Novel Choice

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

Re: Cover Design Process: Failing Better

Loved Chip Kidd's video.

I've noticed over the years at UB that when it comes to design my creative process always starts out much more complicated than it ends. While trying to figure out what direction to go in for my full concepts, I looked back at some earlier work in this program, comparing first drafts with final ones and had a good laugh. I think i'm finally learning to simplify, to say more with less, so my latest "failure" won't be as bad as the previous.

Here's how I'd categorize my creative process:
1. spend A LOT of time looking at other people's designs and getting to know the writer/writer's work
2. start working on the first idea that comes to mind
3. hate it.
4. try another.
5. hate that one too.
6. keep going.
7. eventually find something that works, and spend hours honing it.
8. second guess the whole thing

I think the one thing that helps me get through it all is to remember that there is no one right answer when it comes to design. However, it often feels like trying to solve a really difficult math problem without an answer key.

Re: Cover Design Process: Failing Better

So far I have to say I have experienced different processes for my projects across the board. Sometimes, I have a great idea, and it slowly takes form on the screen to look a lot like I imagined. Many times I have no idea what I'm doing and sometimes it turns out total crap and sometimes, luckily, happy accidents have happened. Most times, it feels somewhere in between.

I generally have a broad idea of how I want it to look. This involves hours of "shopping" around on pinterest for the bits and pieces of my idea for inspiration, first needing to see how others have attacked this type of visual. (By shopping I mean stealing other people's ideas.) The magic happens when someone else's idea sparks my own concept.

As I commented once in Creative Concepts, I struggle not usually with the idea part so much as I do the execution. At first my ideas usually include too much, and from brainstorming to comp, a lot has been cut to slim the idea down. This is pretty typical of all my processes. Yet, I did not take art classes, I cannot illustrate. My fear is that all of my projects will be different versions of the same technique. I see many very cool effects on Pinterest and I'd love to know how they did it, but I'm not sure how to get there!

Re: Cover Design Process: Failing Better

Very interesting topic! I really enjoyed the videos and the talk thanks for posting them. So basically when I sit down to design I try to think about the finished product. I think about the target audience and the shape and basically all the small details. I also like to think about what the marketing process will be for the book. Simple and eye catching are always a plus. I've found over the years that that's what people usually go for. It's also important to me to think about the cover as a whole. Front and back nothing annoys me more then when the covers feel disjointed. I can't think of a specific designer I really like but the cover designs for most of the books Melville House puts out are pretty cool and worth checking out.

Re: Cover Design Process: Failing Better

I was so happy to see Jen's post with Chip Kidd. I went to his talk at MICA in the fall of 2013. I got so much out of it and thoroughly enjoyed it, and bought the last copy of his book -- Go: A Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design -- and waited for him to sign it afterwards. Talk about fan-girly!

"When you design book covers, you often have to learn a lot about the subject of the book. If it's a work of fiction, you need to read the book to figure out what themes you could use to best illustrate the story. When it's a work of nonfiction, like this biography about Beckett, you have to become familiar with the writer's work."

There really are no short-cuts. My process seems to take me lots of time. I have to start and stop and do lots of research and go away and think about it. I find myself reading other things that may help or may get me off track. I like what Joe Fioramonte said in my Words & Images class and in my Web Development class, that he doesn't believe in creative block. You have to just keep going. That may mean getting away from it for a bit for me, but I find that when I come back to it, things start coming together. So there you have it, the answer is GO.

I am finalizing my novel choice of Slaughterhouse Five.

Re: Cover Design Process: Failing Better

I read this post at the perfect moment. As I've been struggling this weekend with my three concepts, it was very reassuring that I'm not the only one who goes through these struggles and emotions. While reading this, I remembered this quote from Julia Cameron about the design process.

I tend to forget this pretty much every time I'm starting a new project. I let the process stress me out until I've had that "aha" moment.

As for my design process, it seems very similar to Erin's. First, I need to be in the right environment with minimal distractions. My workspace needs to be neat and I have to be in the right mindset (which is challenging for projects with tight deadlines). I tend to work well under pressure once I've got the creative juices flowing. I really like to do my research and explore. Pinterest and Behance are the two resources I use the most when searching for inspiration. Mood boards have helped me immensely thus far in the program. Once I've established a mood or theme, I start sketching, then move to the computer. 

