Hope you've recovered from the antics last week in Sydneytown. Congratulations once again to all the winners and those nominated, and those nearly nominated.
The giving of awards and the award night and format itself is bound not to please everyone. But I'd like to reiterate how much of a highlight it was to have the chance to put faces to names and compare notes. To literally have a chinwag about book design and stuff.
I have since read Chongs thoughts on his 2 awards for Hand Me Down World, ‘The Best Designed Literary Fiction Book’ and ‘The Best Designed Cover of the Year'. It makes good reading so am posting the link here. I did indeed go out and buy a copy yesterday.
http://blogs.crikey.com.au/culture-mulcher/2011/05/20/advertisements-for-myself-and-lloyd-jones-prize-winning-book-jacket/
And just in case I hadn't had enough of books and talking about books in the last week or so, I watched this episode of Jennifer Byrne Presents: The Future of Book, on iview last night because I missed it last week. Good viewing also.
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/firsttuesday/s3219358.htm
Love your thoughts on the format, the choices, the winners, the nominations, those books that were clearly missing in action, how things could be done better, what the judges got right. There's been the suggestion, and not to detract from those books that do, that we have an award for the 'best book cover NOT using any foils, spot UVs, embosses, debosses or other fancy finishes' or perhaps an award for the 'best book cover designed using dodgy art supplied by the author'. I'm all for that. And what about an awards for ebooks?
Add your faves here and get this chinwag happening.
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Thanks for the links Sandy.
ReplyDeleteRe the awards, I agree it would be fair if production budgets were considered in some way when assessing the design.
A paperback design without an embellishment budget for example, finds it hard to compete with more expensive productions, even though other aspects of the design may be terrific, for example, the typography.
What about a separate entry category for the no frills, paperback designs? A category where the judges would focus on a designer's skill in answering a brief by using other, core design elements. For example, composition, type, colour, communication level etc. All those other good things.