Think Twice

by Michael J. Mauboussin

Art Director: Stephani Finks // Harvard Business Press

Usually I'm walking on thin ice when my type is illegible. But in this case, illegibility was used to make the reader read / think twice.

Alternate takes:

Bloodbrothers

by Richard Price // Picador

Cover photograph by Bruce Davidson / Magnum Photos

Eighteen-year-old Stony De Coco has to make a choice: either join his father in the tightly knit world of New York's construction unions or take off and find his own path. But Stony’s family is not about to make that choice easy. As he tries to protect his little brother, Albert, from their dangerously unbalanced mother, and to postpone the difficult adult responsibilities that await him, he finds hope in a job working with children at a hospital--a job that promises not to make anyone happy but Stony.

Richard Price's Bloodbrothers is a soulful and often profane story of working-class life in the Bronx, and one young man's bruising initiation into adulthood.

Early Sketches focusing on Co-Op City:

Clockers

by Richard Price // Picador

Cover photograph © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos


EDITOR COVER BRIEF:

CLOCKERS by Richard Price

Description:

Rocco Klein is a Dempsy, NJ homicide detective six months from retirement in the opening pages of Clockers. Dempsy, NJ is a lost, desolate place, full of slums hemorrhaging drugs, specifically crack. Strike, the second main character, is the crack dealer. He overseas his host of minions—his clockers—but not without undue stress. His profession makes him nervous and he doubts whether it is truly for him. His boss, the drug kingpin Rodney Little, sees it another way. This sets the stage for the event that catapults Rocco Klein and Strike toward each other. A murder occurs outside a fast food restaurant. Instead of Strike stepping forward, his brother, Victor, admits guilt claiming he did it in self defense. Klein of course does not buy the confession and the pursuit of Strike and Rodney Little begins.

The story is told from the perspectives of both Rocco Klein and Strike, alternating chapters as the novel moves through the grime and grit of slummy NJ. Each character has a distinct view of the world they live in. On the whole, this lets Price create two different worlds within one, a layered city, with each layer utterly connected.

I’d have to say this book is geared toward a predominantly male audience.

The tone is desperate and violent. Every line spoken, every description suggests violence in one way or another. “The New York skyline had begun to bruise purple.”
The language is aggressive and direct. Everything is meant to cut someone else in some way, emotionally, physically. It’s a hard environment and Price paints the picture of Armageddon, the last days over Dempsy, NJ.

Compare this book to all the gritty cop dramas that were once good. NYPD Blue in its beginning days. The Wire (which Price writes for). It’s smart and fast paced. Homicide: A Year in the Killing Streets by David Simon

The language is what makes this book different. Price’s prose clips along. Every character is cunning or done for, and there is a clear line between both. The crack dealers he is portraying are smart, know the game, know the cops, know their clientele. The cops know the clockers, and watch the city and its dismal surroundings, like crooks themselves.

Notable imagery: Strike drinks vanilla Yoo-hoo to nurse and calm his ailing stomach.
Handcuffs. The slums, the endless maze of brick housing projects. The corners, parking lots and concrete yards where clockers know to set up shop. Police interrogation rooms. Crack viles. Beepers or pagers.

Early Sketches:

The Sixties: BIG IDEAS // small books

by Jenny Diski
BIG IDEAS // small books / A Picador Paperback Original

A brilliant, alternative take on 1960's swinging London, Jenny Diski offers radical reconsiderations of the social, political, and personal meaning of that turbulent era.

What was Jenny Diski doing in the 1960's? A lot: Dropping out, taking drugs, buying clothes, having sex, demonstrating, and spending time in mental hospitals. Now, as Diski herself turns sixty years old, she examines what has been lost in the purple haze of nostalgia and selective memory of that era, what endures, and what has always been the same. From the vantage point of London, she takes stock of the Sexual Revolution, the fashion, the drug culture, and the psychiatric movements and education systems of the day. What she discovers is that the ideas of the sixties often paved the way for their antithesis, and that by confusing liberation and libertarianism, a new kind of radicalism would take over both in the UK and America. Witty, provocative, and gorgeously written, Jenny Diski promises to feed your head with new insights about everything that was, and is, the sixties.