A few tips I've learned from previous professors on the design process: Joe Fioramonti has a folder on his desktop that has thousands of design photos. His screen saver is a seemingly never ending slideshow of design inspiration. This way he is always being exposed, even when he isn't searching for it. Jeanne Fountain likes the cut and paste method once in her digital draft phase. This allows her to look away from the computer on a new medium and explore different layout options. 

Re: Cover Design Process: Failing Better

Jen, I love this post. I really enjoyed the talks and found them insightful and also very reassuring. I often start a project feeling as overwhelmed as I am excited. Often, I feel like am staring at this big, complicated task and I have no idea where to begin or how I will ever come up with the perfect solution.

My creative process? Here it goes. I am not an incredibly neat person, so I find this odd – but I’ve got to have a really clean and organized workspace before I feel like I can get started. It’s a weird compulsion – my space has got to be neat and pretty, or something, ha ha. Once I stop procrastinating, the first thing I do is scribble tons of words that come to mind with what I am trying to communicate in a design.  I sketch a lot (which always look terrible because I cannot draw) and always hit Pinterest or even tumblr for inspiration, not only design ideas, but colors and texture as well. I’ve always been a researcher and my educational background is in strategic communication, so trying to understand the root of any design problem is important to me. This equals lots of googling, reading, etc.  I can almost never just start digitally designing; I’ve got to do lots of pencil-to-paper exploration first. I used mood boards for the first time in Words & Images, and actually found them to be very helpful.

Once I (finally) get started on the computer, this is where I get in that design flow zone.  Unfortunately, I find that I am most creative late at night, which doesn’t exactly mesh well with working full-time or enjoying the morning hours most on the weekends. Nevertheless, my process usually finds me staying up into the late hours of the night obsessing over details, getting frustrated, overwhelmed, excited and so on.  I pinned this on Pinterest a while back, and think it so accurately describes what I suspect is many people’s creative process (excuse the language):

Once I have something or a few version that I love, I have to walk away for a while – even if it is just an hour to come back with fresh eyes. I usually ask my husband (who does not have a design background) what he thinks/if what I am going for works through his view and decide if I need to come up with more or better solutions than the several I have ended up with. When I need to start over, it is, as Amy warned, hard to let go of the idea I spent so much time developing. I don't know that I really have a set way of dealing with this - I feel like it just comes from a lot of deleting, deconstructing, looking at inspiration pieces again, and moving elements around on screen and getting re-inspired this way. A lot of times I will end up with something that is completely different than my intention that way.

Bob Shelley, a logo designer, came and spoke in my Design-Business Link class last fall and said his process involves taping all his sketches to a wall and just studying them- even the ideas he hated. This helped him to come up with new and better solutions. He would visually group them, remove, move around, and sketched more while staring at the wall. He'd leave it up during his whole design process. He also said different music influenced his process. Although I almost always design with music on, I haven't tried to use this exact method of sketch posting but I think it would be a great way to flesh out ideas no matter the design phase.

Again, great post- I guess I kind of rambled here. I will definitely be watching the full length talk!

Re: Cover Design Process: Failing Better

This was a great post, which really got me thinking about the entire realm of "process", including my own. 

I was immediately brought back to my semester in Words and Images. TJ had us working on Process Books for each project as our ideas came into fruition throughout the semester. It was really eye opening seeing the process from beginning to end, showing how unique each person's design process really was. It wasn't until that class that I realized how every designer goes through a different process when creating final ideas and deliverables.

Like Jen, I tend to be a perfectionist, and rather than having one amazing first draft that doesn't need much fixing, it takes me at least 5 or 6 executed ideas until I can be proud of what I created. I have learned about myself that I refuse to deem a design complete until I feel it has been created into a masterpiece that I love, even if it takes days, weeks, or months (speaking on personal design work; as school work has its due dates--it is a more expedited process of creating a masterpiece). I have to completely love what I have created in order to show it off to a "client", "teacher" or "professional".

It is definitely obvious that everyone has a different process, as everyone's brains work in unique ways, whether the first try comes out picture perfect or if it takes 6, 7 or 8 designs before you feel it is just right.

I researched the phases of a "design process" and came across this gem:

I think this is a great portrayal of the design process--with each phase just as important as the next. Like a snowball effect, it takes a beginning design strategy, a creative concept (majority of the time more than one), and the actual design and ideas, to come up with a beautifully executed end result.

