We don’t post a ton of advertising stuff, but I thought these “Become Someone Else” print ads for Mint Vinetu by Love warranted a mention. What’s not to like about ads that promote reading? Plus, they are really well done — the images are such a quick read that without even being able [...]]]>

We don’t post a ton of advertising stuff, but I thought these “Become Someone Else” print ads for Mint Vinetu by Love warranted a mention. What’s not to like about ads that promote reading? Plus, they are really well done — the images are such a quick read that without even being able to read the copy, you totally get the meaning. Here is what Love had to say about the project:

When one reads books, he/she starts living it and identifies (or not) with main hero. These print ads for the Mint Vinetu bookstore, which sells lots of classics, focuses on the idea of becoming someone else. And provokes people to try on different personas.

Via Black Eiffel

I heard Jonathan Safran Foer speak with Vendela Vida (yep, co-editor of my favorite magazine ever) the other night as part of the excellent series City Arts and Lectures. After talking lucidly at length about his nonfiction book on the ethical implications of meat, Eating Animals, Vida asked him about a new book he [...]]]>

I heard Jonathan Safran Foer speak with Vendela Vida (yep, co-editor of my favorite magazine ever) the other night as part of the excellent series City Arts and Lectures. After talking lucidly at length about his nonfiction book on the ethical implications of meat, Eating Animals, Vida asked him about a new book he had just finished called Tree of Codes. She showed him a copy (which is one of only ten dummies of the work extant) and he couldn’t contain his curiosity; he hadn’t actually seen it yet.

He was fascinated by his own work for this reason: he didn’t write the words to this book, and its form is rather interesting. London upstart/art publishers Visual Editions reportedly came to him with this offer: “we can’t pay you, but on the other hand we’ll make any sort of book you can imagine.” Their second book, after their ambitious edition of Tristram Shandy, will be his reaction to this challenge (“It’s gonna have to be really interesting to make that worth it”). All the words were written by Bruno Schultz, in his classic collection Street of Crocodiles. What Safran Foer brought to the work was, well, scissors.

Inspired by FBI, wartime or totalitarian redaction of documents, and by Schultz’ own erasure — Safran Foer called the work an “erased text” and told a little bit of the fate of Schultz, who was spared death for a time during the Holocaust by painting murals for a Nazi officer that were subsequently obscured, revealed, and smuggled from Poland by the Mossad — Safran Foer clipped away words revealing a new text: Street of Crocodiles. Visual Editions found a printer willing and able to make it: the published book, incredibly, will be diecut with a different die for every page.

He described the process as something he expected to be fun but was in fact very frustrating. But, one excellent quote from the evening was something like “as time goes on I have less and less faith that I can write something good, but I have more and more faith in accidents.” The juxtapositions and phrases he found in the process are all creative accidents: they surprised him and were not what he would have come to with his own devices.

Needless to say, I’m thrilled about the book. It’s right up my alley. I am fascinated by redaction and erasure. I like diecuts quite a bit. And, not only does it conjure memories of Street of Crocodiles (which is great, distinctly textured, both as a collection and as a somewhat different film by the Brothers Quay — the entirety of which is in two clips after the jump) but of experimental writings I have loved.

Burroughs used cut-ups. Oulipo writers have some games that start with found texts or otherwise artificially limiting word selection to force the creative accident. I dig artists books. And my favorite artist book ever, A Humument, is a  similar project to this one. I first encountered A Humument when its pages were exhibited at the museum when I was a kid. I found an edition years later as if from a remembered dream, and have bought three or four copies since. Artist Tom Phillips painted and drew directly over pages of the Victorian novel A Human Document, leaving words joined by proximity or rivers of white space to make new prose-poems (and a sort-of narrative starring a hero named “toge” who can only appear by name when the original text speaks of togetherness) with the remaining words; for each subsequent edition he’s repainted some pages differently so that the overall text changes over time, eventually becoming a wholly different piece than the original.

More pics after the jump and the whole thing here.

Street of Crocodiles, The Brothers Quay, 1986

You’ve most likely seen Coralie Bickford-Smith’s lovely Penguin clothbound classics. And while they are beautiful, I think Ms. Bickford-Smith has outdone herself with the new covers for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books. Spend some time at her site looking around at some more of her work; she has a real knack for creating covers that [...]]]>

You’ve most likely seen Coralie Bickford-Smith’s lovely Penguin clothbound classics. And while they are beautiful, I think Ms. Bickford-Smith has outdone herself with the new covers for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books. Spend some time at her site looking around at some more of her work; she has a real knack for creating covers that work really well in a series and are desirable art objects individually. Hers are the sort of book covers that make you want to own the book regardless of the content.

via Ace Jet 170

Hyperactivitypography from A to Z — a super cute activity book designed with a vintage flair — looks fantastic. According to the designers, “The book is packed with activities, ranging from silly to hard core nerdiness.”

