Design « 800 CEO Read

April 5, 2013

How to Be Interesting

Filed under: Big Ideas,Book Reviews,Design,Personal Development — Jon @ 11:59 am

This week, Dylan and I went to go see Jessica Hagy speak at the wonderful Lynden Sculpture Garden. Hagy, an ex-advertising copywriter who now creates doodles and charts with keen observations on people and the situations they find themselves in, presented a summary of her “10 Simple Steps” from her new book How to Be Interesting (In 10 Simple Steps).

After enjoying her previous book Indexed, which consisted solely of pages of charts and minimal commentary, I was curious what her presentation might consist of. Silence, while hilarious charts appeared on screen? An attempt to verbalize the complexity of ideas within charts? The answer, a bit of both! But just as interesting as the formal presentation itself was Hagy’s informal chat about how she works and what she’s working toward. While most of her answers to the audience’s questions revolved around the internet, she also talked about observing different types of people in public situations, which usually provided inspiration during any period of writer’s (or doodler’s) block.

So, How to Be Interesting. The title is both funny and curious, and that’s exactly the talent Hagy has. Being interesting is a primal need, yet when do people really talk about this in a way that doesn’t have some kind of agenda behind it? In the book, there are very obvious, concrete statements combined with peripheral emotions, goals, and personality traits that we all have brushed with at one time or another. Consider this example:

Recall What Makes You Cry

A place. A person.
A creature. A song.
Now devote a little more of yourself
to that memory.

Hagy includes this not to come across as some lonely poet, but as a way for the reader to consider something that “Moves you to ACT up & SPEAK out.” In fact, the book is 100% about action, encouraging people to make the changes they want to make in their lives: be innovative, share, develop confidence, explore, try, fail, and ultimately succeed at being the best you can be. Change the world. That is, after all, what makes us interesting.

It was great to meet in person, but this was not our first interaction with the author. A few years ago over at ChangeThis, we published her manifesto, “Indexing a Career.” Check that out for starters, and then pick up a copy of her latest book, or a stack for your team. After all, don’t you want to work with an entire company of interesting people?

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December 31, 2012

The Sketchnote Handbook

Filed under: Blog,Book Reviews,Design — Michael @ 11:36 am

There are many ways to learn. Let’s pretend, for the sake of this review, that there are two kinds of learners: those who take note and those who don’t. That was fun. Now let’s think about the first group (sorry non-note-takers; this is your exit cue). Note-taking can be something we take for granted, something we don’t think about, often because we tend to treat it much like we’d treat tying our shoes or brushing our teeth: it’s simply an activity you do in order to facilitate some result. You take notes in order to help maintain attention during a lecture, or else to have some visual and/or conceptual reminders of what you heard. After a lecture or a conference, you page back through your notes and the little bits and pieces that you see on the page will hopefully help you to reconstruct the big ideas that were communicated during the event.

Fortunately for you note-takers, the presumption that note-taking is a banal, mechanical process that does not bear analysis is entirely wrong! And by now, you likely know that I will be directing your attention to Mike Rohde’s new book The Sketchnote Handbook. You might in fact be familiar with Mike’s work already: he illustrated two of my personal favorites from the past two years: ReWork and The $100 Startup. His style is notable, and The Sketchnote Handbook offers a peek behind the curtain, and more importantly, it offers a powerful application of that style that can be useful to almost anyone.

This ‘illustrated guide to visual note taking’ delivers on its promise: it not only demonstrates techniques for sketching quick and easy images that will enhance your notes, but Rohde also delves into some important peripheral topics. Chapter 3 is all about how to improve your listening technique, so that you can take (sketch) better notes. Chapter 2 establishes the argument for sketchnoting, wherein Mike cites Alan Paivio’s dual coding theory. Long story short: sketching (or ‘doodling’) helps you remember better.

OK, non-note-takers are back on stage. The added beauty of The Sketchnote Handbook is that it might just be the kick-start that non-note-takers need. If you might have previously thought, “I have nothing to gain from taking notes”, you might want to reconsider your position. Simply writing words in a notebook page can definitely provide a challenge with limited payoff. Rohde’s sketchnote approach provides a genuinely fun activity to everyone in the audience, with the very likely benefit of actually improving retention of the key concepts.

If you’re thinking you might be into sketchnoting, but you’re worried because you ‘don’t know how to draw’, you’ll be relieved to find chapter 7, which details all kinds of techniques that you can practice to improve your skills. The demonstrations Mike provides are literally so simple that you’d have no excuse to shy away from the book on the basis of skill. And returning to one of the key concepts the book communicates (in the introduction), “ideas, not art!” You don’t need to be an artist to sketchnote; you simply need to be good enough to sketch something today and recognize it tomorrow. This point is illustrated (literally) in the book when Mike shows two sketches of a dog: one is good and the other is bad. But as he says, “either way it’s still a dog.”

Check out the video below for more info, and visit Mike’s own book page for even more (including a free sample chapter PDF).