Cover Design Process: Failing Better

Since we'll be getting into full drafts this weekend, and going through the process of working through multiple different versions of different concepts, I come back to thinking about process. Process is a bit troublesome for me--it takes me longer than I'd like to make the jump between concepting and drafting. Mainly, this is probably due to entirely too much perfectionism on my part. I've been trying to keep in mind the lecture that Chip Kidd gave at MICA last year. The organizational structure for it was the Samuel Beckett quote, "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better." [Kidd really only quotes "Fail. Try again. Fail better," but I gave you the original text because, well, it's the original text.]

Here's one of the funnier excerpts from the same talk that he gave (though this one is from an earlier event elsewhere):

There's also a video from Random House (featuring Chip Kidd, but also Peter Mendelsund, another big name in cover design, among others) discussing their processes for cover design. What's really interesting here to me are the examples of the various solutions for The Dinner, All That Is, and Salt Sugar Fat (none of which are Kidd's designs, just in case this post was getting too reverential or fangirly for you). 

In both cases, you can see that the various iterations relate to a similar concept (true also of Kidd's different versions for Augusten Burroughs's christmas stories above) but address it in both subtly different and more fundamentally different ways. Amy cautioned today about having an idea in your head that you might not be able to find the right imagery for, and against being too caught up in that idea that it limits you--this happens to me sometimes, so I find it helpful to see other designers' processes (keeping in mind that I probably can't just go to a museum on the off-chance and contract a photograph the way someone like Chip Kidd can...).

So, I guess I'm (still...always) curious about how other people manage process--what do you do? How do you generate ideas for different iterations? Are there examples of other designers' "process books" that help you think of techniques to try that allow for fundamentally different or subtly different solutions to the same design problem?

And, in case you're interested...

There's more from Kidd in his TED talk, which is pretty great if you haven't seen it, especially in his description of how he got to the graphic representation of the dinosaur for Jurassic Park, and in the first 35 minutes or so of a complete version of the "Fail Better" talk. The most fundamental things that he says in his TED talk that stay with me are about the responsibility of a book designer being three-fold--to the audience, the publisher, and the author--and that a book designer's job is to ask the question, "what does this story look like?". 

Novel Choice

I am going to do "Catch-22" by Joseph Heller.

Novel Choice

"The Age of Innocence" by Edith Wharton.

Re: The Wild West of Book Design

In response to Katie's original post, I find that these "western" designed novels inspire today's typography movement. Today's typography is clean and encourages the use of white space. While the earlier dime novel examples show many typefaces together, I wonder if the idea of combining multiple typefaces (which is popular in modern typography) stemmed from the combination of typefaces used in design during this era. In modern typography/design, I think its safe to say that most designers will use 2-3 typefaces per piece. However, these early dime novels illustrate five or more. During the early years of design, many designers drew typefaces by hand for individual pieces, or specified particular typefaces with typesetters who in turn had to individually set each letter in a word in the requested typeface. Whether they were hand drawn, or arranged by a typesetter, it's seems as though an enormous amount of time was likely spent on generating a piece that had so many varying typefaces. Why were so many typefaces hand drawn especially when there were many typefaces readily available during the 18th and 19th centuries, like Baskerville, Bodoni, Didot, Clarendon, Akzidenz Grotesk, etc? Then again, I guess the same question could be asked today with the development of so many typefaces, a designer can become lost in alphabet hell.

I found this interesting blog that actually addresses what design is projected to look like in twenty some years. It's a possibility that history might actually repeat itself (like it does for so many things) and revert back to a very wide, diverse range of typefaces within one single design piece (Click here, number 5) and that the amount of typefaces will be so overwhelmingly similar that typeface designers will have to go to extreme lengths to make their fonts unique.

Re: The Wild West of Book Design

After reading Katie's original post, which included questions pondering how the western design has influenced modern typography, I decided to do some digging on this. I found a site (Font Craft, in case any of you know it, though this is my first exposure to it) that includes a "wild west" font collection. According to the site, they are modern but "historically accurate." Here's what they say about their font "Plowright": "Plowright is a new font based on hand lettering from the 1880s. It’s a great example of the style we often associate with signmaking in the old west, with a lot of quirks and original character."

While I do like the idea of the fonts being quirky and having character, I pretty much hate this site because it's the equivalent of strobe lights for me with everything that's going on. See for yourself if you wish: http://www.fontcraft.com/fontcraft/wild-west-fonts/#sthash.7hVydDI8.y6QOb8hs.dpbs

Novel Choice

I'm currently leaning toward The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene, though I'll try to decide on a couple back-up options in case someone else is interested, too.

