The role of Publishing in the 21st Century

I came across a video interview with Craig Mod on the I Love Typography website that I thought was really interesting. (See link below.) I've worked with the publishing industry for the past 2 years - mostly designing book covers, but also doing some manuscript formatting and e-book publishing. I've worked with fairly small publishers and have primarily designed for paperback books, which are much more cost effective to produce. The part of my job as a cover designer that I loved the most was finally receiving my printed copy of a book I've worked on. There is something about seeing your work as a physical object instead of a screen image that is so rewarding, and the tactile experience is such a strong part of the book experience.


A moment with Craig Mod from Graham CopeKoga on Vimeo.


In Craig Mod's interview, he talks about the book as an object. There are books that are "throw away" books, like the mass market paperback you pick up in the airport, and then there are the high quality books that have a great tactile quality and are admired as an artistic object. The latter unfortunately is somewhat rare in the current publishing world, but this idea brings up a good point about social responsibility within the publishing industry.
Books have long held a place of high value. You only need to think about the illuminated manuscripts to realize how much of an art form they truly are. With the ease of printing today, perhaps we have lost sight of the art of the book. As typographers and designers, do we have a responsibility to the industry to raise the standards of the publishing? Perhaps. I love how Mod talks about focusing on the beauty of the book as an object.

He also talks about the digitization of the publishing industry thanks to the widely available reading tablets like the Kindle or Nook. This is a subject that has come to light fairly frequently among classmates and coworkers. I've heard claims that this new technology will be the end of the printed book, and while I do think the industry will certainly experience a shift towards digitization, I can't agree with that statement. I liked Mod's take on this subject.
In the interview, he discusses how the digital era of publishing is a great solution for both publishers and consumers. Publishing a book for the Kindle has very low overhead costs and is economically beneficial for both the publisher and the author. The consumer also benefits, since e-books tend to be cheaper and purchasing an e-book is a relatively simple process. This doesn't mean the end of printed books, however. According to Mod, this digital shift is perfect for the "throw away" books and would allow publishers to focus on producing more artistic physical books.

http://ilovetypography.com/2010/11/05/an-interview-with-craig-mod/

Painted Echoes CD Cover Design

I recently just completed a CD cover design for Tim Glemser. I don't get to do many CD covers, so this was a really fun project. I actually started this project just before starting school, but as my school projects started piling up, along with my stress, this little project got pushed to the side for a while. Thankfully Tim was extremely patient and understanding and I was able to finish it up after finals. (And now I know not to take on any projects while I'm in school.)

Anyway, here is a preview of the design. The bottom shows the front cover/spine/back cover. (The white box is where the bar code will go.) And the top shows the interior with the CD. (It's upside down because this image was taken from the design template, and that part gets folded down, which would make it right side up.)

If you want more info on the CD you can visit Tim's website, www.timglemser.com

School Project: Environmental Typography

For my final project in my Typography class, we were asked to create a piece of typography that was incorporated into an environment that either enhanced the meaning of the text, or created a nice juxtaposition. My favorite example of this is Steven Sagmeisters work: Obsessions make my life Worse and my work Better. This gorgeous work was done using pennies, well the Euro equivalent of a penny. When you look closely at it, you can see he even went so far as to use different shades of pennies to create depth. It's a great example of how the meaning can be emphasized.

 

Obviously I couldn't pull of something of this magnitude, so I went with something a bit quieter. First I had to choose my location. I'm very fortunate to live close by to many different historical areas, and I decided to use that to my advantage. I chose to use Walden Pond as my location, and decided to use quotes from Thoreau's book Walden.

The idea was that Thoreau was greatly inspired by his time living at Walden Pond, and the ideas that he developed from that experience have had a profound influence on us today. I wanted to represent the inspiration he gained using his quotes in the natural setting, and I pushed it a bit further by using natural elements as my medium.

After experimenting with various ways to create typography out of natural elements, I developed a way to write on leaves. I basically traced words onto leaves and the pressure of my pencil caused the leaves to bruise and the letters to brown and become visible over time. I used this method to write three quotes on some leaves and then framed these leaves with some branches and hung the whole thing from a tree.

 

I know it's a bit hard to read them in the photos, but in person the words were much more obvious. The phrases I chose to use are:

"Go Confidently in the Direction of your Dreams."

"Not till we are Lost do we begin to Find Ourselves."

"What Passes by as Truth Today may be Falsehood Tomorrow."

