It's Guy Kibbee's birthday today.
06 March 2014
08 April 2013
06 April 2013
Two (or more) Words
I like to write. And I like to think I can usually find a way to put more than two words together without making a complete fool of myself. But I don't do it often, (not as often as I'd like anyway), and it does not necessarily come easy. I can feel myself laboring over what I write, fine-tuning each turn of phrase, and I wonder if the spirit isn't lost when I do that, as though the expression is being drawn too far away from the impulse to express it.
I spent most of the afternoon writing, re-writing, and then re-re-writing the cover letter for a job I'm applying for. It's a position I'm qualified for (I think), though I don't necessarily have the set of experience that might be expected from someone applying, so the challange is in demonstrating (in Human Resources terms) my "equivalent experience," but carefully, without drawing too much attention to the fact.
Now I wait. I wait and I hope and I remain uncertain that I've managed to attract anyone's attention with my somewhat unusual approach to a cover letter. And that's the worst part, because you never really know if you've been passed over based on your qualifications, or if it was that cover letter. That doesn't do much to encourage me as a writer.
I spent most of the afternoon writing, re-writing, and then re-re-writing the cover letter for a job I'm applying for. It's a position I'm qualified for (I think), though I don't necessarily have the set of experience that might be expected from someone applying, so the challange is in demonstrating (in Human Resources terms) my "equivalent experience," but carefully, without drawing too much attention to the fact.
Now I wait. I wait and I hope and I remain uncertain that I've managed to attract anyone's attention with my somewhat unusual approach to a cover letter. And that's the worst part, because you never really know if you've been passed over based on your qualifications, or if it was that cover letter. That doesn't do much to encourage me as a writer.
05 April 2013
Don't Press Your Luck.
I do business with a publisher that does a great deal of business with Lightning Source (the print-on-demand division of Ingram Content Group, the very large book distributor). I don't compain about Lightning Source (much), mostly because, by now, I'm well-versed in what they're capable of, and I try to play to their strengths by avoiding their weaknesses.
I understand that Lightning Source works in volume (not so much quantities of books, as quantities of titles), and that they want everything to fall within a narrow set of worry-free parameters so it can all be processed with a minimum of effort. I try to work within those parameters, but there are times I think they get a bit too nit-pickety.
As an example: I've just had a cover rejected because an element was 0.025 inches outside of the designated safe area on either side. (That's the area in pink, set against the blue backgound. The shaded areas are guides that can be turned off and on, and won't appear on the printed cover.) That's 1/40th of an inch — 1/40th of an inch! — on either side.
I understand that Lightning Source works in volume (not so much quantities of books, as quantities of titles), and that they want everything to fall within a narrow set of worry-free parameters so it can all be processed with a minimum of effort. I try to work within those parameters, but there are times I think they get a bit too nit-pickety.
As an example: I've just had a cover rejected because an element was 0.025 inches outside of the designated safe area on either side. (That's the area in pink, set against the blue backgound. The shaded areas are guides that can be turned off and on, and won't appear on the printed cover.) That's 1/40th of an inch — 1/40th of an inch! — on either side.
17 December 2012
Elementary School
My son is in Fifth Grade this year, in the same elementary school he's attended since he started Kindergarten. (That might as well be forever ago).
His school is a small (relatively speaking) square brick building, built in the mid-1950s. (I've no idea how many students.) Walls of cinder block, with thick layers of yellow and blue paint. Those are the school colors, and a fresh coat of each is applied each August before the school year starts. And each year, those walls are quickly filled with writing and drawing and essays and classwork and art projects — seeing that stuff is my favorite part of going to the school.
My son attends an after school program most days, and by the time I come to fetch him in the late afternoon, the school is mostly empty, and as I'm making my way to a playground at the other end of the building, if I stop to linger and look at the Fourth Graders' interpretations of The Starry Night, that doesn't arouse any particular concern.
As my son and I were wandering the halls in the late afternoon, we passed his First Grade classroom. It's empty now — he had been part of a small class that was part of a Special Ed program, but all of the students in that program have been consolidated in another school in the district, and the classroom was left unused.
I remember visiting that classroom with him, to meet his new teacher, a few weeks before school started. He was excited to be starting First Grade, and more eager to explore the new classroom than to meet the teacher. I hadn't expected to see it empty — you don't expect to see a completely empty classroom in a school this time of year.
I've often wished to find a way to keep my son six-years-old for just a bit longer — but that never did work out. He's now ten, plays an instrument in his school band, he hasn't seen Star Wars yet, but he's a voracious watcher of documentary television — no, really — and is a constant source of surprise. I forget not to take that for granted.
The thoughts of the parents whose children are now forever six-years-old, trapped in amber, and of empty classrooms in an elementary school are profoundly, unspeakably sad.