RE: The Wild West of Book Design

First, super-creative idea for a first blog post, Katie! Second, 1860 - 1922? We're looking at an era of tremendous change in just about every area of design and technology already, and then to think about continued developments through the 1960s...so many influences, so many different periods of design to talk about.

For one thing, it's important to think about quality of paper and the printing process--after centuries of books as the primary printed product, with an increasing focus on legibility for long blocks of type, the Industrial Revolution creates all of these consumer goods that need to be advertised (dime novels and penny dreadfuls included--in fact, it might be interesting to look at how these dime novels included advertisements, or if in their story lines they might even have been advertisements themselves--product placement, anyone?). So, you get posters, magazines, newspapers being printed in much larger quantities on paper with much lower quality where the ink bleeds more. Type designers respond by eliminating some of the contrast between thick and thin strokes, large x-heights to be read at a distance, and larger slabs due to increasing fascination with the non-western world (interesting note about Napoleon's interests in Egypt, Abby).

Then, think about the probable audience of these novels--not the traditional reader, right? It's not until the Enlightenment (made possible by improvements in publishing technology) that books become remotely commonplace items, and then most people with the wealth to own books were probably reading religious or historical texts. But dime novels are tall tales of half-imagined real-life heroes, mixing fact, myth, legend into thrilling adventures for pure entertainment value (perhaps the reality television of the time, but yes, clearly also a precursor in both content and design to the silver and golden ages of comics in the twentieth century). So, starting the blog in a book design class with some of the first books designed specifically not to look like books to appeal to non-traditional readers? Nice.

Current designs related to western tradition? I think western styled typefaces are still popular, though sometimes with an ironic nod to the fact that the era is so romanticized, especially for Americans. And especially for Texans, as Shannon noted. The prominence in the last few years of the hipster aesthetic--a preference for the artisanal, the use of stylized images meant to look aged and evoke nostalgia, and a genuine love for the spur as an element of typeface design shows that, for better or worse, "western" influenced design still strikes a chord. To the point of a joke response site, Comic Spurs (definitely worth a look if you haven't seen it).

In terms of current book cover design, I think the concept of a type-only or type-heavy cover is still popular, though certainly more restrained in the variation of typefaces, which are as often sans or a mixture of sans/serif, or handwritten type, or one-off decorative type projects as they are traditional serif types. I don't know as much about western fiction as a genre as compared to others--a quick googling reveals a pretty close relationship between westerns and romance these days, with the classic embrace a popular image--, but covers for the more mainstream writers with western influences (Annie Proulx, Cormac McCarthy came to mind) still show some traces of the original designs, I think.

And, one more thing (Amy warned you about my posts...): in looking for examples of type heavy covers, I came across this Guardian article from 2012 about book design theories, which might prove useful. I'm done, now. I promise.

Novel Choice

Preference for "The Postman Always Rings Twice" by James Cain

Novel choice

I was hoping to do either 1984, Slaughterhouse Five, or Catch 22, depending on what everyone else chooses.

Novel choice

I think it'll be The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West for me

Novel Choice

I think it was mentioned in class that we could post our choice to eliminate confusion, so I figured I'd go for it while I'm here.

Preference for novel: Under the Volcano - thanks!

Re: The Wild West of Book Design

When checking out the dime novel covers you posted, Katie, and reflecting on their influence on design- I couldn’t help but think they resembled comic books. Not the “Western” typography so much, but the layout and over all design influence. The content also reminded me of what comic books offer – short stories, based on good vs. evil, much like the dime novel’s description of “patriotic, often nationalistic tales of encounters between Indians and backwoods settlers.”

Upon googling, I found several references/short notes about  their influence on this genre.  Comic books were referenced as the most recent,  in addition to older varieties such as "penny dreadfuls" and “pulp magazines,” which were inexpensive fiction magazines published from 1896 through the 1950s. Comic books became popularized in the United States in the 1930s. Check out some examples of pulp magazines and comic books below and how their use of type, space, and illustration reflect dime novel design of times past.