School Project: Wicked Problem Project

My second project for my Integrated Design Media class focused on trying to solve a "Wicked Problem." A wicked problem is phrase used to describe a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. It's often used in social planning, and in our case refereed to homelessness.

We were asked to research homelessness in our own towns and to work closely with a professional involved with a homeless organization in our area, as well as other professionals outside of the design world or homeless organizations. The idea was to promote collaboration and to experience a creative thinking approach to solving a problem through design.

I was completely overwhelmed when I first heard of the project and had no idea how I was going to complete it in just a few short weeks. Luckily, my professor knew how large scale this could go and didn't make us actually execute our design ideas. We did have to do as much of the project that could conceivably be done, and to represent the rest. (So if I was to design a billboard I could just take a billboard and Photoshop my billboard design into the picture instead of actually creating a billboard.)

After doing a lot of research, I came up with the idea to create a donation method through the Boston subway. Our subway has something called a Charlie Card, or a re-loadable card that we scan at the turnstile instead of buying individual paper tickets. Using the Charlie Card is super convenient and also gives it's user a 30 cent discount on the fare.

 

I chose to create a variation on the Charlie Card, which I named Charlie Change. Instead of getting a 30 cent discount though, this card would have you pay the regular fare, but that 30 cents would be given to local organizations that help fight homelessness. 

As I mentioned above, I didn't have to actually implement this idea. I did however, design the card and create some advertisements to raise awareness about the card. Below are some images of the front and back of the card. I decided to continue with the identity the T has already created with the Charlie Card and used the same illustration Charlie, although I did vector-ize him.

I also created a poster that would advertise the new card and what it does. Below are my designs and how it would appear in a subway station. I kept it pretty similar to the design on the back of the card.

School Project: Typographic Process Poster

 

 For our second Typography project, we designed a poster that outlined a typographic process. We had a very long list to choose from, but I chose to do my poster on the production of wood type, and specifically focused on how the wood type was created. It was really interesting to research, and I learned quite a bit about wood type. For the poster, I tried to incorporate some of the characteristics of the process, choosing a slab serif (Clarendon) for my headlines and adding some distressing to mimic the texture that wood type sometimes gives. I also looked at many wood type collections and based my design at the bottom of the poster on vintage decorative wood type borders.

School Project: Integrated Design Media Crowdsourcing Project

For my Integrated Design Media class, we were asked to first create a project proposal based an a boring everyday activity. Some examples we were given were brushing your teeth or making the bed. In this proposal we would outline the steps that the task required, determine the target audience, and develop a mood experience to show the design style we were looking for. I chose "How to Shine Your Shoes" as my boring activity, and in the spirit of full disclosure I will let you know that I had to have Chris show me how. Next, we crowdsourced our design proposals to the other students in the class. The idea was to use our how-to guides and mood experiences to create a design that would help the target audience learn how to do whatever task we chose. So in my case, it was about how to get people to learn how to shine their own shoes.

We each chose a proposal (not our own) to complete and were given total freedom as long as we took the information in the proposal into consideration. I was lucky enough to have two people choose to do my proposal and it was really fun to see how they each completed the project. I wont share images of their completed project here since it isn't my work, but both created a shoe shine kit with all of the necessary tools and instructions. I went with a modern/vintage mood experience that focused heavily on natural textures such as wood and leather, and they both did a fantastic job at incorporating that into their kits.

I chose to execute a proposal for how to paint your nails. The mood experience for my project was heavily influenced by different cultures, particular bohemian and gypsy textiles. I created packaging that included an instruction booklet as well as a webpage with a demonstration video. I wont show you the webpage or demonstration video because those things were WAY beyond my skill sets and didn't turn out so well. Luckily things like that in our projects were graded on a curve, taking into account the idea rather than only focusing on the execution.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the packaging that I developed for the project. I had a blast creating the floral pattern.

School Project: Typographic Voice

I think I've been most excited about my typography class. Not coming from a graphic design background, I didn't get a very good foundation knowledge about typography before jumping into the biz. My first project in this class focused on typographic voice, or being able to convey meaning through typography. We were asked to select a song (we were given two options) to typographically illustrate, and I selected Rain by Patty Griffin.

Essentially we were to make a book and each page should by an 8x8 square, but we could "bind" the pages together any way we wanted. I chose to do a vertical accordion fold to enhance the theme of falling rain. I also kept to a pretty limited, practically monotone, color palette to keep it a bit dreary. Below are some images of the final project.