My wife and I had to explain — to struggle to explain — everything that had happened, in a school very much like his, to my ten-year-old. We were concerned that he'd hear about it from classmates, or idle schoolyard chatter, and we just wanted him to know enough not to be afraid.
His school is a small (relatively speaking) square brick building, built in the mid-1950s. (I've no idea how many students.) Walls of cinder block, with thick layers of yellow and blue paint. Those are the school colors, and a fresh coat of each is applied each August before the school year starts. And each year, those walls are quickly filled with writing and drawing and essays and classwork and art projects — seeing that stuff is my favorite part of going to the school.
My son attends an after school program most days, and by the time I come to fetch him in the late afternoon, the school is mostly empty, and as I'm making my way to a playground at the other end of the building, if I stop to linger and look at the Fourth Graders' interpretations of The Starry Night, that doesn't arouse any particular concern.
As my son and I were wandering the halls in the late afternoon, we passed his First Grade classroom. It's empty now — he had been part of a small class that was part of a Special Ed program, but all of the students in that program have been consolidated in another school in the district, and the classroom was left unused.
I remember visiting that classroom with him, to meet his new teacher, a few weeks before school started. He was excited to be starting First Grade, and more eager to explore the new classroom than to meet the teacher. I hadn't expected to see it empty — you don't expect to see a completely empty classroom in a school this time of year.
I've often wished to find a way to keep my son six-years-old for just a bit longer — but that never did work out. He's now ten, plays an instrument in his school band, he hasn't seen Star Wars yet, but he's a voracious watcher of documentary television — no, really — and is a constant source of surprise. I forget not to take that for granted.
The thoughts of the parents whose children are now forever six-years-old, trapped in amber, and of empty classrooms in an elementary school are profoundly, unspeakably sad.
My wife and I had to explain — to struggle to explain — everything that had happened, in a school very much like his, to my ten-year-old. We were concerned that he'd hear about it from classmates, or idle schoolyard chatter, and we just wanted him to know enough not to be afraid.
21 November 2012
Sketches: Burlesque: A Collection of Comedy Blackouts
This cover came together so quickly that I really don't have all that much to say about it! But it sure was fun.
I enjoy the challenge of designing a "period piece," though I'll usually try for something that evokes the impression left by that something else, rather than trying to duplicate it down to the smallest detail. I'll keep clear of typography that seems too anachronistic (even if only to a few people well-versed enough to spot such inconsistency), but I won't hesitate to use something that I think conveys the spirit of that something else. (In this case, a poster might have been largely hand-lettered, which wasn't an option, anyway.)
What I hoped to do here was bring to mind the spirit of an old theatre poster, to kinda get people into the spirit of the material. (The book is a collection of comedy sketches from the Burlesque stage.)
I spent time trying a few different methods to "age" the paper, or make it look a bit beat-up — not because the paper would have looked so old or so beat-up back in the day, but because that's the lens we would see that kind of object through now. In any event, though, I never did find a subtle way to make that work as well as I'd have hoped, so instead I just used some slightly darker patches to take the edge off of the yellow (which is a bit more bright than it appears here).
(That Cooper Black on the bottom is sort of the odd-man-out — but I had already used that in the bookblock (before I'd even considered the cover) and I felt it would be better to tie everything together.)
Not much to the sketch, but hey, here it is:
I enjoy the challenge of designing a "period piece," though I'll usually try for something that evokes the impression left by that something else, rather than trying to duplicate it down to the smallest detail. I'll keep clear of typography that seems too anachronistic (even if only to a few people well-versed enough to spot such inconsistency), but I won't hesitate to use something that I think conveys the spirit of that something else. (In this case, a poster might have been largely hand-lettered, which wasn't an option, anyway.)
What I hoped to do here was bring to mind the spirit of an old theatre poster, to kinda get people into the spirit of the material. (The book is a collection of comedy sketches from the Burlesque stage.)
I spent time trying a few different methods to "age" the paper, or make it look a bit beat-up — not because the paper would have looked so old or so beat-up back in the day, but because that's the lens we would see that kind of object through now. In any event, though, I never did find a subtle way to make that work as well as I'd have hoped, so instead I just used some slightly darker patches to take the edge off of the yellow (which is a bit more bright than it appears here).
(That Cooper Black on the bottom is sort of the odd-man-out — but I had already used that in the bookblock (before I'd even considered the cover) and I felt it would be better to tie everything together.)
Not much to the sketch, but hey, here it is:
09 October 2012
Sketches: Mel Blanc: The Man of a Thousand Voices
I am surprised to discover that I had been asked to start on this over two years ago. (It's taken that long for the book to be finished.)
