We had 2 projects selected for this year’s (2013) PRINT magazine’s Regional Design Annual.

As book cover designers we have all at one point or other come upon FaceOut Books blog, featuring the work of the best of the best in the world of book cover design. Over the years, getting featured on FaceOut Books has become sort of a “feather in the hat” in the in the world of book cover design. Who hasn’t wanted to have their work featured along side this list of greats?

So when Emily Weigel of FaceOut Studios contacted us about doing a post on our golden egg project (limited edition Sherlock and Jane Austen sets), we nearly lost it! Read on and get a glimps into the workings of a two man studio that could…

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Author S.C. Barrus posted an excited cover reveal of his new book Discovering Abberation on his blog. It’s a very exciting time in an authors life to see their book take final form as a finished piece of work ready for the masses. We were equally happy with the final results on this one. Read more about the novel here.

A nice blog post by an author we recently finished doing a cover for: Visit the blog post.

We are rather pleased with the end result and were happy to see that the author posted this write-up about the process he went through with us.

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In this episode Andrew and Ian have a conversation with book designer Briar Levit. Briar is an assistant professor in Portland State University’s graphic design program. She is art director for Bitch Magazine and, she is a freelance publication designer.

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In this episode Andrew and Ian have a conversation with book designer Ingrid Paulson. She talks about her start in book design, top-secret production on Harry Potter books, the design community in Toronto, and more.

Check out this stuff:

Ingrid was filmed by the Quill & Quire, talking about the book design of Heaven is Small. In our own talk she discusses creating a new paperback version of a hardback design, so this book is a good example of that.

Inrid contributed to a New York Times piece, “Favorite Book Cover Designs of 2012″.

Andrew mentions a gallery that licenses TV and movies for art. It’s Gallery 1988.

P.S. Please forgive the microphone problems. The audio for Ingrid and Ian is good, but Andrew is afraid he sounds like he’s trapped in an old coffee can on the crumbling floor of an abandoned mine.

In this episode book designers Andrew and Ian catch up on their respective autumn vacations. Andrew gets self-conscious about his public image in New York. Ian is still relaxed from his trip to Mexico.

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Stuff mentioned in this episode:
Jacqui Oakley illustrated Ian’s recently designed box sets of Jane Austen and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle books.

“Author Promoting Book Gives It Her All Whether It’s Just 3 People Or A Crowd Of 9 People” on The Onion.

This is a pretty accurate representation of Andrew’s author event last month. Well, at least somebody likes Andrew’s book.

Earlier this year our studio was commissioned to create a one-of-a-kind collectors set of illustrated classic novels and stories for Amazon/CreateSpace. Because of the time sensitive nature of the project (we had roughly 4 months to create 20 illustrated classics with 4 lovely boxes to hold the various sets) we were quickly summoned to CreateSpace’s Charleston office where we met with the core team for the job and discussed the parameters and logistics of taking on and completing such a huge project.

In anticipation of the meeting we designed all 4 boxes and a few of the covers and created fully mocked up “dummies” to show the team. We conceived of a slip case with a magnetic lid that would house the books and also reveal the first title of each volume through a die-cut hole. There was no real way to describe this feature, so we had to show them how we figured the boxes would function. In about 4 days time we created the designs, and in another 4 days we had boxes ready, just in the nic of time to present at the meeting.

The designs and concept for the slipcase box functionality were met with great enthusiasm. The core design that was presented during that meeting is what remained as the basic final design through to completion (we did played around with various colors and font choices). So that was out of the way, so to speak. The next big deal was finding the right illustrators for the interiors, and figuring out a reasonable amount of illustrations to spread out through the book to make it a worthy collectors piece, and at the same time practical within the time-frame.

We looked at TONS of illustrators work and narrowed it down to 6. In the end we went with Jacqui Oakley from Canada and Ross MacDonald from New York. Their styles were literary enough and had a certain charm that we were looking for that seemd to fit the subject matter, yet could give it a contemporary twist at the same time. Jacqui did the illustrations for the Jane Austen and Sherlock Holmes collections, and Ross did the two “youth” sets, the Enchanted Collection and the Adventures Collection. The styles were perfect for the books.

The general process was that we received a slew of rough sketches that were then adjusted and inked and approved again prior to coloring. It’s a damn miracle how the two of them were able to complete nearly 150 illustrations each, with revisions and adjustments, and all the back and forth, in such a short period of time.

And keep in mind that we needed to hire image researchers to figure out what to illustrate and how to sequence the illustrations so they would flow nicely, and give a good idea of the whole story. It was an art in and of itself, as many of these books had great scenes that we would have loved to illustrate, but it would have bulked the books out too much, and ultimately, we would not be able to meet our deadline.

In the meantime, while the art was being made, Alan and Ian of theBookDesigners designed 20 covers and interiors and 4 six-sided boxes. All the books and boxes have spot colors and all the covers and boxes are printed on Buckram with debossing/embossing. Running production was a quite a challenge, to say the least, and took many sleepless nights to complete—not to mention last minute changes all the way up until printing time. Needless to say, we completed it on time and they look rather stunning if we may say so ourselves. Enjoy and by all means—buy them!

Andrew and Ian exchange bookish anecdotes about goofs made either by themselves or observed elsewhere. It’s hilarious.

P.S. The QQ Podcast now has a Facebook page. You would be a major goof not to go there and give us a “like”.

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