Hyperactivitypography was designed by Studio 3, an in-school design agency at the Graphic Design Department of Westerdals [...]]]>

Hyperactivitypography from A to Z — a super cute activity book designed with a vintage flair — looks fantastic. According to the designers, “The book is packed with activities, ranging from silly to hard core nerdiness.”

Hyperactivitypography was designed by Studio 3, an in-school design agency at the Graphic Design Department of Westerdals School of Communication in Oslo. You can flip through the book here, or contact them to buy your own copy.

via Design Fetish

I meant to post about these new Nabokov covers from Vintage Books a while ago, but the post somehow got lost in the shuffle. Over the holidays, I went into City Lights and saw the covers in person — they are even more lovely than these images let on.

John Gall, the art director [...]]]>

I meant to post about these new Nabokov covers from Vintage Books a while ago, but the post somehow got lost in the shuffle. Over the holidays, I went into City Lights and saw the covers in person — they are even more lovely than these images let on.

John Gall, the art director at Vintage Books, was asked to redesign all of Nabokov’s covers. Here is what he had to say about the project in his post on Design Observer:

Nabokov was a passionate butterfly collector, a theme that has cropped up on some of his past covers. My idea was also a play on this concept. Each cover consists of a photograph of a specimen box, the kind used by collectors like Nabokov to display insects. Each box would be filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins, selected to somehow evoke the book’s content. And to make it more interesting for readers — and less daunting for me — I thought it would be fun to ask a group of talented designers to help create the boxes.

Here’s who I asked: Chip Kidd, Carol Carson, Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin, Megan Wilson and Duncan Hannah, Rodrigo Corral, Martin Venezky, Charles Wilkin, Helen Yentus and Jason Booher, Peter Mendelsund, Sam Potts, Dave Eggers, Paul Sahre, Stephen Doyle, Carin Goldberg, Michael Bierut, Barbara de Wilde, and Marian Bantjes. They were then photographed by Alison Gootee. The results are shown here. I hope you enjoy them.

You can view all the covers, vote for your favorite and possibly win a copy on Vintage Books’ blog.

A number of people in the Design Observer comments mentioned the omission of Lolita from the set. In case you too are missing Lolita, here is a collection of the many iterations of that cover as well as a contest to redesign Lolita’s cover from Venus febriculosa.

Row 1: My Little Diary ring from MoonFaces; Burst journal by paintedfishstudio; Old Spines fine art print weberphoto

Row 2: Bookshelf [...]]]> We’re big in to books. We make books, read books, buy books; there are very few things we don’t like about books. Here are some awesome books and book-related items from Etsy.

Row 1: My Little Diary ring from MoonFaces; Burst journal by paintedfishstudio; Old Spines fine art print weberphoto

Row 2: Bookshelf 32 print by  janemount; White Geometric Handbound Photo Album by brooklynbookbinder

Row 3: Book Mobile by theshophouse; Sepia Books from jillruthandco; Antique leather book necklace TheBlackSpotBooks

Row 4: Coptic-bound blank journal by anybodyinthere; Books print from theblackapple

Row 5: Custom Book Art by BookOfArt; Engraveable open book charm TheSCOOPatBOOPS; The Library by NestaHome.etsy.com

An unusual take for promoting a book, [...]]]> What’s your favorite book trailer ever? Don’t have one? Yeah that’s not surprising. As an art form it’s nearly brand new, and very wide open. For instance, unlike a film or TV trailer, there is not footage to work with, usually no budget, and no conventions yet.

An unusual take for promoting a book, this one uses no voiceover and few words beyond the title and author. This trailer has a beautifully elegant restraint, and yet I bet a close viewing would reveal a detailed outline of the narrative.

Four more approaches in decreasing subtlety (including Pynchon and Sea Monsters) after the jump.

This one opts for found footage with fragments of text read from the book: a good strategy when you have zero budget and good sentences at ones disposal. My critique is that it gives no sense of the rollicking hilarity or sweeping plot of this book (which is awesome.)

The voiceover — maybe it’s the intro, maybe it was written for the trailer — introduces the narrative, and the narrator (the closest to film trailers’ convention of “in a world…” premise exposition). It’s read by the author, the great recluse Pynchon (probably accounting for why this video has 100x the page views of most book trailers), over footage shot of SoCal at dusk (the menace of sillohetted palms is a favorite of mine) to get a sense of the mood of the book.

Another option is to reenact a portion of the book. As this trailer shows, the campiness inherent in this approach makes it primarily appropriate for comedy/satire.

It’s important when cutting a trailer to know one’s audience. This book, which I’ve been looking forward to reading, I am a little hesitant of now. Its trailer has clearly been produced internet-provocateur style for a JibJab-addled generation, but it sort of makes me nauseous and makes me question how seriously I can take the text. The same voiceover text, but read over Ken-Burns effect’d Frontline stills would have felt so different.

In the mood for more? The preeminent blog of the emergent form (and where I found the lovely Nocturne trailer) is Bookscreening.