Books Covered by Tobias

Making Lemonade

The Detroit area was hit by incredibly hard storms Sunday night and into Monday. The result: over 200,000 DTE Energy consumers are without power—including us. So, we are half-living at home. We live in the sticks and have a well and septic system which require pumps to work. So we have no "facilities". Thankfully my wife's parents live on the other side of our small town and they do have power.

Since I work at home that leaves me in a bind. No power=hard to work. But, providentially, and I do mean Providentially, last week I purchased a new MacBook Pro 17". The theory was that it would come in handy on our vacations we have planned for the summer and fall. Little did I know that I would be needing it so quickly.

So, here I sit in the Springfield Township Public Library Quiet Study Room; or STPLQSR for short. I schedule 2 hours at a time and it seems no one here in Springfield Township wants to study or study quietly at least. They have wireless access and bathrooms: definitely two plusses in my view. So here I work. Really nothing is different than working in my office except a slightly smaller screen and no food is handy, which is probably a good thing.

So, Tobias' Outerwear for Books is open for business. Maybe I can find a book cover or two here for inspiration....

My First Cover for Collins

This cover should be really nice. I think it is going to print with some great special effects as well.

I'm Juiced! New clients!

I am excited to say that I began working with two great new publishers: Amy Neidlinger and Megan Colvin at FT Press (Financial Times Press is a division of Pearson). Also, I am extremely excited to begin working on two new books for a great art director and designer at the Collins imprint at Harper Collins, Richard Ljoenes. Richard designed one of my all time favorite sports covers—Juiced by Jose Canseco. Check out his portfolio.

I'm back, baby, I'm back!

I have been a little absent from posting lately. Really, I can't tell you why. It has to do with the big "mo" I think: momentum. I have a tendency to either be all or nothing. For the first three months I was all in—projects out the wazoo, blogging, writing, etc. Lots of deadlines. And then, the normal slowdown in the publishing cycle took hold (end of March, beginning of April) and I put the brakes on.

I haven't been ignoring my work; I have still been churning out what is due each day, it is just that my momentum had gone kaput. You can only work like a crazy man for so long until it catches up to you. So, I have been making an effort to do other things beside design.

NFCGA No. 5: The Road to Dallas

It's amazing how a simple decision to crop a photo in dramatic fashion can carry a whole cover. Such is the case with The Road to Dallas. I imagine designing a cover for yet another book on the Kennedy assassination could offer all the excitement of creating a cover for yet another book about Christmas or the Beatles (I mean, what is left to do?). But, beating the expectations game here succeeds because there is not the expected photo of the motorcade, President Kennedy, or the book depository. The anonymity of the figures, the empty back seat and the low contrast of the halftone carry a lot of weight here.

Title: The Road to Dallas
Author: David Kaiser
Publisher: Harvard University/Belknap Press
Designer: Jill Breitbarth, Harvard Univ. Press

Borders Showing More Covers Face-Out *UPDATED

In what can only be considered good news for cover designers, Borders, the mega-bookstore chain, has implemented a new policy of showing more books face-out. According to Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg's article, this is the brainchild of the new CEO. Taking lessons from clothing and grocery retailers the stores will now stock 5-10% less titles in order to accommodate the new policy.

Some think this is long overdue:

"Unlike modern supermarkets, booksellers haven't done enough to make books look attractive on the shelves, says John Deighton, editor of the Journal of Consumer Research.
"Breakfast cereals are not stocked end-of-box out," he says. "You want to your product to be as enticing as possible. It's a little bizarre that it's taken booksellers this long to realize that the point of self-service is to make the product as tempting as possible."

*UPDATED*
More good discussion here, here, and here.

What Once Was

If you are looking to waste a few moments check out the following Urban Exploration (urbex) sites. They range from the interesting (Mike Tyson's abandoned mansion) to the nostalgic, to the downright creepy.

Dead Malls
the Vanishing Point: Above Ground
the Vanishing Point
Illicit Ohio
Forgotten New York
Forgotten Detroit
Groceteria
Defunct Amusement Parks

Famous Author, Cover Model

It seems when the designer of this book set out to search for a cover image, he went to the usually source: Getty. But what was unexpected and unknown at the time was the identity of the photo's subject—the man playing the accordion on the beach. It turns out, according to Paper Cuts, that the man was "none other than Daniel Handler, the well known novelist, musician and author of the Lemony Snicket books."

“They asked me if I objected,” Handler says. “I said: ‘I think you should check with the author.’ I’d be kind of annoyed if my new novel had my friend Rick Moody on the cover. Not that Rick Moody is not a good–looking man.”

Handler - who says he found Stanisic’s novel charming - thinks he knows how this all happened in the first place.

“A friend of mine, Meredith, took a lot of photos of me at one point early in my career, and I was scarcely able to pay her. I said she could sell them wherever she wanted. And some of them ended up at Getty, filed not under my name but under ‘assorted’ or something.”

Alltop

Books Covered is now a featured listing on Alltop:Design,
Guy Kawasaki's news aggregating service. Thanks guys!

I work until 2 am, why?

Must be for my health. Because, everybody knows that graphic design is a walk in the park. Especially when you are self-employed.

Being creative under pressure isn't easy, but earning a graphic design degree could help you join the ranks of the designers who are self-employed. Working for yourself can give you a tremendous amount of flexibility, and allow you to balance your personal and professional lives as you see fit.

Now excuse me, it's time for my 3:00 massage.

(Thanks to Paula Gibson for the heads-up.)

NFCGA No. 4: Dishwasher

It is nice to see a great use of illustration for a non-fiction book. It is way too easy to rely on a stock image to carry a cover. Gregg did an outstanding job with the cover. Clean, fun and a little retro.

Title: Dishwasher
Author: Pete Jordan
Designer: Gregg Kulick

In-house v. Freelance

Sometimes I wonder if in-house book designers have an advantage over us outside designers in this respect: do you in-house people have more time to concept, design, and execute a cover than me and others who freelance? My income comes from the number of jobs that come in and out the door. Which means, quite candidly, that at times some projects suffer do to the limits of time constraints. I have so much time to get X number of covers done. That doesn't mean I don't give it my all, it just means I have to give it my all within the framework of time. I would love to spend entire days just concepting covers, setting up photo shoots, etc. but most of the time its just not practical or cost-effective. Agree?