Once you create a series look, you can get handcuffed by it.
For the BIG IDEAS // small books series, photographer Jon Shireman and I had set up a single image conceptual approach, stripped down to its visual essence with a limited color palette around the conceit that the book itself was physically experiencing the BIG IDEA of that book.
This book was not about the 60s as it was experienced in America but in England. So I had to find some way to distinguish this aspect. Without the Civil Rights Movement and the Vietnam War to draw upon, I saw that 60s London was more about external cultural changes. Mod fashion styles, ala Austin Powers. I did some research on Mod culture, Carnaby Street fashions, groovy industrial designs, tie-dye, abstract trippy art and saw that all of those approaches demanded an explosion of colors. Which was a possible problem. This direction might be too colorful to fit in with the established look of the series.



I needed to say UK and the Mod culture of the 60s. I thought of taking the British Flag aka The Union Jack, and tie dyeing it would be a smart combination of the two. Jon had an all-white flag created from cloth and we experimented with just using the flag's blue and red colors. But it wasn't working as well as I thought and there was too much color scattered all around.


Maybe if I tried breaking it into segments to contain the colors. But it still wasn't clicking. BOLLOCKS!

Forget the tie-dye and work in a peace sign instead.

PISS POOR Attempt!

Maybe a more graphic approach. I tried to find relationship patterns between the angles of the peace sign and Union Jack. For a good moment I thought this would be it!

But no. BLOODY AWFUL!

Maybe I should go full out and just commit to using a multi-colored tie-dye pattern to make it recognizable:

BLIMEY! It was too much color and breaking away from the series look. And they all abandoned the simple and original conceit that the books were experiencing the author's idea.

Jon and I brainstormed some more and ended our conversation with absolutely no ideas or direction. We decided to talk again at a later date when minds were fresh. So I hung up and stepped out of my office door and then it hit me. BUTTONS! Growing up in the 80s and hanging out in the East Village of NYC, it was the style to personalize our jackets with objects of our affection/affectation. Our jackets were covered with favorite band logos, bandanas, patches, safety pins, store buttons like CANAL JEANS, FLIP and Trash and Vaudeville and hand-painted back panels and sleeves. I thought that this would allow me to include many of the eclectic ideas of the 60s by representing them in a button and pining it on a clean white Union Jack. e.g. model Jean Shrimpton, peace sign, rock music, drug use, paisley. I saw plenty of 60s political button art but they probably didn't use buttons like this in their 60s fashion. But still, I like that this approach kept the monochromatic color scheme of the series. Maybe the flag could be a white denim jacket. And used colors only as added dashes of accents. I also liked that it was applied onto the flag and removable. Implying that these were fashionable trends of the moment that you can pick and choose and add to yourself and remove when you were over it. I'm not sure if this is the best solution but I was glad I was able to bend the visual closer to the series original intent and tone.

The Value of Nothing

by Raj Patel // A Picador Paperback Original

"A deeply thought-provoking book about the dramatic changes we must make to save the planet from financial madness." —Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine

Opening with Oscar Wilde's observation that "nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing," Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. He reveals the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger (as much as $200), and asks how we came to have markets in the first place. Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our democratically bankrupt political system.

If part one asks how we can rebalance society and limit markets, part two answers by showing how social organizations, in America and around the globe, are finding new ways to describe the world's worth. If we don't want the market to price every aspect of our lives, we need to learn how such organizations have discovered democratic ways in which people, and not simply governments, can play a crucial role in deciding how we might share our world and its resources in common.

This short, timely and inspiring book reveals that our current crisis is not simply the result of too much of the wrong kind of economics. While we need to rethink our economic model, Patel argues that the larger failure beneath the food, climate and economic crises is a political one. If economics is about choices, Patel writes, it isn't often said who gets to make them. The Value of Nothing offers a fresh and accessible way to think about economics and the choices we will all need to make in order to create a sustainable economy and society.

Arun Gupta: You contend that the actual price of a $4 Big Mac should be $200. What are the real costs of that hamburger?
Raj Patel: The Center for Science and Environment in India tried a few years ago to figure out the true cost of a hamburger. Assuming that it was raised on pasture that was once rainforest, the ecological services provided by that rainforest, the loss of diversity, carbon sequestration, water cycling, fuel and tropical product sources, among many other things, the cost would come to $200. The U.S. food industry has huge hidden costs, from the agricultural run-off that causes a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico to the cultural destruction wrought by the “Western” diet. There are also huge health costs associated with poor diet — in 2007, $174 billion was spent in the U.S. caring for people with diabetes — as well as the public funds that support the industrial food system.

