Also flat-out removed the icons from the sidebar — somewhere I hear applause — and redid the way entries list comments to hopefully make it easier to use.

As always, feedback welcome. Thanks!

Currently on sale at Labyrinth for $11. A nice (and long-overdue) addition to the bookcases.

Big thumbs up to my mother for bumping into and getting this. Sweet Mom.

My memory fails me, didn’t you blog about this a while back? …[I]t would be worth posting an update, the cover is looking great.

Yes, I did — and couldn’t agree more, it is looking great:

There are a great many comments at the introduction page, but let me add a few: I like the font choices, love the subtitle and author treatment on the front, like the little details like the handling of the bar code and publisher logo on the full version, and like the smaller cartoons. Only the cityscape on the back stands out as being “too different” for me, but I’m not an expert on the style (and the author says it fits).

Cover design by Brent McFadden. Nicely done, folks!

Acrobat is coming in the fourth quarter of 2006. [Design software package] Creative Suite 3 will be introduced in the second quarter of 2007. Acrobat will take advantage of the Macromedia assets. And you’ll see a lot of activity in the CS3 launch. There will be a lot of integration between [Macromedia] products and [Adobe] products as part of those offerings.

As Rob comments, Universal Binary (read: MacIntel) versions won’t be available until CS3. Kind of a long wait, IMHO — but gives us time to budget for a new machine.…

…doesn’t work for me. It shows maybe a tenth of the previews, won’t move the files, won’t organize them, and won’t auto-activate them in the various applications (probably because it thinks they’re not complete, hence the lack of previews.)

The venerable Suitcase X1 also has one big advantage: huge preview area, small font list. FontExplorer gets it backwards, devoting more space to the font list. In FE’s defence, it can be a WYSIWYG menu, but apparently that requires that the previews work. (Unsurprisingly.) Once I have everything organized and tagged this layout might work, but have to get there, first!

I’m wondering if part of the problems I’m experiencing may be a permissions problem with Mac OS X. I want my fonts folder to be called “Font Library” and be at the root level of my hard drive. FE seems to want all the data in my users folder — but doesn’t list a help item or mention on the web site that it has to go there. No specific permissions error, either — just doesn’t work.

In short, a good first try. I’ll keep checking this one. (And, note to Extensis: I’m a licensed X1 user. Thanks for the notice on Fusion. Hmph. Your loss — I’m staying with X1 until FE is fixed. Have a feeling it won’t be too long.)

• Entourage/Thunderbird

I’ll be out of the office tomorrow and Wednesday, and have a list of things that have to get done before I leave — so in the middle of this, Enter Rage does its final face plant. “Oh, no,” was all I could keep saying. Sheesh. Bad timing!

But, after much coaxing, more than a little head-scratching, and some trial and error, Enter Rage is history, the mail’s migrated, and Thunderbird is in-house:

Installation went fairly easily — once I found this thread explaining how, except that the dragged files are already .mbox files, thus eliminating a step. Not exactly an intuitive import process, but being able to rescue 77 thousand emails from what seemed like certain death was worth it.

Now that it’s installed and working, I like it a great deal. The “vertical” arrangement — three-column panel of folders, email list, and email content — is brilliant. (And just what I want in FontExplorer. Hello, Linotype?) Junk controls that actually work, inline spell-checking, a nice “look,” and, most importantly, open source. That means, like Firefox, my browser of choice, the program is managed by people who care instead of companies that profit. Nice.

Using iCal to replace some of the calendaring functions that went away with Entourage, but the task management there isn’t great. Looking for a few tasks program with a robust notification system, if anyone can suggest such a beast.…

When trade paperbacks have folded covers to immitate the slip cover of a hardback, what is that called? Overleaf? I want to design a book with these cover elements, and want to describe it properly to the printer.

I’ve only done one — Florida’s Birds — and just referred to it as a “flapped paperback.” (No flapping bird book comments, please…;)

Checked a couple of sources but didn’t see it specifically named. Can anybody help us out? Thanks.

No idea what/where this is. Doesn’t really matter; I’d love to use it on a book cover.

Found because someone with the nickname Daydream Scream tagged a photo of mine as a favorite. There’s no way I’m not going to follow up on a name like that — and found this.

Sweet Flickr.

Glenn Goluska trains three decades of experience on his upcoming lecture Lead, Wood, and Laser: 30 Years of the Book, Design & Typography. Cosponsored by the Alcuin Society and host venue the Vancouver Museum, this 7 p.m. event next Thursday (March 30) should touch on Goluska’s stints at groundbreaking Toronto publisher Coach House Press, at the Canadian Centre for Architecture, where he designed exhibition catalogues and posters, and at Imprimerie Dromadaire, which Goluska has run off and on since 1975. As if that weren’t enough, The Elements of Typographic Style guru Robert Bringhurst introduces. To reserve, call 604-734-7368.

I’ve attached a couple of covers I’m working on for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, if you’d like to post one or both for comment. The photos are pretty much set at this point, but I’m still refining the typography. Would love to know what people think. Thanks!

