A pin board of some broken dreams

I've been pinning some of my favourite book designs on my Pinterest board of inspirational stuff

http://pinterest.com/sandycull/inspirational-stuff/

and many come from Darren Haggar.

http://www.dhaggar.com/

What I love about his website – apart from it's stunning simplicity – is that, as well as covers that get approved and finally printed, he also puts concepts that don't survive the approval process. An excellent idea which I might have to utterly copy.

I wonder if you can tell which little beauties here were cut off at the knees.

TATA –The Age of The Acronym

Book designers have always been fundamentally concerned with the readers experience – from that initial seeing the book cover in the shop, the rolling it around in the hands, the touching the stock and the taking in of the image; to the reading of the blurb and perhaps a sly breathing-in of the binding. When we take it home, we crack it's spine a tad and sit for several nights with it's flawless typography, enjoying the care and attention to detail and run our hands across of the pages.

I guess this is now called the UX, the User Experience?

And here's the UK Penguin Essentials – (Essential reading, beautifully designed).

In this new digital age, never has the design of a book been more important.
http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/penguinessentials/#

My favourite is the cover of Diary of a Nobody, illustrated by Rob Lowe of Supermundane:

Stefan, Liz and my new friend Ted

My friend Prue sent me a link to Elizabeth Gilbert's TED talk about the creative process. Yes, yes. Still bleating on about this. EG talks about trying to write a new book after the success of 'Eat, Pray, Love'. I'm probably the only person on the planet who hasn't read it . . . nor seen the film.

This excellent talk reminded me of when a colleague jokingly told me years ago - well, I think he was joking - that 'The Cook's Companion' (1995), would be my brightest book design triumph and that every book I designed thereafter would ultimately fall short. Be that as it may, :(, I like EGs idea of having an external force on hand sometimes. I'm almost inspired to get a copy of EPL.

Now these TED talks are a whole other distraction for me. What am I doing watching these at 11pm when I could be sleeping? Elizabeth Gilbert, Phillipe Starck and then several by Stefan Sagmeister. Great stuff. . . enjoy. Thanks Prue.

http://www.ted.com/

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off.html