Cheap food is “cheat food.” There are all kinds of costs that are externalized from the price we pay at the checkout. We pay those costs one way or another — but the food companies don’t. Merely having a system of free markets with accurate prices still doesn’t address the underlying issues of poverty and disenfranchisement.

—from The Ideology of Hope: An Interview with Raj Patel
By Arun Gupta | From the November 20, 2009 issue of The Indypendent

The hamburger analogy was my original approach. The concept was to show the hidden cost of a hamburger. When you bite into it, you're contributing to the cost of land, transportation, fuel, global warming, heart disease, health care cost, etc. I thought a burger made out of representative icons of all of these cost areas sandwiched between hamburger buns would put the idea across. I also used bright colors to suggest fast food.

Initial concept sketch:


To make a quick mock up of my concept for presentation, I used the icons from the poster of Gary Hustwit's documentary OBJECTIFIED.


{ My signed postcard by Gary when I saw him and his documentary at the IFC Center.}

I hired illustrator Daniel Pelavin to flesh out my idea. These were still in initial sketch stage:



My Publisher liked it but thought it was emphasizing too much on one specific part of the book. I was asked to broaden the idea to bring to the forefront the economic aspects of the book and somehow show the vague idea of "value". And it had a "call to action". More big poster and immediate in feel. Hmmm. I decided to illustrate the title. Making "Nothing" out of "Something." A BIG FAT ZERO made up of phrases and World currency symbols. To further the idea of "nothing", I planned on blind embossing the letters so that it was black on black. I imagined the texture looking like a garlic/ginger grater. I set the type at a very small 4 points to form a smoother zero. But it was difficult to read and the blind emboss would never read on Amazon. So I simplified it to just using the US "$", increased the point size and dropped the idea of blind embossed and printed the letters in silver ink. The final cover prints in super glossy lamination with 2 hits of dense, rich black; metal tone silver ink for the small type and uses one of my favorite bright printing colors:


Lime Green PMS 375.


Earlier comps when the tentative title was ANTON'S BLINDNESS

This idea was to put price tags/values on things that were considered priceless and not for sale. The sun, sky, trees. But I couldn't make the tags work in an elegant way. I also tried a barcode but got bored of that approach.

ANTON'S BLINDNESS is a neurological condition in which loss of sight is accompanies by an insistence and a belief that the patient can see. One of the key symptoms is the complicated confabulations needed to explain accidents that result of in fact being blind. We are like those patients in our blind belief in the free market and its accomplice prices. Why even now are we making complicated excuses for the failure of free market capitalism? As we witness the continuing financial and economic crisis, economist and activist Raj Patel asks us to consider why things cost what they do, and how we reclaim both the market and democracy.

Book trailer:

NurtureShock

by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

Art Director: Anne Twomey // Twelve Books - Grand Central Publishing

The central premise of this book is that many of modern society’s strategies for nurturing children are in fact backfiring – because key twists in the science have been overlooked.

For some jobs, it can take a while to come up with an idea that you think is worth pursuing. Exploring endless ideas and directions with many, many variations both broad and minute. But sometimes you get a job where you know exactly what you want to do before the client is done with their intro brief. That was the case when Art Director Anne Twomey called me to discuss a new book on the subject of how we were raising kids all wrong by over praising them. I recalled reading a New York Magazine about this very subject. It turned out that the same authors wrote it. Over praising your child either develops high self-esteem and encourages them to strive higher. Or sets them up for failure. The authors use science to back up their claim that everything we thought about raising a child is working towards opposite results. Shocking!
But whatever the opposing theories are, children were seen as delicate, fragile things caught in the middle. Treating them with kid's gloves. So by the time I hung up the telephone, I knew that an egg was the perfect metaphor. A white egg set against a white background. Simple and uncluttered. And the egg should be cracked. Suggesting both its fragile nature and the beginnings of coming out of its shell and ready to come into the world. I was going to shoot this myself but decided to see what was available through stock photos. I saw golden eggs, smashed eggs and cracked eggs. But visually, the idea was starting to look a little thin to me. Especially if I wanted to have the object against white. Then I saw an egg with a band-aid on it. That was a nice element of color to focus on. The band-aid could represent the child rearing that kept things together until it was ready to hatch. Or maybe it was stunting its growth and trapping them in a shell? It also made the perfect spot to the place the title. For a book that had a lot of attention and needed a “Big Book” commercial look, I’m happy that I was able to keep the execution clean and simple.

