Some design projects were not meant to be. The rough concepts below for a farm-to-home fresh food delivery startup never went beyond the initial stage. The startup quickly ran out of funds, staff went unpaid, and the founder departed the sunburnt country just ahead of his very unhappy creditors. However, not every venture capitalist is kin to Arthur Daley — a second startup (qodeo.com) has been the exact opposite — a reliable client for many years.
In Praise of Book Launches — An Account
Natalie, Charlie, Diane and The Ghost Warrior who was the inspiration for the story
Author Natalie Gretton recovered from the recent bankruptcy of her publisher by holding a very successful book launch. Here is her account of the event:
My young adult medieval adventure novel was due for release five weeks after the publisher went into liquidation. After negotiation with the printers, I purchased the 1500 copies of The Healer of Marchmont. Neither my husband Mike of I had much idea of how to market the book to sell so listened to anyone who had advice for us.
I was offered our local Neighbourhood Centre to have a book launch and chose a date some weeks from that. Flyers went out to the whole town and outlying areas of Trentham through the postal service advertising the launch using the cover of the book, part of the blurb and a little about me. I also placed books in the local Trentham bookstore, Aesop’s Attic in Kyneton, New Leaves bookshop in Woodend, Stoneman’s Bookroom in Castlemaine and Paradise Books in Daylesford. These are on a commission basis. Friends were contacted by email, on Facebook, through my new website set up by my IT guru son, and word of mouth. A visit by friends who live in Canberra was good, because they took a box of 64 books back with them to sell for me. At present there are 5 books in Harry Hartog book shop in Woden, Canberra and more are being advertised by the friends. Other people took 10 books and sold those as well.
The book launch went very well. The day was lovely, sunny, still and warm. People came from many different places and were old and new friends we have known for short times and long times. We had some local people attend as well. Fifty people were here altogether. Some people had bought the book earlier and came to give comments about it or to get it signed for their children and grandchildren. Diane Parsons, a local retired secondary school teacher launched the book for me and after that, a critique was given by Charlie Wells. Charlie’s mother is the manager at the Trentham Neighbourhood Centre and had asked Charlie to read the book. His comments were very interesting and insightful for a ten year old young man. All the comments we had on the day and in emails since have been very positive. The day of the launch we sold $500 worth of books which did not include more that were sold prior to the launch.
There are still very many books to sell but at least I have more than some other writers who were left in the lurch. I think I was more fortunate than some other writers as I now have my book in print. Others were left with nothing to show for all their hard work and will now have to negotiate with another publisher.
So with a bit of advice and some energetic emailing, phoning, flyer producing and a launch with a good afternoon, good friends, some lovely snacks and a few drinks, one can recover from what could have been a total disaster.
I must say here that Julie Athanasiou, my editor and Luke Harris, my designer, have been most helpful. Luke has been in contact regularly and is most supportive of everything I have done. Thank you, Luke.
Natalie's website can be found here.
Getting a Title Removed from Amazon / Reassertion of Copyright
Recently, a local publisher (Jo Jo Publishing) went into bankruptcy owing authors, printers and suppliers a great deal of money. The liquidators indicated the authors were free of any contractual obligations to the now-defunct company. Many of the authors published by Jo Jo wished to remove their books from Jo Jo-badged online listings (with Amazon in particular) so they could re-upload their titles with new ISBNs. As Jo Jo was now unstaffed, they had to take matters into their own hands. Amazon has a facility for authors in this kind of situation:
“If you believe that your digital content is being sold by a publisher no longer authorized to sell your copyrighted content, please provide Amazon.com’s copyright agent the written information specified below. This procedure is exclusively for notifying Amazon.com and its affiliates that your copyrighted material has been infringed.”
Amazon's requirements / contact details continue as follows:
- An electronic or physical signature of the person authorized to act on behalf of the owner of the copyright interest;
- A description of the copyrighted work that you claim has been infringed upon;
- A description of where the material that you claim is infringing is located on the site;
- Your address, telephone number, and e-mail address;
- A statement by you that you have a good-faith belief that the disputed use is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law;
- A statement by you, made under penalty of perjury, that the above information in your notice is accurate and that you are the copyright owner or authorized to act on the copyright owner's behalf.
Amazon.com 's Copyright Agent for notice of claims of copyright infringement on its site can be reached as follows:
Copyright Agent
Legal Department
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226
Fax: (206) 266-7010
E-mail: copyright@amazon.com
Everything, All at Once — A Timeline of Our Planet
This fascinating and graphically striking website maps historical articles on Wikipedia onto a timeline. Viewers can confine themselves to the tiny span of Earth's history that features the human race, or zoom out to the unimaginable expanses of geological time. Incredibly, the project was put together by (very smart) college students.
“The viewer can choose to watch a variety of events which have happened in a particular period or to target a specific event in time. For example you can look at the past century within the categories of war and inventions.”
Choices for Designers
A funny/serious look at options open to modern designers — choosing between autonomy and going corporate, making an impact with something socially responsible or going for a potentially lucrative start-up, doing something you love versus trying to find something secure. Julie Zhuo shows how a host of choices and assumptions can determine one's path through the extremely dynamic design landscape.
