Design

Bookmarking Book Art — Thomas Allen

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Posted on March 9, 2013 by Thomas Allen

This image of Thomas Allen’s book art appears along with the story about fellow-North Carolinian Hugh Howey‘s self-published novel WOOL in the 7 March 2013 edition of The Wall Street Journal but only in the iPad App version. Go to SECTIONS, then ARENA.

Click on the image to the left to go to Allen’s website to see more of his work and find out how to purchase it.   If you can find the Fall 2006 issue of Zoetrope:  All Story, you can see more of Allen’s work, but click here to read Chip Kidd’s comments on Allen’s artistry.

Bookmarking — A Variable Redletter Day?

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In a report possibly falling under the category “What the Font?” or  simply “Sans Clue,” PoliceSpecials.com carried this story from the BBC today:

“Thousands of motorway speeding convictions could be overturned because the font used to display the numbers on some variable speed limit signs may not have complied with traffic regulations.  The Crown Prosecution Service said the signs showed mph numbers taller and narrower than they should have been.”

The typefaces mandated by the Department of Transport for traffic speed limit signs are Transport Medium, Transport Heavy and Motorway Permanent.  The designers were Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert.   Simon Garfield provides an amusing chapter in Just My Type on how their design came to be adopted.  But the typeface in question on which the BBC has belatedly reported (see the Daily Mail for the original scoop last December) is this:

variable

According to roadsuk.com (well, that is the URL, although a bit of blue in the letters “u” and “k” help to disambiguate the message),  the font seems to be named (imaginative this) “Variable Message Sign.”   But in the Daily Mail article, neither the “wrong” nor “right” signs illustrated seems to be in the Variable Message Sign typeface.  So, what the font?

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In The E-Book World, Are Book Covers A Dying Art? : NPR

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For the past 25 years, Chip Kidd has made a name for himself as a top book designer. His designs have helped transform books into visual icons.

With the disappearance of the dustjacket’s original function — to protect the binding of the book — is it imaginable that the book cover will no longer be needed as the book evolves?

Imaginable, yes.  Likely, no.  As long as the imagination of Chip Kidd and his like bring their passion to publishing.

The possiblility of building up the thumbnail cover across the pages/screens of the ebook or giving it a functional role in the narrative may mean we come to judge a cover by its book!

See on www.npr.org