Re: The Wild West of Book Design

I went a-searchin’ and found this here dude who designs book covers for people who are self-publishing. His name is Derek Murphy and his business is CreativIndieCovers. He shares a post about working on his first design for a cowboy western book. Derek writes about the author giving very specific instructions on how he pictured the cover — each of three people and where they are and how they’re looking at each other — and how difficult he found it to do exactly what the author wanted.  He says he probably should have suggested an emotive cover instead of trying to find people who look like the characters as the author envisions them. He includes 10 samples and says they are likely to find one that will work. I really want to see an emotive one, wonder what that would be like, and wonder why he didn’t throw one in the mix! The samples are pretty predictable, western typeface at the top, photo of cowboy(s) on horse(s) in the middle, and author name in a simpler typeface at the bottom. They are cleaner and modern compared with the ones Katie posted but still appropriate to the genre or formula. I think this is the comforting part that Andrew mentioned.

  

Re: The Wild West of Book Design

Abby, that background info is fascinating. I had no idea. There is something compelling about unabashed ostentatiousness, perhaps because, looking at those old posters, they so clearly delineate a time period and a slew of connotations. There's something comforting about that. I love that Bonanza poster, Shannon. I decided to search "western" on  dafont (I know, pretty janky) and the results show just how wide the range of Western fonts can be. What other groups of typefaces are so clearly associated with US geography and/or time periods? Is Deco a quintessential 1920s New York typeface? What's a 1970s Pacific Northwest typeface?

Re: The Wild West of Book Design

Having similar questions as Katie, I decided to explore Behance and see how current artists are using these typefaces. For the 'traditional' western type like those found in the 1922 posters, I found a reoccurring theme: Texan products/companies/etc. or anything to do with country: music, lifestyle, etc. Some posters even attempt the "too many fonts competing with one another" style. I also found a significant amount of artists/typographers gaining inspiration from these while creating new typefaces (see "Hello Elise" design below). Many of the newly designed typefaces have a very modern approach, but others such as Bleeding Cowboy and Outlaw remain traditional.

Re: The Wild West of Book Design

It's interesting to note that the slab-serif fonts that were popular in ‘western’ style art and most notably WANTED posters were actually developed and introduced by Vincent Figgins in the early 1800s following Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt. Napoleon popularized the fonts by using them in most of the promotional materials he sent from Egypt. It’s why they’re sometimes call Egyptian fonts. A modern equivalent to the western style would probably be the posters in typewriter typefaces or in Playbills.  

Re: The Wild West of Book Design

Before I even read this post, I scrolled down to check out the pictures and couldn't help but notice the typography and how unique Western style is. I can agree with Katie that it is more on the awesomely bad side, but everyone's taste in style is different.

Thinking off the top of my head, there are still a few font types that can be used today to create a Western feel, the two coming to mind being both Playbill and Outlaw:

As new and unique fonts are being created everyday, I have come across the question of: who gets to decide what fonts are "in" and current, and what fonts are "out" and overused. I can't say that Western fonts are currently "in" but who am I to have a say in what is cool in the typography world in 2015.

I am not particularly a big fan of Wild West stories, but I can attest to the unique style that they portray to make it easy to identify what the story will be about just by the use of the typography. 

I am also curious to see how the style has changed over the years from the 1800's Western style to today. I wonder if the fonts remain the same since they date back to such a long time ago, but that is also what makes them so uniquely recognizable and distinct making me also wonder if the same fonts have just been updated throughout the years.

The Wild West of Book Design

Last night Amy described this blog as the “wild west” so I thought it’d be kind of funny to start the blog off with that in mind and go back to the first American books, the dime novel, and discuss book design for tales of the Wild West. According to The Library of Congress, dime novels “were patriotic, often nationalistic tales of encounters between Indians and backwoods settlers” and were most popular from the late 1800s to as late as the 1940s.

What strikes me most (from a design perspective) is the typography… it is so awesomely bad (or maybe horribly awesome?). There are about 80 different fonts, competing with each other for space and attention. Looking at the covers I attached, which span from 1860 to 1922, though, really shows me how design actually improved over those years. The color and illustrations became brighter, so printing clearly improved as well. The typography choices were slimmed down; white space is used more appropriately. I’m still not saying these are well designed, but seeing the advances made by 1922 does show me the early improvements that eventually led us toward better design.

This has sparked some curious follow up questions for me: How has ‘western’ book design changed for modern times & how do these early dime novels still inspire today’s novels? How do similar fonts show up in new & modern ways? To what degree did these designs inspire the next generation of books and book design in the 1930s through the 1960s?