This is an old edition of Meanwhile from an inferior, more simian newsletter platform that has unhelpfully severed all the hyperlinks. It’s included here in the archive simply for sake of completion.
Crime and punishment at Amazon
“In an effort to discourage stealing, Amazon has put up flatscreen TVs that display examples of alleged on-the-job theft, say 11 of the company’s current and former warehouse workers and antitheft staff. The alleged offenders aren’t identified by name. Each is represented by a black silhouette stamped with the word ‘terminated’ and accompanied by details such as when they stole, what they stole, how much it was worth, and how they got caught—changing an outbound package’s address, for example, or stuffing merchandise in their socks. Some of the silhouettes are marked ‘arrested’.”
On Roberto Calasso’s The Art of the Publisher
“Calasso immediately complicates the idea of the publisher, pushing it past purveyor of art and into art itself: ‘What is a publisher,’ he asks, ‘but a long snakelike progression of pages?’ A publisher is a sort of super-book that contains hundreds, maybe thousands of distinct but ‘mutually congenial’ individual books. Each publisher is a multimedia, multidisciplinary project (including everything from editorial to publicity) whose essential concerns are whether and how a book gets published. Things, then, haven’t really changed in 500 years. Whether and how have always been the primary concerns of the publisher.”
Neil Gower on his Bill Bryson covers
“The author and most of the titles are well known, a built-in level of awareness that gives a head-start in catching a reader’s attention. The most practical difficulty posed by the titles themselves is the variation in length. The pithy title At Home and the expansive The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid both have to sit comfortably within the same space. Other than noting this potential pitfall, I tend to ignore the title and simply respond to the text. It’s very gratifying how, through doing this, connections between title and image create themselves – the chalky track on The Road to Little Dribbling, for example; the odd juxtaposition of Northern Lights over Istanbul on Neither Here Nor There; the way the Lost Continent is hinted at beyond the dark trees on that cover. The connections are not always obvious, are often just subliminal, but are unmistakeably there.”
My report from the ABCD awards
“It was down to the throng of two-hundred-or-so cover designers at Zigfrid von Underbelly to pick their favourites, a simple case of popping a voting slip into a makeshift ballot box. Once the room was full and the votes counted (by eager and intimidatingly efficient student volunteers in some back-dungeon), the awards were awarded. There was much hooting and hollering, some impromptu speeches and even a mic-drop (entirely unintentional). To call it a ceremony isn’t really accurate – it was all far too informal and enjoyable for that. Shindig would perhaps be more precise. The awarding of awards certainly happened, yes, but it was all a fantastic excuse to fill a room with peers in this very specific creative field, a scattered bunch rarely given an opportunity to get together in one place.”
Michael Bojkowski on Albertus
“Wandering through the City, it soon becomes apparent that Albertus (or Old King as a certain Russian foundry decided to rename it at one stage) rules here. It was designed by Berthold Wolpe around 1936 and is the mortar that cements the City together. It also has to be one of the more comprehensive examples of typographic brandwork you'll find. Following World War II, the City became the focus of a flurry of regeneration projects (including construction of the Barbican Estate) and signage became a key element during this period. A decision was made to use this one typeface and it has been adhered to ever since.”
Spine
If you're even remotely interested in the art of book cover design, you need to buy Spine #4. Over 80 pages of book cover design related articles and features, including: The Life and Death of a Book Cover by Will Speed; an interview with Kimberly Glider; and Grimm Covers: Designing Grimm's Fairy Tales.
That is all.