These were my earliest concept sketches. Version A. would have had the characters sort of emanating from the open top of Mel Blanc's head, though in thinking about it after-the-fact, that's probably not an apt metaphor for having created the voices for the characters, rather than creating the characters themselves (but hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
I had also been thinking it might either be difficult or damn near impossible to get good, useful character art, and I was trying to design around that limitation — so the other concepts could have used tiny photographs of Mel Blanc's head (perhaps each with a different expression) or character art. (The photos would have been in several different colors, rather than just black-and-white.) There could be a few (Version C.) or quite a few (Version D.), depending on what became available.
In retrospect, there wouldn't have been as many photos of his face in different expressions to support this design (but hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
A year later — literally, a year later! — we had an actual photo (and a really good one) for the cover, and the design was refined a bit...
The idea (mostly in my head, and not at all well demonstrated here) was that all the cartoon character art or photos — at this point I think it was more likely to be character art — could be contained by a series of circles in the background. (Those grid lines in the sketch were for my own reference.) That'd make it easier to put the cover together, easier to incorporate the different shapes of the different characters, et cetera et cetera, and allow for a degree of flexibility, depending on how much or how little became available.
And another year after that, the manuscript had been finished (mostly), and I started thinking about the design of the bookblock. (During this time, arrangements were also made for an artist to provide a selection of cartoon character heads, with the idea that they'd be used in a form more or less like the sketch above.)
Here's where I digress a bit (and I apologize in advance). A few weeks before I started work on the Mel Blanc book (again), I put together the cover for a different book...
...And as you can see, I ended up using a modified version of the basic structure I'd had in mind for the Mel Blanc cover there, instead (but hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
I still could have used it again, anyway — I'm not averse to repeating myself, not by any means, and I could easily have made the covers look very different, despite the similar structure — but in the back of my head I'd been thinking of something else, anyway. By this point we had decided on character art, and I was thinking it might be much easier — practically speaking — to incorporate that stuff into a series of square shapes, rather than into a series of round shapes.
That was the way I began to approach the design of the bookblock, with the idea that the square shapes (with the character art) could be used as design elements with the chapter breaks (as seen in this somewhat sketchier-than-usual series of sketches)...
It was during that process that I stumbled across the idea of using word balloons, instead. What better design metaphor for a voice artist?
That very quickly led to the question of how can I use this idea for the cover? Two very quick thumbnail sketches later — one of a series of series of word balloons in a grid, the other a more chaotic arrangement — and I had an answer I thought might work...
...Which I elaborated on just a bit to get an idea of relative sizes, type placement, and so on. (Those notes off to either side are about the measurements for the hardcover case wrap, which will need to be slightly more wide.)
And so, more than two years later, in a somewhat unexpected, roundabout way, we arrive here:
I wanted to use a combination of well-known and less-well-known characters on the cover — hence, the less-recognizable Woody Woodpecker, and the somewhat-controversial (though by now forgotten) The Frito Bandito. Everything had to fit together more or less like a puzzle, and I ended up modifying a few of the illustrations to make them better fit the space I had, making the occasional color adjustment here and there.
There's an ol' Warner Bros. cartoon from 1949 called "Curtain Razor," essentially a series of blackout gags as Porky Pig auditions a series of vaudeville acts. One of the performers (voiced by Mel Blanc, of course) is known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices," and he performs a rapid-fire series of voice impressions. (Sorry, I tried to find a link to the cartoon, but they've all been taken down.) That was more or less the inspiration for this cover — a chaotic series of different cartoon voices that seem to bombard you all at once.
(In the cartoon, Porky responds that he only counted 999 voices. The performer is puzzled, trying to remember what that other voice was — the gag, of course, is that it's his normal speaking voice — and he wanders off, hoping that he might think of it later.)
These were my earliest concept sketches. Version A. would have had the characters sort of emanating from the open top of Mel Blanc's head, though in thinking about it after-the-fact, that's probably not an apt metaphor for having created the voices for the characters, rather than creating the characters themselves (but hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
I had also been thinking it might either be difficult or damn near impossible to get good, useful character art, and I was trying to design around that limitation — so the other concepts could have used tiny photographs of Mel Blanc's head (perhaps each with a different expression) or character art. (The photos would have been in several different colors, rather than just black-and-white.) There could be a few (Version C.) or quite a few (Version D.), depending on what became available.
In retrospect, there wouldn't have been as many photos of his face in different expressions to support this design (but hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
A year later — literally, a year later! — we had an actual photo (and a really good one) for the cover, and the design was refined a bit...
