Carry On, Margaret

M.E.I. contributes the following to the discourse:

A paragraph about publishers from Carry on Jeeves by Wodehouse:

I always used to think that publishers had to be devilishly intelligent fellows, loaded down the the grey matter; but I've got their numbers now. All a publisher has to do is to write checques at intervals, while a lot of deserving and industrious chappies rally round and do the real work. I know, because I've been one myself. I simply sat tight in the old flat with a fountain-pen, and in due season a topping, shiny book came along.

I'm really fond of this Penguin edition. It's the first long text I've read set ragged right that wasn't a design book. You can't see in the Amazon shot but the headers have a 1/2 pt rule the length of a text block below the head. The verso head is set left aligned too, about a pica in from the margin, OS page numbers (foot) set to the left as well. I like the contents page (subtle, legible) and full title. The text is Monotype Trump, which I'm not familiar with, but is reading well. Aside from some new line mistakes on the "Other Penguin Titles by PG W." page, a spiffy series design.

That crazy "Murder in Manolo" SOHO author ought to consider ragged right text for all her dialogue/brand name-heavy books. I'm at a loss as to what other types of text would be well-suited for ragged right, though. I like the rag better with this small trim (4" x 7") than if it was set in a traditional trade pb size. I don't know if smaller overall trim makes any "different" kind of design element more tolerable (perhaps), but the rag does seem to create the illusion of more space (breathing room) on what might've been an overwhelming page if set full just. YMMV.

. . .

I think a sequel to the Guinea pig book would be a great Production Meeting project. The Care and Feeding of Typesetters (like the "Move the Figs" rant from last night, but with marker illustration and gratuitous use of the phrase "I am just telling you").

I am all for it, as long as in the feature-length film of The Care and Feeding of Typesetters, the narrator will be played by Hütz.

Minutes, 8/28/06

Resolved:

• That somebody should post something on the blog every now and then.


• That Lodge members should not appropriate blog post ideas that rightfully belong to the Lodge blog. (Sorry!)


• That authors should know better than to cross Sarah G.

Proposed:

• That Lodge members should maybe look at the blog from time to time.


• That two baskets of calamari and two of fries is about the right amount of snacks.


• That the Lodge will convene again by early October.

What did I forget?

File under: Safety fonts with senior appeal

Andrew Byrom's Grab Me is an expensive but practical and sturdy display font made out of stainless steel tubing and wall brackets.

It might be worth $3k (or a trip to a hardware store with a generous returns policy) for a book jacket design with a three word title like:

Old: The Senior Movement in Canadian Architecture

I also like Byrom's 3-D neon tube font and Concussion, a font for color blind designers.

I'm going to pack up the office. It's over. There's no way I can compete with Protea Publishing.

Book covers

Marty is Dead

Not non-fiction, I think

Paintings

Small dog

Human portrait


Holy Book repair

Slipcase Bible

Academic binding

A. Poetry. Critic.

A poetry critic reads a bunch of chapbooks all at once, and discovers that books, OMG, have designers. Writing in this week's Contant Critic, Joyelle McSweeney clarifies a previous review of a chapbook based on a discussion with the book's designer:

In preparing my review of Yunte Huang's Cribs last month, I went out of my way to consider the book's layout and non-verbal textual markings in developing a reading of the book as a whole. I credited Huang-the-author for the distinctive irregular stripes running up and down the book's pages, along and amid the words. Since the review appeared, communication with Huang and with Tinfish editor Susan Schultz revealed to me that these non-verbal elements of Cribs were in fact the invention of Kristina Bell, the book's designer.

I stand by my reading of Cribs, but I wonder why, with Bell's credit in the book's interior, I was still unable to 'see' her contribution for what it was, even while I was preoccupied with 'seeing' it on the pages. I'm particularly struck by my failure to see because, as the editor of my own new press, I've learned that a designer's selection of typeface and layout becomes the first interpretation of the poem, the medium through which the book's readers encounter that (perhaps?) immaterial entity, the poem itself.

Assorted Chapbooks reviewed by Joyelle McSweeney

Turns out even critics know a "McSweeney's-esque typeface" [that would be, what?, Garamond?] when they see it.