Hardcover cases are almost always hidden under jackets. That’s a shame, since the skin of the book is where textures and colors add dimension to the book design.
The hardcover skin is a vestigial organ, and therefore a part of the book budget that gets squeezed early when cost is an issue.
Here’s a simple case covered in textured paper with a dull silver embossed spine. This is about a basic as a case can get. The only “extras” here (in cost) are the two debosses: on the front cover, and on the lower back cover. Generally, a spine must have visible embossed text for the occasions when the book is separated from it’s clothing.
Where Now: New and Selected Poems by Laura Kasischke, published by Copper Canyon Press
The texture of the paper, part of the standard textures offered by Rainbow, echoes the photo on the cover of the book, a mysterious cloth floating down a stream.
Will anyone look at the binding? When I designed it, I liked to imagine author Laura Kasischke pealing back the jacket and admiring her own name, debossed on the cover: Her accomplishment.
Case binding by John H. Dekker & Sons of Grand Rapids, MI.
The of burning village in Viet Nam suggests the context of the original and is also sadly like our own urgent canvas,with our great wildfires, and endless wars.
Designing a refreshed, enhanced edition of W.S. Merwin’s The Lice
In 1967, Atheneum published the first hard and softcover editions of The Lice. I’ve been designing the new 50th Anniversary Edition for Copper Canyon Press, and the project has taken me down all kinds of interesting rabbit holes. I plan to post about a few of them.
Considering the original cover:
As delivery to the printer approaches, I am still trying to nail down the color for the cover. I thought I had it, based on two old copies I had, but then thought to look at a first printing to see what materials they used.
L to R: First, third and twelfth printings
When my copy arrived, it seemed to me that the first printing was a different color than the later printings. Taking note of how yellowed the inside cover of the first printing appeared, I wondered if it had been printed on a natural white to start with?
It was difficult to match the color using my current Pantone Plus system swatch book book. In frustration I pulled out my very old Pantone CMYK book. There, I found some credible matches to the warmish greenish gray and the oxblood brown. I began to wonder if it wasn’t a good thing I’m too cheap throw out my old swatch books. Does the paper under the ink yellow as much as that without ink? Or perhaps, I was now thinking, each printing and even each copy had aged in its own way. . . .
Here is the first printing next to my Gracol6 proofs:
L to Right: First, Gracol proof 2 (designed to be more tan), Gracol proof 1 (before I decided to make the bottom look more like the original book color)
The updated proofs are in the middle and on the right. I hope those of you who remember the original paperback will immediately recognize that rad title, (there isn’t a poem named “The Lice” in the collection), while new readers will appreciate those gorgeous elegant Bembo caps, and be drawn in by the photo. The of burning village in Viet Nam suggests the context of the original and is also sadly like our own urgent canvas, with our great wildfires, and endless wars.
Monotype’s Bembo Titling caps are so graceful (look the serifs on the “C”), they are an improvement to the original, heavier Bembo caps. To my eye, the bottom half of the original with those cap italics, desperately needed an update. I’ve never been a fan of all cap italics. They are all over the interior, too . . .
I’m going to adjust the cover color one more time . . . I know, who even cares about this? {I do.} Who would ever notice? {Why I blog.}
W.S. Merwin’s latest poetry from his palm sanctuary
W.S. Merwin turned 89 on September 30, 2016.
Garden Time by W.S. Merwin, Copper Canyon Press, 2016, ISBN 978155659-499-1
The cover image, a copperplate photogravure by Gwen Arkin, shows the potting shed on the land where W.S. Merwin lives, writing and tending a forest of palm trees that he planted, turning clear cut land into a forest. Sarah Cavanaugh‘s photographs are on the endsheets and on the back of the jacket. Merwin’s Maui forest is now The Merwin Conservancy.
Endsheets
Case in Rainbow “Handspun” texture with debossing and silver foil stamp on the spine
Merwin’s “Also By” takes up two pages
Interior
Merwin’s poetry asks for a classic, minimal setting. MVB Verdigris is the text typeface, with display type set in Garamond 3. The Garamond siblings are a nod to Merwin’s years living in France if anyone were to ask me why I picked them. If you listen to that clip under the “living in France” link you’ll hear: warmth and erudition are in Merwin’s voice as well as in Verdigris’ letterforms.
The real book is better than the pictures. 5.5 x 7.5 inches, soft to the touch, fits well in hand . . .
Cover and Jacket
The cover art led the way to an earthy, organic approach for the whole book package. For the forest photos by Sarah Cavanaugh, printing them in full color seemed too literal, and possibly overwhelming to the space of the poems. Instead those photos are presented in a muted green monotone. I used 4-color process for the green so I could attempt to make both greens match (the one printed on the creamier endsheet stock and the one printed on the white jacket stock). By pulling back the yellow a bit on the endsheet green, the result matches well enough.
The original cover concept was whisper spare. Just the simple author/title. No enhancement. Test prints and common-sense talk* from JB the seasoned marketer convinced me that we had to make it possible to read the author/title from a distance. I used an understated intervention, a brown rectangle made from the image of a palm leaf.
*actually a passionate plea
Better choice?
Bloodaxe in Britain has released Garden Time in softcover. Their approach to the cover is a bit different, although they use the same image as a starting point.
In the photo below, you can see how the color is darker and duller in the finished book (left) than it is in the press approval proof (right) provided by the printer. The cover was printed offset (10pt C1S, 4/0) and finished with luxury matte coating.
Printed book with luxury matte coating on the left, matchprint from the printer on the right.