The idea (mostly in my head, and not at all well demonstrated here) was that all the cartoon character art or photos — at this point I think it was more likely to be character art — could be contained by a series of circles in the background. (Those grid lines in the sketch were for my own reference.) That'd make it easier to put the cover together, easier to incorporate the different shapes of the different characters, et cetera et cetera, and allow for a degree of flexibility, depending on how much or how little became available.
And another year after that, the manuscript had been finished (mostly), and I started thinking about the design of the bookblock. (During this time, arrangements were also made for an artist to provide a selection of cartoon character heads, with the idea that they'd be used in a form more or less like the sketch above.)
Here's where I digress a bit (and I apologize in advance). A few weeks before I started work on the Mel Blanc book (again), I put together the cover for a different book...
...And as you can see, I ended up using a modified version of the basic structure I'd had in mind for the Mel Blanc cover there, instead (but hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time).
I still could have used it again, anyway — I'm not averse to repeating myself, not by any means, and I could easily have made the covers look very different, despite the similar structure — but in the back of my head I'd been thinking of something else, anyway. By this point we had decided on character art, and I was thinking it might be much easier — practically speaking — to incorporate that stuff into a series of square shapes, rather than into a series of round shapes.
That was the way I began to approach the design of the bookblock, with the idea that the square shapes (with the character art) could be used as design elements with the chapter breaks (as seen in this somewhat sketchier-than-usual series of sketches)...
It was during that process that I stumbled across the idea of using word balloons, instead. What better design metaphor for a voice artist?
That very quickly led to the question of how can I use this idea for the cover? Two very quick thumbnail sketches later — one of a series of series of word balloons in a grid, the other a more chaotic arrangement — and I had an answer I thought might work...
...Which I elaborated on just a bit to get an idea of relative sizes, type placement, and so on. (Those notes off to either side are about the measurements for the hardcover case wrap, which will need to be slightly more wide.)
And so, more than two years later, in a somewhat unexpected, roundabout way, we arrive here:
I wanted to use a combination of well-known and less-well-known characters on the cover — hence, the less-recognizable Woody Woodpecker, and the somewhat-controversial (though by now forgotten) The Frito Bandito. Everything had to fit together more or less like a puzzle, and I ended up modifying a few of the illustrations to make them better fit the space I had, making the occasional color adjustment here and there.
There's an ol' Warner Bros. cartoon from 1949 called "Curtain Razor," essentially a series of blackout gags as Porky Pig auditions a series of vaudeville acts. One of the performers (voiced by Mel Blanc, of course) is known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices," and he performs a rapid-fire series of voice impressions. (Sorry, I tried to find a link to the cartoon, but they've all been taken down.) That was more or less the inspiration for this cover — a chaotic series of different cartoon voices that seem to bombard you all at once.
(In the cartoon, Porky responds that he only counted 999 voices. The performer is puzzled, trying to remember what that other voice was — the gag, of course, is that it's his normal speaking voice — and he wanders off, hoping that he might think of it later.)
03 July 2012
29 June 2012
Sketches: Eagle Down
I try to spend as little time as possible second-guessing myself and my work, but mostly, I get nowhere with that. I'll have an approach that I like, or what I think is a (reasonably) clever idea, or an unusual solution to a design question — but then, I'll stop and wonder: is this concept going to win over whomever has to make the decision to approve it?
And then I might think, what small adjustments might be made to nudge this into more crowd-pleasing territory? And then, how much time and effort do I want to put into that? Often followed by, geez, why don't you just trust your instincts?
This was one of those occasions. Much as I wanted to use the target shape to replace the missing letter "O", I was kinda concerned that the word didn't instantly read as a word, as it ought to. The shape was there, sure, but it was the difference in color and contrast that created doubt in my mind, and like a juror instructed to not to consider stricken testimony in court, you can't "un-see" something. (Not really.) Out of concern that this might doom the entire concept, I did an alternate version, mostly for myself — that's it on the right, the version with the target shape filled with a clean version of the sand texture in the background. (You're probably not seeing that texture on screen — I think it's been mostly lost to the JPEG compression, though I hope will be a bit more obvious in print.).
While I was wondering over which I ought to submit, my nine-year-old son saw the original version (that's it on the left), and read the title out loud with a moment's hesitation, but without prompting. I guess if a nine-year-old can make sense of this, I shouldn't be too terribly concerned.
Oh, and here's the quick sketch I did before I started working on this. I had been asked to design a cover based on the cover of the screenplay, but there really wasn't anything there to draw on for a formal book cover (and I wanted to do something in keeping with the other books in the series). But I did use the silhouetted figure.
And then I might think, what small adjustments might be made to nudge this into more crowd-pleasing territory? And then, how much time and effort do I want to put into that? Often followed by, geez, why don't you just trust your instincts?