New York Retro Style — Cover Concept
A few ideas for a new edition of a work of fiction, centred on the cocktail bar scene of New York in the 1980s. Still a work in progress, but fun to work with bright colours, big, bold type and the very distinctive skyline of the Big Apple. Typefaces used so far include ribbon, Playfair and a photo typeface based on neon signs.
Visual Communication — A Cover Concept
A cover concept for a Visual Communications textbook for Cambridge University Press. I used an old experimental French typeface for the title — each letter is as minimal as possible, but still quite readable. The strange object featured at centre left on the front cover is a student artwork. This concept didn't make the final cut, but it was my personal favourite.
A Fifty Year Old Mystery — Book Cover
In January 1966, the three children of Grant and Nancy Beaumont were kidnapped from an Adelaide beach, never to be seen again. The Missing Beaumont Children minutely and carefully chronicles both the agony of their parents and the subsequent investigations, some serious, others farcical. The tragic subject matter called for a subdued and respectful treatment. Typefaces used are Veneer and P22 Typewriter.
A Minus for Website Grader
Website Grader puports to analyse all aspects of your website's performance, mobile readiness, SEO and security. Enter your URL, offer up your email address, it loads your site and in a few seconds, rates it on a number of metrics. It is probably quite valuable for spotting large issues, but for finer granular reporting, one would have to look elsewhere. The site's main function seems to be to nudge users towards the parent service, HubSpot Website Platform. But it is beautifully designed, fun to use and readable, so test away.
Re-covering the Classics
Cover art by Roberlan Borges
What could be more interesting for a book designer than tackling the cover design for some of the great works of world literature? The Recovering the Classics project aims to create exciting cover art for great works in the public domain.
“Sadly, many of the greatest classics in the public domain are left with poorly designed or auto-generated covers that fail to capture what makes these books exciting and inspiring to us. So we invited illustrators, typographers, and designers of all stripes to create new covers for 100 of the greatest works in the public domain.”
And some of the resultant covers very much fulfill that creative brief. Could this be the spur for you to read that masterpiece you've always been meaning to get around to?
Variations on a Theme — New Book Cover
A few iterations on a two book series (non-fiction) for a local author. At the time of posting, covers 1 and 2 are favoured, though further modifications are likely. As ever, selecting, manipulating, kerning etc. type is more than half the fun. Typefaces used include Trajan Sans, Trade Gothic, Alternate Gothic, Museo and Plume.
Australian Society of Authors looks out for Self Publishers
The ASA has compiled a compact PDF booklet with practical advice for self publishers. Of particular note is their discussion re. pricing a book by factoring in production, distribution and bookstore costs, and a rather short list of distributors who may be willing to take on self-published authors (especially those with active promotional plans). The Arts Law Centre of Australia has also compiled an in-depth discussion of self publishing from their rights/legal perspective.
Kids Book Reviews
Kids Book Review is an attractive and frequently updated Australian book review blog. Apart from thoughtful reviews, the site also features interviews with illustrators and authors. Due to the sheer volume of review requests, the volunteers who run the site will not review self-published work. The site also has an excellent list of writing awards and events, plus links to related blogs and services.
A Good Walk Spoiled — Book Cover Design
The Australian Golfer was originally published in 1906. The Australian Golf Society decided to reissue this early classic of Australian sports writing. We were tasked with typesetting and cover design (based on the original). The Victorian/Edwardian love of ornamentation is in evidence, but toned down a little more than the earlier version.
My Little Red Corvette — Cover Design
Our client wanted a stark, almost monochromatic cover featuring a vintage red corvette, and an assault-rifle wielding protagonist, all in the gritty shadow of a celebrity obsessed LA. Plus blood. There will always be blood. Typeset in Veneer italic and Magneto bold.
Big blocks for big boys (and girls)
An enterprising designer has come up with a system of enormous lego-like blocks that can be used to build a variety of non load-based structures, while channeling one's inner seven year old.
Views from Our Robot Emissaries
An astonishing set of robot and astronaut-taken space images collated by the Atlantic magazine photo editor. We have eyes almost everywhere now, and know orders of magnitude more about the solar system than a generation ago.
Image of the mountains of Pluto (!): Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory / Southwest Research Institute / NASA
If You Liked Author A You Will Like Author B
Amazon and other online booksellers are very good at picking up on your searches and purchases to anticipate other items you may be interested in. Of course, the selections are made by algorithms rather than Amazon staff members. Awesome Author Recommender goes in the other direction, using human beings to point the way from one author to the next. Judging from my searches, the site does not go very deep at present, but the authors it did highlight from the searches I made were definitely top drawer.
Displaying Your Fonts in a Browser
Wordmark gives users a way of displaying the fonts resident on their computer. You can enter your own text string, display black on white or reversed, increase the font size. An excellent way to make font selection a bit easier.
Four Minimalist Covers — Book Design
Four covers for the same publisher, each under the same imprint. All yellow backgrounds, strong, simple typography, minimal image content. There is much to be said for paring design back to its absolute essentials. Less clutter, less distraction, more emphasis on the content and the beauty of typography. Typefaces used include League Gothic, Clarendon Bold Condensed and Bell Gothic Black.