Peter C. Baker and Linda Huang discuss her design for his book, Planes. A fascinating insight into the process of experimentation, rejection and iteration that goes into a book cover.
From Ghostsigns author Sam Roberts, BLAG (Better Letters Magazine) is a new online and print publication for and about the international sign painting community, celebrating exciting work and sharing knowledge and resources. The first issue is cracking – the French Dispatch behind the scenes feature is particularly good. Also: major URL envy.
Found via the wonderful Present & Correct blog, Paper Shipwright publishes downloadable cardboard model kits of ships, lighthouses and all things nautical. As someone who spent an absurd amount of time obsessively PVA-ing Games Workshop’s Townscape buildings together as a child, this is all exceedingly up my street. Bring on the paper cuts!
Tor.com’s favourite books about the craft of writing, including wisdom from the luminary likes of Ursula K Le Guin, Stephen King and Ray Bradbury. Reminds me of my favourite Bradbury fact: he wrote The Fireman – the short story that he would later develop into Fahrenheit 451 – on a coin-operated typewriter. It cost him $9.80.
My first creative role (at Revolution Software) involved wandering around York, taking laughably low-resolution photos of old walls and rusty old boats for use as in-game textures. Things have moved on somewhat – here Kristóf Rosu talks about the photogrammetry workflow used for creating three-dimensional photographic scenery for Sniper Elite 5.
Tim Easley’s sleeve artwork for Modified Man, sculpted entirely out of plasticine, is quite something. Apparently it took around 80 hours to complete! Just imagine the smell of it.
I’ve linked this before, but it’s fab enough to share again: Google’s street view camera taking photos of itself in mirrors. Strong “Tarantino pottering around his house” vibe. WITH ROBOTS.
Window-shopping for prints on the Condé Nast store while watching Love Island (this is very much how I roll), I came across this batch of seventies/eighties New Yorker covers by artist Gretchen Dow Simpson. Sublimely serene … imagine Edward Hopper and Adrian Tomine going away for a a nice weekend getaway by the seaside.
Brandon Schaefer tweeted this earlier; John McConnell on designing book covers for Faber and Faber: “Every sales director wants to know if they can have the title bigger. So I say, ‘The book is only six inches wide and you cannot get it any larger. I've blown it up as big as I can. I simply cannot get it any bigger.’ But what they really mean is, ‘Can you make my book stand out more in the shop?’ Nothing stands out in American bookshops because they treat every book as a product in its own right they're all screaming so loud. They have their volume knobs turned up full blast. So when you look around, it's a blank-out, you see nothing. The trick is to go the other way.”
Absolutely not going the other way: Dave McKean has illustrated the Folio Society’s new edition of The Gormenghast Trilogy, creating 142 artworks for Mervyn Peake's pioneering work of fiction. And boy are they pretty. These books will always look like Ian Miller in my mind, but this may very well change that.