Thomas and Rose spans the globe and many decades, while Memoirs of a Stay at Home Dad charts the efforts of one dad to raise his children and deal with the changing roles of men. The Thomas and Rose cover uses the sharply cut and elegant Orpheus Pro for the title, and the Stay at Home Dad sports the rough and warm finesse of Five Boroughs.
Rubber Brain — Cover Design
A bright and cheerful cover for a book showcasing techniques for increasing mental productivity and resilience, and targeting tertiary students. The rubbery title typeface is Hamurz and the subtitle is Gilbert.
“In this book, five leading psychological educators show you simple tools derived from a wide range of solid science covering everything from positive psychology to goal setting, from mindfulness to CBT, and from emotional regulation to moral reasoning, to optimise your thinking.”
Calling Creative Independents
Creatives often work in semi-isolation, even in the era of the Internet. The Creative Independent aims to provide an eclectic resource for artists and other creative people. Resources include interviews, practical advice for running a business, how to turn a creative idea into a career, avoid creative blockage etc. All clearly and unpretentiously written.
“The Creative Independent is a growing resource of emotional and practical guidance for creative people. Our goal is to educate, inspire, and grow the community of people who create or dream of creating. The Creative Independent is ad-free and published by Kickstarter, PBC.”
Virtual Box Set — Cover Design
Some of the conventions of print live on in digital books ... for example bundled sets of books are often depicted as an actual box set of the printed kind. We set up the pictured box set for Peter Ralph, the successful author of numerous financial thrillers.
“I’ve been involved in business and business litigation for most of my life and my story-telling is coloured by the days and weeks I’ve spent in lawyers’ offices, barristers’ chambers and courts waiting for the wheels of justice to grind to a conclusion. I enjoy slightly changing the facts, adding a little more violence than actually took place and changing the names of the characters to protect the guilty to produce what are hopefully enthralling business themed suspense novels.”
Unsubscribe En Masse
If you subscribe to email newsletters and regularly provide your email address online, you may find your inbox swamped with importuning emails. If it has all gotten too much, unroll.me offers you a quick and painless method for clearing out most of that recurrent clutter. The process is extremely simple, and what it reveals about the sheer number of marketers who have your email address can be fairly sobering.
The Map is Not the Territory
National Geographic Magazine has just opened up an archive of thousands of its customised maps. Those of us who grew up with piles of yellow-edged National Geographic magazines will recall the intensely detailed and often very colourful maps covering the globe, nations and specific themes.
Australian Book Designers Association
There's an organisation for everything, even book designers. ABDA showcases the work of a group of designers with diverse approaches and workflows. It even organises awards, a few events and posts interviews with individual designers. Here's my interview from their archives.
Author Testimonial #8 — Cover Design
“The books came today....they look lovely. Thank you for helping with this project and for arranging the printing as well. It’s a very nice thing to see the cartoons so well presented, and for some reason, more satisfying than on the website....maybe because you can’t turn a book off! You’ve been very helpful and obliging....many thanks for that, and hopefully I will be back for Book 2 in due course.”
Marketing Ideas for Authors
From the ever-prolific and results-oriented Joanna Penn, an information-packed video on book marketing. Well worth 45 minutes of your time.
100 Million Books to Direct to Your Brain
The founders of this site and app aim to bring selected snippets from the vast, vast ocean of books whose time has come and gone, and hopefully resurface interesting ideas and insights for readers. The selections are made by humans rather than algorithms.
“Hence 100 Million Books, a browser extension that shows you a new idea from a new book every time you open a new tab. There are no categories and no social features and no algorithms whatsoever. From fiction to nonfiction, old to new, science to literature, etc…it presents you the world.”
Skills for the New Digital World
One of Google's many initiatives is Google Digital Garage, an entry point to many courses designed to assist people with skills necessary to negotiating the online world. According to the introductory material:
Grow your career or business at your own pace, with flexible and personalised training courses designed to build your confidence and help you thrive.
- Discover tools to make your business succeed
- Improve your interview skills
- Prepare for the career you want
Well worth a look for anyone wanting to enhance their digital skills, whether for business or other purposes.
Women Illustrators United
Women Who Draw attempts to redress a perceived imbalance of female/male illustrators. According to their website:
“Since its launch, Women Who Draw has become the place to go to discover new talented illustrators from all over the world. It features over 2700 (and counting) professional artists, tools to help users curate their own stables of artists, interviews with industry pros, monthly member collaborations, and a resources page for artists and the people who hire them.”
Whatever the politics of the site, it showcases many excellent designers working in a wide range of styles.
Life Advice_Book Cover Design
Typefaces: Eveleth and Proxima Nova. Published by Brolga Publishing.