The author's NurtureShock Blog on Newsweek.

The Happy Book :)

by Rachel Kempster + Meg Leder

Art Director: Greg Avila // Sourcebooks, Inc.

THE HAPPY BOOK shows how to practice and celebrate happiness so you can find it when you really need it. Packed with creative prompts, wacky ideas, and hip activities, this is the ultimate pick-me-up. Packaged to encourage doodling and drawing, THE HAPPY BOOK has space to scribble thoughts, make lists, fill in the blanks, and paste pictures. This book is about creating a record of what makes you glad, whether that means '80s hair bands or hot chocolate with churros.

Fully interactive and customizable for each reader, THE HAPPY BOOK allows today's social networking fans an offline outlet for play. From photo scavenger hunts to cake baking to finger painting, everyone's happy formula is unique. THE HAPPY BOOK enables readers to celebrate and share whatever gives them wall-to-wall joy.

This is a happy book I designed for my friend Rachel. I'm going to put in drawings of the World Series Champion NEW YORK YANKEES. Because THAT, makes me very happy.



Earlier Sketches:

The Killing Circle

by Andrew Pyper // Picador

Cover photograph by Jon Shireman

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE CRIME BOOK

Patrick Rush is a single father, unhappy with his career, devoted to his young son but haunted by the loss of his wife, when he joins a local writing group. In the candlelit studio where the circle meets, he finds one writer's work far more powerful than the others—a young woman named Angela, who writes about a girl stalked by a killer named the Sandman. But Angela's stories may be more autobiography than tall tale: soon the members of the group are being hunted by a shadowy figure resembling the Sandman, and the line between fiction and real life beings to dissolve. When his own son is taken, Patrick is forced to chase down the Sandman for himself and to discover the ending to his own terrifying story.

A sheet of writing paper with a delicate semi-circle paper-cut wound came to mind as I was talking with the editor. With a bit of blood pooling up behind it and beginning to run.

I emailed a quick, concept sketch to Jon Shireman to photograph:


And voila! With hole-punch wounds on the spine:

The Night of the Italians: Presented by The Type Directors Club

Last night, I attended THE NIGHT OF THE ITALIANS. A celebration of Italian design presented by the Type Directors Club in the beautiful new SVA Theatre.

The panel discussion was moderated by Paola Antonelli and brought together a star-studded panel that featured Louise Fili, of Louise Fili Ltd., Francesco Cavalli of LeftLoft, 
Massimo Vignelli of Vignelli Associates
 and Matteo Bologna of Mucca Design.

This was one of the best talk I’ve been to. Paola was an entertaining moderator who was funny, personal, and kept things moving along.

SOME HIGHLIGHTS:

The word Fili is Italian for “Threads”, Cavalli means “Horses”, and Mucca means “Cow”.

Francesco and Matteo are both from Milan, and Massimo is from Venice.
Only Louise was born in America. New Jersey to be exact. Unlike the rest who wanted to come to America to pursue their design dreams, Louise was desperate to live in Italy. Ever since the time she first visited with her family at the age of 16. Because of her yearning for the culture roots of her parents, she embraced all things Italian and was influenced by its aesthetics. Her design reflects the most typically “Italian” of the four there.

But they all admitted that although Italy is a great place to be, they could not work there.

Most left Italy for greater opportunity. Masimo left because the ceiling was too low there. He found that NYC has no ceiling when it came to realizing your creativity.
Matteo presented some typical advertisement work being done in Italy and said that THIS is the reason why you don’t want to work in Italy as a Designer. Making the transition from Italy to NYC wasn't hard to make because Milan is a very urban city and is as chaotic as NYC. But living in a city where stores and life doesn't close down for the weekend was very stimulating.

The post-Q&A section generated some very good responses from the panel.

One questioner, noticing that most of the works shown were print based, asked their thoughts on designing for the Internet. Massimo responded that BOOKS ARE DEAD! Yikes! But sadly not shocking. The printed books could only reach the amount of people that it can publish. But the Internet can reach millions around the world. Matteo added that books have had a good run at reaching people for over 500 years but in essence, has hit the ceiling. And the Internet does not have a ceiling in getting your message out. I think I need to look for another line of work.

Another question, “What is more important, the image or the copy?” was met with amused silence until Matteo answered, “The kerning.” This was a reference to Matteo's earlier remarks about his subtle redesign of the Victoria's Secret Logo, jokingly commenting, "We got paid a lot of money to do kerning."