This was one of those occasions. Much as I wanted to use the target shape to replace the missing letter "O", I was kinda concerned that the word didn't instantly read as a word, as it ought to. The shape was there, sure, but it was the difference in color and contrast that created doubt in my mind, and like a juror instructed to not to consider stricken testimony in court, you can't "un-see" something. (Not really.) Out of concern that this might doom the entire concept, I did an alternate version, mostly for myself — that's it on the right, the version with the target shape filled with a clean version of the sand texture in the background. (You're probably not seeing that texture on screen — I think it's been mostly lost to the JPEG compression, though I hope will be a bit more obvious in print.).While I was wondering over which I ought to submit, my nine-year-old son saw the original version (that's it on the left), and read the title out loud with a moment's hesitation, but without prompting. I guess if a nine-year-old can make sense of this, I shouldn't be too terribly concerned.
Oh, and here's the quick sketch I did before I started working on this. I had been asked to design a cover based on the cover of the screenplay, but there really wasn't anything there to draw on for a formal book cover (and I wanted to do something in keeping with the other books in the series). But I did use the silhouetted figure.
23 June 2012
There's a turtle in our pond.
It's a small pond, and a big turtle. (Reasonably big, anyway. It's about the size of, I dunno, a salad plate? Seven or eight inches wide, I think.)Seems a good chance this is the same Painted Turtle we saw briefly last year (seen in the photo above), when it spent the morning inexplicably wandering around the edge of the unpaved driveway in front of our house. We were concerned it might wander into the street, so we brought it to the backyard, where it discovered the pond, and eventually wandered off. That was the last of the turtle excitement.
Then, about two weeks ago I spotted it — or quite possibly another turtle, can't be certain — from an upstairs window, basking in the sun on the big flat rock in the middle of the pond.
It's difficult to get too close enough to get a better look, though — it seems rather shy, and retreats into the water before I can get the least bit near to the pond. It's a bit more comfortable under the water, though. It hides among the leaf litter and algae, but it can usually be spotted. That's how we know it's a Painted Turtle.
(We have a frog, too, but we've had frogs every year. A turtle, that's something extraordinary.)
18 June 2012
Monday Evening
I should be working right now. I'm not, and I suppose really don't have to be — but I can't help but feel as though I ought to be. I can't just sit here, comfortably, and do nothing without this sense of unease that something isn't getting done.
That's the way it is when you enjoy your work, I suppose. It expands to fill a vacuum. And when you're self-employed, it becomes difficult to seperate work from home from whatever else. I have to make an effort to make the time for whatever else.
Much as I enjoy my work, though, it can still wear me down. I need the time away — that's what "now" is supposed to be. But that desk in the next room, the computer on that desk, it's all still there, and were I to wander over to the office, I could easily lose an hour or two with some small task I-just-want-to-get-this-done, and end up falling into bed at 3:00 AM.
That's the way it is when you enjoy your work, I suppose. It expands to fill a vacuum. And when you're self-employed, it becomes difficult to seperate work from home from whatever else. I have to make an effort to make the time for whatever else.
Much as I enjoy my work, though, it can still wear me down. I need the time away — that's what "now" is supposed to be. But that desk in the next room, the computer on that desk, it's all still there, and were I to wander over to the office, I could easily lose an hour or two with some small task I-just-want-to-get-this-done, and end up falling into bed at 3:00 AM.
16 June 2012
Saturday Afternoon
Mind is meandering. Decision-making has wandered off somewhere, to look for more interersting stuff to decide. Concentration has become diluted. Work is done for the day.
13 June 2012
Jayne Mansfield
I've been working on a book about Jayne Mansfield this week, and it's solved a mystery from the recesses of my memory (though I'd never thought to look for the answer).
I remember seeing pictures in an article in Playboy — yes, it was an article — of a nude scene she had done in a film. (With a man. He wore glasses.) This was ages ago, and I was still young, though wise enough to understand that a nude scene would have been uncommon for an established film actress in the 1960s, and I've always kinda wondered about the circumstances.
I now know that the film was Promises! Promises!, remembered mostly for her nude scenes (and for an obscenity charge against Hugh Hefner as publisher of Playboy, which had featured a pictoral taken on the set of the film). As Roger Ebert wrote, "In 1963, that kind of box office appeal was all she had left."
I remember seeing pictures in an article in Playboy — yes, it was an article — of a nude scene she had done in a film. (With a man. He wore glasses.) This was ages ago, and I was still young, though wise enough to understand that a nude scene would have been uncommon for an established film actress in the 1960s, and I've always kinda wondered about the circumstances.
I now know that the film was Promises! Promises!, remembered mostly for her nude scenes (and for an obscenity charge against Hugh Hefner as publisher of Playboy, which had featured a pictoral taken on the set of the film). As Roger Ebert wrote, "In 1963, that kind of box office appeal was all she had left."
