Picks of the Month: book design geekery

Four Corners Books

Four Corners Books is a really interesting publishing company with a really unique and strong aesthetic. The titles are designed individually with reference to their content - which range from classical literature to non-fiction. Each title contrasts so effectively against the Scandinavian grey/white of the website background, which separates the company from most online booksellers.

The company is a really good example of how book design can carry through and influence the company aesthetic. The pricing is a little more expensive - at twenty pounds for a hardback - but this is understandable due to the collectable nature of the novels. Four Corners seems to occupy a space in-between coffee table books and classic fiction that not a lot of publishers have dared to explore.

Below is an example of Gustave Flaubert's 1856 Madame Bovary, adapted and designed through a simplistic, mixed-media aesthetic.

Smithsonian artists' books

The USA's Smithsonian museum have an excellent collection of artists' books. These range from traditional books with excellent illustration and design to actual works of out that do not function through readable text, but just use the physical form of a book to tell a story or to convey a message. I have pictured a few of interest below:

Eye Magazine

'Books without words' is a theme I'm really into today. Eye Magazine has a great selection of wordless books, ranging in theme but mainly centered around art and visual culture.

 

Outdoor Gallery by Yoav Litvin focusses on graffiti of note found in New York City, it features Banksy and Normal Rockwell and a few other unexpected characters. 

London Letters by Roger Perry features large, black and white images of politically motivating 1970's graffiti. Juxtoposed against one another, the layout is poignant and emotive in a way that stark images  alone can be.

Lionheart

In Thursdays session, Ness Wood of David Fickling Books (@wood_ness on twitter) came into the session to talk with the group about the book design process. It was a really exciting talk, and Ness' career has been overwhelming.  Ness also doubles as a book historian, and works with Queen Mary University. 

In the lesson, we were given the hardback cover to Richard Collingridge's Lionheart, which looks like this: 

We were then asked to formulate a different paperback cover, suitable for supermarkets with mass-market appeal. We were given the option of sketching or of using Photoshop and I thought I had better use the time to hone my skills. The illustrations from the book were available on Blackboard, and I had a look through to find a different image with both of the major characters that would be graphic enough to get noticed, and display the excellent illustrations: a major selling point.

pesky birds

I found this one, and I used the lasso tool to cut around the image - which wasn't very easy for a novice like me because of the hairiness of the lion and the trickiness of the birds. I thought the background could be more dynamic and tell more of the story, so I had a look through the illustrations and found the image below. The animals in the book are a main feature of the story, and displaying them more prominently on the cover was important. I like how in this image, the animals are peeking through the wilderness:

I then sought to put the lion over the more exciting background image, and I blurred and blurred and blurred to get rid of any pixel-y problems. I also cut out a few birds from the first image and positioned them so they were flying off the screen, which I thought looked quite hopeful and gave a nice uplifting tone to the image. Choosing an illustration where the lion looks quite sublime was an important factor in the process, because the book is about a child overcoming fear. Evoking that on the cover with the juxtaposition of a small child and a large lion was quite important. I also think that this nods to the original cover, where the two were contrasted in a similar way. 

 

For the final version, I manipulated the contrast, saturation and added a filter so the colours would be quite powerful for added visibility. I also used a similar font to the original cover on my version, but if I were to go back and change anything, I would probably make it bold so it would stand out more on supermarket shelves. The red star - which looks  quite gaudy on the image - symbolises a sticker of some sort. Possibly added by the publisher to show an award the book has been involved with (like being nominated for the V&A best illustrated book), or for the supermarket to place an offer or a price.

I'm really excited that my Photoshop skills are improving, and I'll let you know if I get any feedback on my version of the cover.

academic publishing process (condensed)

As discussed in the previous post, an author can be commissioned through a proactive, reactive or collaborative process. After the commissioning editor and the author have made contact, the steps to produce a publishable and professional-standard monograph can be detailed.

• The author/academic submits a book proposal based on their research. This outlines a synopsis of the book, where its place in the market will be, a list of the contributors, how relevant the book will be to the market, and offers a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the content.
  

• The author -if not already on file - submits a copy of their CV, which details the published works and academic background of the contributor.
  

• The commissioning editor reviews the work and decides whether it is publishable based on market research and financial investigation into the costs of production using a P&L sheet. MUP aims to have a 65% profit margin, and will only publish after this amount. Here is an example of a P&L sheet:

• The title is sent to an acquisitions meeting, which includes members of staff from editorial, sales and marketing, and rights. These respective contributors determine if the book is publishable from their aspects.
  
  
• If it is commissioned, the academic publishing house will send out a house style attachment that outlines the writing style that is preferred.  This list is quite extensive, and contains grammatical, spelling and structural preferences outlined by the publishing house. An example of this sheet for MUP has been provided on Blackboard. The author must adhere to these rules if they are to be published.
  

• During this process, contracts between the publishing house and the author will be drawn up, these contracts talk about the digital, media and adaptation rights of a book, the revenue breakdown and the legal obligations both parties have toward one another. Some examples of these can be found on BlackBoard. Tony showed the group a few examples of their contracts at MUP, and we went through the contract line-by-line. It was very interesting how different the fiction/small publisher contract at Blue Moose was in terms of tone and address, in comparison to the academic contract.
  
  
• The work is then peer-reviewed by comparable academics in the field, these in-depth reviews work on a quid-pro-quo basis, and the reviewer is usually only paid £50 for the effort, or given five books from the publisher's backlist (in some cases).
  
  
• If the book passes the peer review process, the work is edited and finalised by the editorial team, the marketing and sales team work on the design. The cover is decided at this stage.
  
  
• The book at this stage is saleable, and the metadata and isbn must be put in place.
  
  
• Sales and marketing teams introduce the book at conferences and book launches, and the book is distributed through existing channels to retail outlets.