A 4th year design student was concerned that his senior portfolio did not reflect an obvious “style” and would that be a problem for Art Directors hiring. Massimo responded that, “It’s not important to develop your own style but your approach.” To which Francesco added with no disrespect, “You are too young to develop a style.” He described our job as problem solvers and that your voice will come out on its own. Or else, you are just imitating someone else's look.

After the talk, there was Sicilian gelato served from L’Arte del Gelato for which Louise designed the logo. The line was very long and there was only one person scooping s-l-o-w-l-y. But the Stracciatella and pumpkin flavors were really delicious and worth the wait. It was great catching up with friends and the panel members were all accessible and having a great time. I love Louise. My Art Director and Mentor who taught me to be the Art Director and Designer I am today. When I’m around her, there’s a part of me that still trembles in awe. Just like how I felt when I was starting out as her design assistant at Pantheon Books. I was able to snag the event poster designed by Charles Nix. It was a fun night. The event ended with Matteo calling out to me as I was leaving. I turned and saw him flipping me the bird. Now That's Amore. Arriverderci.

Here are videos I was able to take of Louise and Matteo's presentations discussing their work and what it means to be an Italian designer:

Louise Fili-The Night of the Italians: presented by The TDC from Henry Yee on Vimeo. Matteo Bologna-The Night of the Italians: presented by The TDC from Henry Yee on Vimeo. (The Panel Left to Right: Louise, Francesco, Paola, Massimo and Matteo) Louise's grandfather with her young father on the far right. Me and Louise. The Great Massimo.

RIP Massimo Vignelli, 1931 - May 27, 2014 by Michael Beirut / Design Observer

Time: BIG IDEAS // small books

by Eva Hoffman
BIG IDEAS // small books / A Picador Paperback Original

• An AIGA's 50 Books // 50 Covers Best Cover 2009 Selection

Novelist, cultural commentator, memoirist, and historian Eva Hoffman examines our ever-changing perception of time in this inspired addition to the BIG IDEAS/small books series
Time has always been the great given, the element that establishes the governing facts of human fate that cannot be circumvented, deconstructed, or wished away. But these days we are tampering with time in ways that affect how we live, the textures of our experience, and our very sense of what it is to be human. What is the nature of time in our time? Why is it that even as we live longer than ever before, we feel that we have ever less of this basic good? What effects do the hyper fast technologies—computers, video games, and instant communications—have on our inner lives and even our bodies? And as we examine biology and mind on evermore microscopic levels, what are we learning about the process and parameters of human time? Hoffman regards our relationship to time—from jet lag to aging, sleep to cryogenic freezing—in this broad, eye-opening meditation on life’s essential medium and its contemporary challenges.

It’s about Time, but what aspect of time? When you have plenty of it, it never comes to mind. You only think about it when you're running out of it. That’s what I needed to think about. With deadlines approaching and running out of time, I think and let go. Sometimes after the end of a long workday, with time standing still, I stare at my wall and my mind drifts. The afternoon’s setting sun begins to cast shadows of my windowpane across my office wall.
It made me think of the long shadows of late August. That melancholy moment when you realize that summer is almost over. Where the sunlight becomes golden, hazy and lazy. That's when time makes itself known. When it tells me that moments are drifting away. Goodbye summer. That’s what time is to me. Fleeting moments.
I’ve already established this BIG IDEAS series with a minimal color palette and minimal imagery. Using a golden color would be out of place. But I was also designing another subject in the BIG IDEAS/small books series about the British SIXTIES where I needed to incorporate the red, white and blue of the Union Jack. I had to break my rules. I placed my type along the shadow's edge. The transition point that separates day from night. Interesting thing about this image is that it’s not a photograph. I didn't want to use a stock image. It seemed simple enough to photograph live. But I was designing this in the wrong time of the year, winter. So I mocked up my concept by creating it in Photoshop with Gaussian blurs and gradient masks. I did have photographer Jon Shireman shoot this as he has for all of the other in this series. But I decided to stay with my mock up because it just seemed to capture the mood I wanted. Sorry Jon. But wait till you see what we came up for the next in the series, CHOICE. I can't wait to show you.



It's a beautiful autumn here in NYC and summer's a distant memory. Replaced with apple picking, butternut squash, crisp blue skies, rustling leaves, cocktail parties, great weather for leather and dressing in layers. Hello autumn! Did you have a nice summer?


*sigh*