06 June 2012
05 June 2012
Note to Self:
Make a point of writing notes to self in such a way that they can be read and easily understood after-the-fact.
Field Day
I made my son a special shirt for his Fourth Grade class's Field Day. It was bright yellow (that was the team's color), but at his request, I carefully lettered his name in a gentle arc, and a big number on the back, both by hand, with a fabric marker, just like a sports jersey.
One of his friends said to him that day "You must have a really cool Dad."
(There's not a Dad alive who doesn't appreciate having his awesomeness confirmed by a neutral third party.)
Sketches: The Time Tunnel
This is, as it happens, the second cover I've done in a year or so where I started off working in red, and made a last-minute switch to blue. I dunno, the red seemed to work better in theory than in practice — the black-and-white photos looked dull in context. That, and the print vendor has somewhat oppressive ideas about ink density, and I was concerned that laying black ink over all that magenta and yellow was just going to cause no end of disappointment and trouble.
I'd been thinking of two tumbling figures (perhaps even as a surprint), but I never could find two figures to work with. (And someone did that, though not particularly well, for the DVD package, anyway. Maybe they couldn't find anthing to work with, either.) There was a great publicity photo of the two leads, in color, though one of them had this odd expression on his face (and he was not in his recognizable green wool turtleneck), so I used another black-and-white publicity photo, instead.
(I spent far, far too much time trying to take that recognizable green wool turtleneck from this photo and place it over the body on the other photo, which had a sharper, better-quality image, but I decided if I couldn't get to the point where I could convince myself that it was possible, I was never going to be able to convince anyone else.)
30 May 2012
Sketches: Little Elf
Sadly, none of the covers in is post will likely see print (though who knows, if the opportunity comes up, I hope to be able to use one of the concepts again).
I say "sadly" not because my work on this won't be used — woe is me. — but because when I put a great deal of time and effort into a project, I feel as though I take part ownership (if only a very, very small part), and I want to see it have the very best chance at success. That time-worn adage about a book's cover, there may be some small truth to it -- but it's the cover that, more often than not, intrigues you enough to take the opportunity to judge the book.
In an era where most books are sold via a web browser, and the most you'll see of them before you open the box is a small image of the cover, that cover carries an enormous weight — even more so, I think, than the days when you were able to page through a book to get a general sense of it. And when you have a paperback book that's going to retail for $50 (!), even if it is almost 700 pages, I think that burden becomes even greater.
I say "sadly," because I think if you could see the cover that will be used, who knows, you might be inclined to agree that it falls short in that very basic function. Granted, design can be very subjective, and it's just about a given that not everyone will agree, but the publisher and I pushed for something better — not because we're sure we know better, only because we both wanted the best possible package for this product.
I don't want to get stuck on the politics of all this (and I wouldn't feel entirely comfortable getting into even constructive criticism of someone else's work here), but I did want to make the point (because it came up in the discussions) that none of this was about "ego." I'm proud of my work, of course, but humble enough to know I'm often just as fortunate to have all the pieces come together, as I am skilled. (And they often don't come together without a great deal of trial and error.)
These sketches were put together as an alternative to another cover design, so I was approaching this project with, I guess, somewhat more restrained goals. I felt it might be best to keep the design simple, and the structure reasonably similar to what had already been suggested. But I wanted to make the type more legible and better-thought-out, while still keeping with the era of the book's subject.
I used Cooper Black (hey look, it has it's own Wikipedia page!), which I had also selected for the interior design pages, because it reads well, it's of the era, and it's easy to tinker with to give it a slightly more uneven, hand-drawn quality. (Similar hand-drawn lettering was used on many posters and trade ads in the book. Beautiful stuff.) The other cover had used type that was a shorthand, almost a cliché of type use of the 1920s, and I felt this was among the weakest aspects of the design.
Granted, not everyone would recognize that, because a cliché only becomes a cliché only after people rely on it so much you begin to see it everywhere — but still, I wanted to try for something better. (Type is an acquired skill.)
I did those "safe" versions (with a variation, based on the gold colors used in the original design), and what I referred to as a "far-fetched" version. It was a concept that almost didn't make it past the sketch stage, but I was intrigued by the idea, and wanted to see if I could make it work. I took the opportunity to be a bit more playful with the title, and especially that photo — I like how it draws your attention right to those eyes, that face. I was hesitant because I was afraid this might be too much of an unusual approach for the subject matter, and for the type of reader likely to be interested in a book like this. But hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
(Honestly, it's difficult to imagine another opportunity for me to use this concept — it'd have to be just the right combination of title, image, and subject matter. But at least I can still use it here.)