Introducing the Illustrations of Pawel Nowacki
Pawel has illustrated several books with us now, with a range of subject matter. He has adapted well to every request and produces illustrations with personality and energy. Here's an introduction from Pawel:
"My name is Pawel (the Polish cognate of Paul) and I’m a freelance illustrator based in Poznań, Poland. When I was a small boy, my father showed me a ballpen-made portrait — I've been drawing ever since. Being self-taught, I barely ever leave my pencil behind, wanting to be a better artist. Working almost my entire life in IT business has given me an interesting perspective on art, and at the same time equipped me with some skills that are helping me out with my art work. Coming from two such distant worlds is both advantage and a challenge which I take happily, having a great motivation from my family, especially from my beautiful wife Joanna.
I really enjoy black and white drawings. Book illustrations, comics and graphic novels were always something special for me. Being able to actually create book illustrations is like fulfilling my childhood dreams. This is also why I really enjoy working with Luke, for he is a professional, honest and friendly person, giving me the opportunity to do what I really love:)
If you are a book author and want to decorate your book with any kind of illustration I'm more than happy to help you. I always like to research the subject of the illustration to fit it best for authors idea. I usually do hand-drawn, pencil to paper sketches then scan and add some processing work on the computer with use of a graphic tablet. I always like to leave a hand-drawn feeling to the final effect. I can create book illustrations, portraits, caricatures, etc. but I stay open for any kind of drawing / art idea you might have!
You can have a look at some of my previous works on my portfolio archive at pawel-nowacki.tumblr.com/archive and also on my Instagram account: www.instagram.com/nowacki_pawel, (user: nowacki_pawel)"
Principles for Combining Typefaces
From the great online Smashing Magazine, an old post (but a goodie) on combining typefaces in a layout. An interesting table rating type combinations for 22 commonly used typefaces.
“The fact that there are no hard and fast rules about combining typefaces can make the process of making good choices time-consuming and maybe even a little exhausting. But it’s also nice to have a handy set of principles, as well as an understanding of certain typographic situations to avoid, to guide the process as quickly as possible to a pleasant typographic result.”
No-one Answers their Phone Anymore...
Photo by Alexander Andrews on Unsplash
Alexis Madrigal explains why it is sometimes hard to get phone calls answered, and why you might not feel like answering your own. As he notes, the sheer number of alternatives to the vanilla phone call have rendered it "a vanishing cultural layer". Having so many communications options (email, text, phone, messenger, snapchat, skype, etc) does create a complex landscape where different people are approachable only via specific avenues, and if you try the wrong one, a reply might be slow in coming or nonexistent.
Author Testimonial #7
“Luke Harris at Working Type Design has recently created the covers for three of my novels and the results are beautiful eye-catching images that wonderfully distil the essence of my stories. Even though the books are all so different from each other he captured the ‘feel’ of them perfectly. He is a delight to work with – patient, professional and informative, with a keen eye for detail – and the whole process has been a complete pleasure. I would highly recommend his services and will definitely be using his talents again for future novels. Thanks Luke – look forward to working with you again soon. ”
Samantha's Goodreads profile. and Another Time and Place on Amazon.
Abdi Aden talks PR for his Books
Abdi Aden, author of Shining and Yes I Can is very canny at promoting his books. Here are a few suggestions from him based on his experiences:
My PR is very basic and low budget.
- Word of mouth anywhere you can, such as my kids' basketball. Take-away shops, public places.
- Schools I visit and speak at.
- Making t-shirts.
- Websites, also other book-sellers websites.
- Calling places saying "I have a book." Like example some writers festivals, Dymocks Camberwell also run a book night every November for self-publishers.
- Social media like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Also learn when new social media come up like snapchat.
- Find small festivals, such as Clunes -- self publishers do well there. People attend from all over the world,
Author Testimonial #6
“Working Type Design created the cover of both of my books The Shed and Underneath my clothes. Luke was fantastic to work with and so patient with me when it came to layouts etc People comment all the time on how great my book covers are...especially The Shed.I can highly recommend Working Type Design.”
Creative Mornings Melbourne
Serial founder of interesting design-based companies (Swiss Miss, to-do app Teux Deux, and Tattly, Tina Roth Eisenberg is also behind the global design talks known as Creative Mornings.
Melbourne has its own series, so if you're interested in designers talking about designy things (there's a different theme every month), then consider going along. At the price of free, how could you miss it? In a section impishly titled "convince your boss", the organisers advance the following argument:
“From design legends to hometown heroes, CreativeMornings speakers are selected by each chapter based on a global theme. Past speakers include visionaries such as Seth Godin, Ben Chestnut, Jessica Hische, Debbie Millman, Simon Sinek and David Kelley, among many others. These accomplished individuals share their stories and lessons they’ve learned throughout their careers and in doing so, pass on invaluable knowledge to the audience. I will walk away from the event feeling motivated and inspired to apply those lessons to my own work. ”