st1:place
w:st=3D"on"><st1:PlaceName =
w:st=3D"on">Times</st1:placename></st1:PlaceName><span
class=3Dapple-converted-space> <st1:placetype =
u2:st=3D"on"></span><st1:PlaceType
=
w:st=3D"on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place></st1:PlaceType></st1:place=
><br>
<st1:street u2:st=3D"on"><st1:address u2:st=3D"on"><st1:Street =
w:st=3D"on"><st1:address
w:st=3D"on">242 West 41st =
Street</st1:address></st1:street><u1:p></u1:p></st1:address></st1:Street>=
</span></font><font
color=3Dblack face=3DHelvetica><span =
style=3D'font-family:Helvetica;color:black'><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>=
Continue reading ““If I spike you, you’ll know you’ve been spoken to.”” →

Need a quick C-note?

India5 Comments

Sanskit grammar

Kevin Pease of Designrants points out the following excellent opportunity—which, oddly, he doesn’t wish to take!—for an up-and-coming type designer to make a few bucks and gain some experience for his or her résumé:

The project is for outputing a variant Typeface from an existing open source Typeface, where the variant is replacing only 1 alphabet (upper,lower case, basic and italic) and putting a sanskrit alphabet (upper,lower case, basic and italic) that will have to be designed.

. . .

The budget is about $100 via Paypal, Moneybookers. Delivery for early/mid-next week.

Um, I don’t know much about designing typefaces, and nothing about Sanskrit, but that sounds . . . how shall I put it? . . . extremely challenging. Still, if you’re really hard up for cash and selling your spinal fluid isn’t working out for you, perhaps this is your dream project. If so, see Kevin’s post for more details!

Via Ultrasparky.

Well, nobody can accuse book designers of price fixing.

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revised price list

Tom Christensen did an informal survey of four book designers to find out how much they’d charge for a hypothetical job.

I was trying to determine a reasonable price for a 320-page hardcover collected poems, interior and cover/jacket design. . . .

According to the 2001 edition of the Graphic Artists Guild handbook of Pricing and Ethics, for an average poetry book a designer might charge $7,500 to $15,000 to design and set the interior plus $1000–$2000 for the jacket. That gives a total range of $8500–17,000. Those figures are seven years old, but several people say the prices in this publication skew high.

Yes, in my experience, they do.

The results? Each different, like a snowflake: $3,100, $8,000, $8,800, and $12,800. See Tom’s post for each designer’s breakdown of charges: rightreading: Book design fees.

Photo: price list by Nick Sherman; some rights reserved.