In an era where most books are sold via a web browser, and the most you'll see of them before you open the box is a small image of the cover, that cover carries an enormous weight — even more so, I think, than the days when you were able to page through a book to get a general sense of it. And when you have a paperback book that's going to retail for $50 (!), even if it is almost 700 pages, I think that burden becomes even greater.
I say "sadly," because I think if you could see the cover that will be used, who knows, you might be inclined to agree that it falls short in that very basic function. Granted, design can be very subjective, and it's just about a given that not everyone will agree, but the publisher and I pushed for something better — not because we're sure we know better, only because we both wanted the best possible package for this product.
I don't want to get stuck on the politics of all this (and I wouldn't feel entirely comfortable getting into even constructive criticism of someone else's work here), but I did want to make the point (because it came up in the discussions) that none of this was about "ego." I'm proud of my work, of course, but humble enough to know I'm often just as fortunate to have all the pieces come together, as I am skilled. (And they often don't come together without a great deal of trial and error.)
These sketches were put together as an alternative to another cover design, so I was approaching this project with, I guess, somewhat more restrained goals. I felt it might be best to keep the design simple, and the structure reasonably similar to what had already been suggested. But I wanted to make the type more legible and better-thought-out, while still keeping with the era of the book's subject.
I used Cooper Black (hey look, it has it's own Wikipedia page!), which I had also selected for the interior design pages, because it reads well, it's of the era, and it's easy to tinker with to give it a slightly more uneven, hand-drawn quality. (Similar hand-drawn lettering was used on many posters and trade ads in the book. Beautiful stuff.) The other cover had used type that was a shorthand, almost a cliché of type use of the 1920s, and I felt this was among the weakest aspects of the design.Granted, not everyone would recognize that, because a cliché only becomes a cliché only after people rely on it so much you begin to see it everywhere — but still, I wanted to try for something better. (Type is an acquired skill.)
I did those "safe" versions (with a variation, based on the gold colors used in the original design), and what I referred to as a "far-fetched" version. It was a concept that almost didn't make it past the sketch stage, but I was intrigued by the idea, and wanted to see if I could make it work. I took the opportunity to be a bit more playful with the title, and especially that photo — I like how it draws your attention right to those eyes, that face. I was hesitant because I was afraid this might be too much of an unusual approach for the subject matter, and for the type of reader likely to be interested in a book like this. But hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
(Honestly, it's difficult to imagine another opportunity for me to use this concept — it'd have to be just the right combination of title, image, and subject matter. But at least I can still use it here.)
21 May 2012
Sketches: The Hollywood Canteen
Sometimes, you have what you think could be a good idea, but it takes more effort than you expected to get to “there.”
I did a few sketchier-than-usual sketches for this book on my iPad. I have a stylus, and I like it a lot, as styluses (styli?) go, but I still miss the control and precision I get with pen and paper (even with a big ol’ Sharpie marker). This point in the process is (or should be) one of discovery, of taking ideas out of my head and putting them into a form that I can follow through on — but I felt like the lack of control in what I was drawing was a big, big distraction. Maybe I should loosen up and learn to embrace that. I dunno, maybe I will.
Had a thought about using the title as a sort of “dividing” element between two photos, but gave up on that when I found the perfect photo. Or, almost the perfect photo. There was another, of a short dumpling of a man in uniform with a comical expression of delight on his face, in a slow dance with a beautiful woman who was at least a foot taller than he was. (Her hair was swept up, it was difficult to be sure.) And you probably wouldn’t have recognized the actress.
No mistaking pin-up girl Rita Hayworth, though, on a crowded dance floor filled with servicemen. There couldn’t have been a better cover photo for this book.
As you can see from the sketches, I had wanted to put the subhed between the two parts of the title, to use that space better. (There’s always the concern that it will be read as “Title-Subhed-Title” instead of “Title-Subhed,” but it can work, and anyway, I wanted to try it.) That turned out to be much more difficult that I had anticipated, trying to balance the way everything fit together with the size of the elements — I didn’t want the book title to be too big, but I didn’t want the subhed to be too small — et cetera, et cetera. So much so that I just gave up on the idea at first.
(I tried a variation on that photo tinted dark blue, too, but the highlights on Rita Hayworth were so bright that the contrast made them look too hard.)
But I got kinda stubborn, and when I came back to this, I decided, y’know, there ought to be a way to make this work. And that took a few further adjustments (there’s another version of this version that had the subhed overlap the word “Hollywood” differently, but that didn’t seem as legible), but I think I finally have everything sorted out. Except for the back cover, which isn’t finished yet.