The printer always tells me that matte coatings will make the color darker, and it is useful to consider this side-by-side comparison. The cover stock is not as bright white as the proof stock. The cover stock is warmer (more yellow). So, some color shift is due to the difference in the stock.
On screen the image looks very bright (yes I know the screen doesn’t give an accurate color match). I had already made the image brighter and a bit more saturated to come closer to our expectations from the screen. I’m glad I did as the printed cover stepped it back down again.
Design note to self: Remember to think ahead and account for the likely difference between press proof and actual printed results.
Possible strategies: pull back the yellow 5%-10%, increase brightness and saturation, and in some circumstances pay for a proof on the actual stock for a better proof to begin with.
“The exquisite production quality of the book effectively highlights both his talents as translator and his vision as a travel writer.”—Justin Radland, The Los Angeles Review of Books
Finding Them Gone: Visiting China’s Poets of the Past by Bill Porter / Red Pine
400 pages, over 120 photos, 7 x 9 softcover
The book is organized around the story of Bill Porter’s Guggenheim award project. He traveled around China, visiting sites related to poets and offering libation to their spirits. It is a combination of travelogue, translation, and commentary where each chapter represents one of thirty days on a whirlwind tour.
The title page spread suggests the dizzying array of gravestones, pagodas and memorial halls visited during the journey, as well as the impressive list of Bill Porter/Red Pine’s published works.
Pages include poems in English and Chinese, images and captions. Wayfinding consists of running feet that tell the day number of the current page and he poet discussed on the page.
We wanted a book that you could open at random and jump in. Read a poem, take up the story, enjoy a photo.
From over 400 photos, Bill Porter and I culled down the lot. Layout of the book was done organically as I flowed the text and sized the photos into the five basic photo shapes I established within the design grid. All of the photos were adjusted for at least -10% in the shadow. Most photos required individual attention.
This book was unusual in that the design evolved as we developed first a single-chapter fundraiser and then adjusted that design to fit more lines on the page for the book. The book is printed on antique white rather than bright white stock, a choice that puts the words before the photos, and is consistent with other Copper Canyon Press titles.
Finding Them Gone fundraising sample and 3 color proofs of the cover as I adjusted the final color.
The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, translation and commentary by Red Pine published by Copper Canyon Press.
Thinking of Eric Gill, and his background as a stonecutter, I set the book title with Gill’s beautiful Perpetua Titling capitals. I fell in love with the shapes of the letters, I admit.
Then, we found the image of the man in his simple hut, in the midst of dragon-shape pine trees. After acquiring the image rights, we learned that this scene was a detail from the familiar painting, “The Thatched Hut of Dreaming an Immortal” by Tang Yin (late 16th C), the wide painting depicts a man hovering in space at the left side. The Immortal hovers just beyond the book cover too.
The interior design balances the vertical lines of Chinese and the dense commentary on the verso pages with the poem number and translation on the recto page. All along, we wanted to keep the attention on the poems, with no more than 2 poem per spread.
I selected Minion for the text, as the sections of commentary can be long and we had limited space. Minion is slightly condensed so fits more words on the page than Bembo (another face I considered). Why not Perpetua for the text? Aside from the problem of fitting commentary, I don’t use Perpetua anymore for text because it falls apart when printed POD, and even though this book was printed on web press (at McNaughton and Gunn), you never know how the text may be printed in future.
Copious notes and commentary are part of what make Red Pine’s books so great.Stonehouse: The page has to work with less text, too.
Multilingual books are always full of puzzles to solve. In this case the poems contain some archaic characters, so we relied on a compositor in Taiwan to compose the Chinese. Delivered as a PDF, each page contained several poems. I placed the PDF and cropped out the other poems. Midway through, the Chinese compositor changed the spacing and organization of the source pdf changed. Aargh! I had to relink and check and recrop all those text boxes. What are blogs for if not for complaining, right?
I’ll end with one of my favorite poems from this collection:
Poem 13 by Stonehouse, translated by Red Pine
To buy a copy of the book, buy direct from Copper Canyon Press, or browse your local bookseller.
Back in 1999 a designer friend of mine referred me to Rum & Reggae Guidebooks. At the time, R&R wanted to redesign their travel books focusing on countries with beaches. Their attitude was their brand: irreverent, witty, and informative.
I worked closely with author and editor Jonathan Runge. We went back and forth through several design approaches and in the end settled on a design with typography that rests on energetic and sophisticated Scala and bold and edgy Journal.
I developed a vocabulary of icons to aid readability and findability of the minutia of the restaurants and accommodations. I also developed a coding system for R&R to use on the editorial side. They provided styled Word docs with codes for icons. I translated the files with Torquemada and imported to Quark Xpress. The system reduced the cost of composition.
The books are graced by illustrations by Eric Orner. My favorite covers from the series have his vibrant and whimsical art.
When the economy crashed, R&R was hit hard, and like many businesses, and our work of 10 years together ended. I’m still dreaming of visiting the places in those guidebooks . . .
This week I had a birthday, and it is way past time to get this project going. I spent a few hours today dearchiving and pdf-ing and now have folder of portfolio images
This blog post, I’ll pick my favorites — covers that please my eye. All are covers done for Copper Canyon Press over about 1998 to present.
I showed my portfolio once and asked the art director her impression. She said “your covers are kind of quiet.” In the case of these covers for my longtime client Copper Canyon Press, that quiet is probably an intersection of my taste and Copper Canyon Press’s usual presentation of a strong image with understated typography.
I’ll talk more about these covers in future posts.
Will anyone look at the binding? When I designed it, I liked to imagine author Laura Kasischke pealing back the jacket and admiring her own name, debossed on the cover: Her accomplishment.
vjb • scribe 