I’ll take both, thank you:

and:

I like the photo choices, and generally agree that it’s down to typography. More in the comments — please join in.

I’m an occasional commenter, and I had a question I wanted to put before some fellow book designers.

I’m fairly new to book design, and the type of books I design use lots of lists in the body copy (numbered and bulleted). I got into the habit of indenting those lists (where the bullet was flush with the left edge of the page, and the text was indented a pica or so), and I am now trying to
correct myself.

The odd thing is that most people where I work don’t hang their bullets, and I’m finding that the lists look kinda weird (maybe just because I’m not used to it). When I’ve asked people on message boards, I’ve mostly had responses from advertising people, and that’s really a very different way of handling
type.

So, the question is, do you always hang bullets in body text, even when there are multiple columns? If so, what is a good way to treat them? I currently have a 1p0 gutter between 2 columns, and I just set things up so bullets/numbers hang 5 points into that gutter. If there is any better practice or resources that I could find to help me improve my work, I’d appreciate the help.

Thanks for the great blog!

Thank you for the great question! Have at it in the comments.

Interestingly, there’s an index page where you can see all of the covers in thumbnail — and most of them stand out for being unremarkable.

When you have a few minutes to go down Mac memory lane, check it out. Many of the articles are online, and the graphic design of all those covers together is worth a moment’s stare by itself. Enjoy.

Linotype updated its font management application, FontExplorer X, to version 1.0.1 on Friday. The updated version includes new InDesign CS and CS2 plug-ins, improved smart sets, fixes some display issues, and more.

Nice to see fixes so quickly. (Hope they keep it up.) Get your copy here.

Here’s one I’d love to use on a cover:

From the always-wonderful heavenuphere, shooting at an architecture exhibit in Rotterdam.

She’s also a librarian, and I covet her garden, too. Multitalented!

…And immediately caused a ruckus. After less than a day of public display on this small Baptist campus, they’re a topic of conversation amongst students and administration. Rumors have begun to swirl of a genuine buzz regarding the poster and the play.

Heheh. The sweet sound of success.

Back then, the header was based on a photo of Haunting Sunshine, a title that’s aged well, and was 550 pixels wide (here scaled to fit):

Then, three years ago this weekend, March 17-21, 2003, Foreword became “offical.” We purchased Movable Type, got it working, enabled comments, and even had rotating headers. The same 550 pixels wide (and again scaled to fit), the site lost the ospreydesign tie-in (and gained a subdomain) in favor of an emphasis on community. This one was my fave:

The photo on the right was to have been a cover for a book Amanda was working on; she spent a good deal of time wandering about Florida gathing information and photos only to abandon it later. (Unfortunately, IMO.) The books on the left were photographed and Photoshopped in-house.

This one got the most questions — and was another Amanda thing:

Nope, I ain’t answering…;)

Readership that first “offical” month averaged 50/day, at least ten of which were family and friends. But it was a start. The plan from there was yearly redesigns, tons of great book design and publishing news and blurbs, and to build that community. I left the juice company in July, and ospreydesign was full-time again. Readership went over 500/day.

In March of ’04, the site gained the so-called “velvet” look:

Reflecting growing average screen sizes, the site grew to first 600, then 650 pixels wide, so we could better accomodate larger cover pictures. Readership climbed over 1000/day, Foreword started flirting with the top-10 returns in Google for “book design,” and life seemed good — for a while.

By October 2004, it was a different site, really, because things were strained to breaking between the two principle bloggers. Yet despite a change in flavor from lighter, quicker “look what I found” items to more thoughts and feelings and design, readership continued to climb.

By March 2005, Amanda and I had seperated, I’d moved to Georgia, and the site got … wider. I flat out didn’t have time to redo it completely, and knew that part of me wanted to do something more radical (read: a new logo), so in the end, I postponed. And you, dear readers, kept coming — over 3000/day, from all corners of the world. Foreword now flirted with the #1 Google return for “book design,” trading spots with Robin Williams and Amazon.

This year, March 2006, posts are sometimes sporadic, Amanda and I are lawyered up — damned shame, if you ask me — but, thanks to the support of my friends, your support, and with the help of a few talented fellow bloggers, the postings continue. The site even got partially redesigned, but ran aground when I realized I didn’t know how to do what I wanted for the main portion and have been too busy to learn — so it hangs. Maybe in a week or two. Might play with a few details here, too; some of the dingbats on the left haven’t worn too well for my taste, the comments still aren’t clear, and a couple of other little things. (As always, suggestions welcome.)

Meanwhile, Foreword’s now solidly #1 in the Google “book design” rank (out of, when searched without quotes, 512 million), readership is over 5000/day, and we’re going to keep posting on book design, books, photography, writing, design, and probably even too much personal stuff. For another three years — or, hopefully, thirty.

Thank you for stopping by. Thank you for commenting. Most of all, thank you being part of the community.