I Shot the Serif

Ha.

Web Design Pie Graph

Thanks to Bob for passing this along to us. I’m sure Ian will appreciate this as well.

White is the New “Flooded with Full Color”

We have been designing book covers for some time now…what, maybe 5 ot 6 years? It feels like we’ve been at it for a while anyway.

If you’re a designer, you know the process. And if you’re not, keep reading and I’ll fill you in.

It goes something like this…

1. Publisher gives us an idea of what the book is about, including Table of Contents, Title, a small write-up, any creative direction they think would be helpful.
2. We mock-up between 3-5 book covers.
3. The publisher picks one of them and asks for revisions.
4. We tweak it and send it off to print.

So for all the book covers posted here in our portfolio (and most everything else on this site, as far as that goes), there are 3 or 4 other options that you never see. And that’s okay. Some ideas were probably just blah, but some were brilliant and still ended up on the cutting room floor.

So it goes.

We love some of the covers that have been chosen and we merely like others. And that’s part of the process. No big deal.

Anyway, why am I writing all this? Well, along the way we have mocked up a few covers that were simple bold text on white backgrounds that generally had a single strong image somewhere on the page. Tres minimalist and chic, if you ask me.

But these covers are never chosen. There often is comments about how white books show dirt from bookshelves and fingerprints. Or how it’s a waste of money to pay for a full-color job and only get black, white, and perhaps one other color.

Sure, sure. We know it can be unconventional, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t look great…grab the eye…or help sell books. In fact, the 4 books I’m reading right now prove my point that white is in! Simple, strong, and stark. And these are almost all Bestsellers.

So what do you do? Keep putting at least one comp of a white cover with bold text and a simple image each time. Surely, someone will choose it eventually.

Remy Sharp

We’re proud to pimp our latest project, though this project has just begun in some ways…

Introducing Remy Sharp, weighing in at 9.5 lbs, arriving safely at 4.04am (error not found) on 11/07/09.

Cyber-stalk him here.

Ad in GENERATE Magazine

We’ve always been word of mouth, never doing any sort of advertising, and we like it that way…generally.

But when our friends decided to launch a new magazine (which is so amazingly beautiful and well thought-through), we thought we’d “support” them by taking out some ad space. It looks great in the issue, seated across from a text-heavy article. Makes our ad really pop! And they even doused some hi-gloss varnish on top of it. Nice.

Take a look…

If you’re interested in seeing it in print, drop by or order your own subscription here.

This Summer…

…has been such a great summer. One of the many things we’ve been doing are these HOMESPUN CONCERTS. Wow, what a blast. We have one more left if you plan to be in Portland. Aug 8th!

And it begins…

Pretty excited to have this new site up. It’s been a long time coming.

Take a look around and feel free to subscribe to the site simply by putting this feed into your aggregator. It’ll keep you updated on our latest works and finds and thoughts regarding design and process.

Also, Holly just launched a new website of her artwork here.

Cheers!