A Slightly Different Focus

I’ve been meaning to do a book design post for a while now, and this morning added a new category — named, appropriately enough, book design — to the site. I’ll add another post to the category in the next couple of weeks, then more soon, covering both new and back titles.

Glamour in Six Dimensions is from Cornell University Press, one of the few folks I still do book design for. They hired me a couple of years ago, post-divorce, so I’m comfortable — and incredibly grateful, in this economy — having them aboard.

More importantly, they send along interesting projects. Glamour was one of them. Here’s the cover:

Glamour in Six Dimensions (cover)

A book is about more than its cover, however. I honestly believe that this one’s better seen as a jacket:

Glamour in Six Dimensions (jacket)

(Want to see it full-size? Download the PDF.)

What’s the difference? The cover’s just the front; the jacket’s the full deal — including the spine, perhaps the most important item, as in most bookstores, this title probably won’t be face-out or prominently displayed: the spine has to sell it.

As with all book jackets, there’s also the issue of how to handle the quotes (known in the industry as “blurbs” or “puffs”) and cover text. Please forgive the artifacts imposed by using a JPG on the web site…:

Glamour's "puffs"

Very happy with how this one turned out, and many thanks to Cornell for their continued support.

Whether it’s a University Press needing great covers, or a wedding needing the perfect momento, book design remains one of my favorite things to do. Let me know how it can help you, anytime.

Please note: There’s a glitch in WordPress preventing me from making the captions for this posts’ images in italic, as they should be. Apologies.

Up next: A Kentucky Derby party, then some great local gardens, followed by a site announcement and some more back posts. Good stuff — please stay tuned.