It's no secret that I love book cover design and this little gem has got way more work going into it than it first appears.
It was designed by Rowan Stocks-Moore to 'celebrate the launch' of the Penguin Design Award, of which he knocked up a few but this is far and away the best. Oddly though, I'm not sure it works as a real world book cover. It's a great piece of design in a masterclass 101 kind of way, but I can't imagine it jumping on - or off - the shelf. That happens sometimes... but regardless, it's really clever and beautiful all the same.
Conversely, these bookmarks are really simple but supremely freaking cool.
They were designed by Ethem Onur Bilgiç who is from Istanbul (no, I can't pronounce it either) and you can find him and his other groovy stuff right here.
Over Christmas, I might have a bit of a whirl at designing some bookmarks myself. That sounds like a neat plan to me - and maybe I'll lovingly hand-craft them and give them away with every copy of a book sold here. So maybe they had better be good! No idea what to base them on though. Best enlist the collective aid of that powerhouse known as 'the children'.
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COMMERCIAL BREAK:
And that wraps that up.
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A friend (Hi Tim) mailed me a story this morning about David Byrne (the Talking Heads dude) and his quest to produce a digital book of some value to people and the roadblocks that amazon et al put in the way. You can read the whole article by clicking here and always a good read, you can check into Byrne's personal blog here. Anyway, read that first and come back - there's a section at the end where Mr Byrne says;
Books, when well made and beautifully designed, are lovely to hold and behold. There is pleasure in reading a well designed book. A little bit of beauty is added to one’s life—something that can’t be measured in terms of pure information. I also have a funny feeling that, like much of our world that is disappearing onto servers and clouds, eBooks will become ephemeral. I have a sneaking feeling that like lost languages and manuscripts, most digital information will be lost to random glitches and changing formats.”
I tend to agree and that shocks me a little. I have come full circle from being a pro-digital kind of person to seeing so many of them, that they mean nothing. A quick look around myself right now will reveal a lot of business type books and books I have outgrown but couldn't let go of sitting on my various bits of tech. Big novels that I will never read twice can be found on audio because a) I can sometimes work and listen, b) I am in the car a lot and c) I actually quite like being read to when it's done properly - when you look at words all day long, sometimes it's really nice. Latest additions to this audio list are James Herbert's Ash and Rankin's Standing In Another Man's Grave. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything by reading them like this.
When I look around my shelves however, I am still buying books at a heavy rate. Yesterday, I picked up Winter Ghosts from Kate Mosse, I'm on the road tomorrow. I know I'll buy another even though I'm armed with audio. I did give away a lot of books a while back - I have no idea what they were anymore but anything deemed important is still with me. Big art books, books with great covers, books I've had since I was a kid. The list goes on.
I am beginning to know myself more than I should - I mean, you hit certain times in your life and you should have it all figured out, right? Albums come and albums go. My rdio collection online grows by about six albums a day but I still bought the Soundgarden album on vinyl last week. Why? Because some animals will always be more equal than others. A beautifully designed Bukowski novel will never be archived to digital around here. It doesn't work.
Eventually, I think we'll all figure this out for ourselves. It's not going away. I don't want it to go away - it's cool and useful in some instances. I don't want bookshops to go the same way as record stores but it's already too late. We're headed down to a critical fork in the road. The only thing anybody really knows for sure right now is that it's a fucking mess. If you want books, albums and films to go the same way as the motor industry in which all cars look the same and are classified as to whether they're small, big or really big, then carry on doing the digital thing. If you got this far - you're already too late. The movie industry is already there.
Slick is very cool but nobody will look back fondly at any digital product like they do a Cortina or an Impala - they don't have a memory attached to them. Nobody will sit around and say "Hey, remember that day we stood in the kitchen and downloaded the new John Connolly book" - it doesn't have a sense of occasion attached to it. I used to have a Triumph Spitfire. It was a piece of junk but it had more character than any car I've had since. That had a sense of occasion about every freaking journey...
We're in the midst of a trauma here. Here's some questions for you to mull over if you care to:
AC/DC recently gave in and allowed iTunes downloads. This is a shame. Want an AC/DC album? Just go and buy one - it's not hard. Anybody that cares that much must have their catalogue anyway. I don't know if Led Zeppelin have released their catalogue to digital outlets but I hope not. Want a Led Zep album? Simply go and buy one. There's a certain way a few bands should be listened to because it's not about the money. It's about the songs. I rather think it's not the bands that think this is a great idea.
People like Stephen King, Rowling - all those guys at the top. We don't need ebooks from them. People may moan a lot and request them but ultimately, if you want to read those authors, go buy a fucking book. You get what you're given... if there's no audiobook available, damn right I'll read it instead of listening.
And there's the crux. We can all have so much now that even something as dumb as being able to own a dog, people think comes under a basic human right. It's going to take a publishing company with balls of steel to hang in there and say 'no, fuck you, buy a book' - and that's exactly when it will become special again. It's all pretty confusing. I wouldn't like to be the historian who looks back and tries to make sense of it.
(I'm not sure I actually said anything during that part of the post, but I feel better. Thanks for listening!)
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Closing with a classic is getting harder everyday. Time to take a left turn and just flaunt something I like and reboot from there: