Thursday, April 1st, 2010
I love books and I love design, which is why I think book covers are extremely important to me. Luckily there is a fabulous book publisher out there who agrees with me (you may have heard of them), they have a quirky little penguin stamped onto all of their books as a seal of quality.
The saying “never judge a book by its cover” is a logical saying, but the point is that we as humans judge everyone and everything on first appearances, whether we want to or not. A good book should have a good cover and whilst I can’t buy a book without at least reading the blurb, I will decide not to buy a book if the cover design is especially poor.
It may be pedantic but when I look at a book, I think it should be a piece of art (the design and the literature combined), presented to you in book form.
When it comes to Penguin books, they could only be better if it were presented on a silver dish by a smartly dressed English fellow named Giles.
Above, for example, are the lovely book covers for Patrick Süskind’s upcoming novels. I recommend you click the Creative Review article (below) and read more into how it was designed.
I’m also currently writing an article on how design is becoming increasingly more important in our consumer-driven lives and it isn’t a bad thing either; I would even go far as to say that it is a great thing, even improving our experience of life, but I shall write more about that another time.
Penguin aren’t oblivious to the fact that they have set a gold standard for quality in books, they sell postcards with book cover designs on, because they recognise that a book cover is a statement and a form of beauty. I dare say that Penguin are the Apple of the book publishing world.
Penguin have also introduced a series focusing on their books over the decades and how they represent the decade (‘Penguin Decades’, see the link below). I recommend you take a look at both the cover art and the books themselves. In particular, John Wyndham is one of my favourite authors (what can I say? I’m a science fiction buff).
Sources
Tags: Book, Book Cover, Cover, Penguin, Penguin Books
Posted in Art, Design |
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Steve Jobs addressed Apple employees at a town hall meeting and had some very intriguing things to say. Whilst, as TUAW mentioned, they are probably not word-perfect quotes, they offer an insight into the head of Steve Jobs and the future of Apple.
Steve Jobs reportedly said about Google:
“We did not enter the search business. They entered the phone business. Make no mistake: they want to kill the iPhone. We won’t let them.”
It should be noted that before Google decided to launch an attack on Apple by introducing themselves into a competing market, they (Apple & Google) had a very good friendship and had worked together extensively on a few projects (including the Maps application on the iPhone itself).
I don’t blame Steve (or Apple) for taking the offensive on this one and if Apple introduced a search engine of their own, it’d probably be the one I would use (assuming that their knack for design, intuitive user experiences and technology ports over nicely enough).
Steve didn’t stop there, he lampooned Adobe too:
“They are lazy. They have all this potential to do interesting things, but they just refuse to do it. They don’t do anything with the approaches that Apple is taking, like Carbon. Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not it’s because of Flash. No one will be using Flash. The world is moving to HTML5.”
It has been a long time coming and he’s right. I hate how Adobe products (even Photoshop) seems to use their own user interfaces, despite Apple having a universal standard already. I hate how the shortcuts to hide the application are the same for everything, except Adobe products.
Adobe purposely broke the user experience because they got cocky and decided they could run things better, but they can’t. They really can’t. Their interface isn’t nicer or cleaner, it has a novelty feel which wears off very quickly. It isn’t appalling either, I’ll grant them that, but it would make sense to keep consistency within the operating system and the applications that use it.
Flash, like other Adobe products, is pretty sluggish and clumsy. It is the reason for most crashes I’ve experienced and I’m sick of it. A web without Flash wouldn’t be a bad thing for me, it’d be a better place (sort of). I get that Flash can be useful sometimes, and that is why desktops (even Apple desktops) use it. But I don’t want my iPhone crashing and losing battery over it.
Even if Adobe fixed Flash, I don’t need animated advertisement banners in my life.
As for potential, they have loads of it. They have created a wonderful tool for designing and image editing, amongst other things. Shame that they charge through the nose and shaft their customers by providing less than 100% in quality.
And while I’m here, since I’ve offered my opinion everywhere but my blog, the iPad is interesting but for the most part, just an oversized iPod Touch. I don’t think it is a flop (I blame the hype that frothing imbeciles created in the run up to the event). Eventually, the iPad, like other Apple products, will gestate into something really awesome.
P.S. I’m mourning for text-based books. I do hope they continue, there is nothing better than a physical book, in my opinion.
Tags: Adobe, Apple, Book, Flash, Google, iPad, iPhone, iPod, Mac, Steve Jobs
Posted in Technology |
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
Serious Drawings is an independent book of art work by Marc Johns. It is a hardcover full-colour book, with 144 pages.
The drawings are very primal and interesting, it is certainly something to look at and you may even consider buying the book. See details below.
Tags: Book
Posted in Art, Design |
Saturday, December 12th, 2009
Abecederia is a beautifully presented graphic novella which has proven popular in France and Germany. It has been translated to English and can be purchased from Nobrow for £10.00 ($16/€12).
Tags: Book, Graphic, Graphic Novel, Novel, Novella
Posted in Art, Design |
Friday, October 9th, 2009
I love science fiction books, but even if you don’t, you should really take a look at some of these fantastic sci-fi book cover designs from Penguin.
Tags: Book, Fiction, Illustration, Science
Posted in Art, Culture, Design |