I did a few sketchier-than-usual sketches for this book on my iPad. I have a stylus, and I like it a lot, as styluses (styli?) go, but I still miss the control and precision I get with pen and paper (even with a big ol’ Sharpie marker). This point in the process is (or should be) one of discovery, of taking ideas out of my head and putting them into a form that I can follow through on — but I felt like the lack of control in what I was drawing was a big, big distraction. Maybe I should loosen up and learn to embrace that. I dunno, maybe I will.
Had a thought about using the title as a sort of “dividing” element between two photos, but gave up on that when I found the perfect photo. Or, almost the perfect photo. There was another, of a short dumpling of a man in uniform with a comical expression of delight on his face, in a slow dance with a beautiful woman who was at least a foot taller than he was. (Her hair was swept up, it was difficult to be sure.) And you probably wouldn’t have recognized the actress.
No mistaking pin-up girl Rita Hayworth, though, on a crowded dance floor filled with servicemen. There couldn’t have been a better cover photo for this book.
As you can see from the sketches, I had wanted to put the subhed between the two parts of the title, to use that space better. (There’s always the concern that it will be read as “Title-Subhed-Title” instead of “Title-Subhed,” but it can work, and anyway, I wanted to try it.) That turned out to be much more difficult that I had anticipated, trying to balance the way everything fit together with the size of the elements — I didn’t want the book title to be too big, but I didn’t want the subhed to be too small — et cetera, et cetera. So much so that I just gave up on the idea at first.
(I tried a variation on that photo tinted dark blue, too, but the highlights on Rita Hayworth were so bright that the contrast made them look too hard.)
But I got kinda stubborn, and when I came back to this, I decided, y’know, there ought to be a way to make this work. And that took a few further adjustments (there’s another version of this version that had the subhed overlap the word “Hollywood” differently, but that didn’t seem as legible), but I think I finally have everything sorted out. Except for the back cover, which isn’t finished yet.
03 May 2012
Different
"I noticed something is different about the Aspire kids."
That's a specialized program in our school district for children on the Autism spectrum. My son started Kindergarten as part of Aspire, but by First Grade he was spending more and more of his day in a mainstream class — with an aide, at first — an arrangement that continues for his peers that continue to be part of that program. (He's now in Fourth Grade, in a mainstream class, without an aide, and will probably be officially "declassified" as a Special Ed student after this year.)
We explained that they're part of that program because of Autism. We tried — and failed, I think — to give him a good sense of what that means, but we were both taken by surprise by the comment, and it was all we could manage to stumble through an explanation that Autism could be so many different kinds of behaviors in different people -- like the different friends he knows. But mostly, I told him, that just means your brain works a bit differently.
I'm not sure if he understands that he was part of the Aspire program. That's how he knows these kids so well, of course, and a few of them have continued to be his friends, but I don't know if he was aware that he was part of a separate program — as far as he was concerned, it was just "school."
And I'm not sure if he understands that he is Autistic. His peers in the Aspire program are so very different from him (he has been the only student from his class to effectively leave the program), and he hasn't yet made the connection.
We didn't tell him, though perhaps an opportunity presented itself here. Should we have? I honestly don't know. I think I'd like for him to put these pieces together for himself, so we can talk about this when he's ready.
My son is becoming increasingly aware of himself. It's exciting and wonderful, but in that way that can leave you completely unsettled as you think back upon your own difficult adolescence.
That's a specialized program in our school district for children on the Autism spectrum. My son started Kindergarten as part of Aspire, but by First Grade he was spending more and more of his day in a mainstream class — with an aide, at first — an arrangement that continues for his peers that continue to be part of that program. (He's now in Fourth Grade, in a mainstream class, without an aide, and will probably be officially "declassified" as a Special Ed student after this year.)
We explained that they're part of that program because of Autism. We tried — and failed, I think — to give him a good sense of what that means, but we were both taken by surprise by the comment, and it was all we could manage to stumble through an explanation that Autism could be so many different kinds of behaviors in different people -- like the different friends he knows. But mostly, I told him, that just means your brain works a bit differently.
I'm not sure if he understands that he was part of the Aspire program. That's how he knows these kids so well, of course, and a few of them have continued to be his friends, but I don't know if he was aware that he was part of a separate program — as far as he was concerned, it was just "school."
And I'm not sure if he understands that he is Autistic. His peers in the Aspire program are so very different from him (he has been the only student from his class to effectively leave the program), and he hasn't yet made the connection.
We didn't tell him, though perhaps an opportunity presented itself here. Should we have? I honestly don't know. I think I'd like for him to put these pieces together for himself, so we can talk about this when he's ready.
My son is becoming increasingly aware of himself. It's exciting and wonderful, but in that way that can leave you completely unsettled as you think back upon your own difficult adolescence.