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September 13, 2012

Infographics

Filed under: Blog,Book Reviews,Design,Marketing,New Releases — Michael @ 7:30 am

My 3-year-old daughter will only tolerate a certain ratio of words to pictures. Generally the pictures win the war for her attention. Looking at the popularity and apparent effectiveness of infographics, adults actually like pictures too (I certainly do). According to this infographic, created by Neo Mammalian Studios, there is some basis for this preference. Content publishers using infographics see increased traffic growth, and data or content presented in the form of infographics tend to have higher likelihood of viral lift. Perhaps this is because our brains are more likely to hang on to information that is communicated visually. The Power of Visual Storytelling is the subtitle of a new book on infographics by Jason Lankow, Josh Ritchie, and Ross Crooks, founders of the multimedia company Column Five.

Infographics: The Power of Visual Storytelling is a picture book (3-year-olds rejoice!) that provides a good overview of the medium and touches on the broader concerns that publishers might have when considering using an infographic. The chief question: what are your goals? This leads to questions about what kind of format should you use: static, motion, or interactive. What is your audience, and how does your audience shape your story? How will you distribute your content, and who can you work with to help spread the impact of this content? Branding via infographics (yes!)? But then you can get a general idea of what’s happening in this book straight from the authors’ short segment at the beginning, titled “The Purpose of This Book”:

…we will focus primarily on [infographic] implementation in improving business communication, from their new-found use in marketing to their more traditional application in reporting and gaining business insight. Along the way, we will also discuss some of the related pruposes for their use in other fields, which will shed light on the approach and critical framework for analyzing their quality and efficacy that we will establish toward the end of this book. Our primary purpose is to provide an in-depth understanding of the value of their use…

Don’t misunderstand: the book is more than simply pictures. But the rich and engaging graphic content included here probably accounts for more than 70% of the 263 pages. There is plenty of explanation to accompany the graphic demonstrations, and perhaps this ratio has something to do with the fact that this is a book about the power of graphics—what better a way to communicate the what and why than to offer demonstrative evidence. If it’s true that human beings are more likely to retain information presented in graphic-rich contexts, then it makes sense for this book to be rich with graphics. From a designer’s perspective, there is little discussion of technical details, but explaining the how is not quite what the authors intended to do. That said, the pictorial content is thoroughly engaging, regardless of what you hope to get out of this book. Whether you need to beef up your content, increase virility, or you simply need something for your coffee table, this book is interesting.

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February 28, 2012

To Forgive Design

Filed under: Blog,Design — Jon @ 2:16 pm

As consumers, we love products that look nice and are easy to use. As humans, we enjoy created environments that enhance our quality of life while offering an interesting visualization to the natural world. But sometimes, our phones don’t work properly, or our cars break down. Other times, bridges collapse, and oil spills destroy oceans and wildlife. In these instances, we are often quick to blame the design.

In his new book, To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure, Henry Petroski makes the case that there is much more involved in these situations than simply poor design, from the human systems the design exists within, to other natural elements and complex behaviors that can be difficult or impossible for engineers and designers to predict, no matter how much research has been done in advance. Because of this, Petroski begins at the starting point:

“Failure to imagine the possibility of failure is the most profound mistake engineers can make.”

Failure is a major theme of the book, and is discussed as a way to become less fearful of it, and more intelligent about how to handle it when it occurs.

“Managed failure” is something often built into systems and products to be faulty in a way that compensates some other portion of the product or its usage. But it’s the unmanaged or unplanned failures that cause the most disruption. These, Petroski infers, need to be better understood – both as insight for how we react to things, and as a guide for how we design within our own work – whether we’re engineers, or not.

There are nearly countless case studies within the book that show how well-designed and engineered situations have failed, and how in each case, it was not simply design (though that was where the flaw was revealed) that caused the failure. Per the title, the book calls us to forgive design for its failures when they occur, and look more at how the nearly infinite variables that surround design can have a huge effect on how well that design maintains over time. This is a highly fascinating read for anyone interested in why things are designed the way they are, especially when they go wrong.

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November 22, 2011

Truisms collide in the story of Nanovation

Filed under: Bestsellers,Big Ideas,Blog,Design,Uncategorized — bob @ 12:58 pm

It’s often been told to entrepreneurs and potential innovators: If you want to create something of value and build a financially successful enterprise, find a problem and solve it. A second truism concerning innovation is the workaround, or “incomplete or partial solution to a particular job to be done.” (The Innovator’s DNA by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen and Clayton M. Christensen.)

When one observes a workaround, the authors of The Innovator’s DNA say pay attention because it might provide inspiration to create entirely new products.

Both those truisms of innovation collided one afternoon in 2002 during monsoons. Ratan Tata, the chairman of the Tata Group, an industrial giant in India that makes automobiles among many other things, was being driven through the manic Indian streets in the driving (no pun intended) rain. Before the trip begins, Tata cautions his driver to drive carefully and expect the unexpected. Soon after, Tata notices a family of four on a scooter passing his car, a common site in India.

He again admonishes his driver to slow down and no sooner finishes his warning than the driver of the scooter loses traction and then control, sending the scooter and family tumbling in all directions in front of him. Tata’s driver was able to stop, keeping the family safe but soaked and shaken up.

Tata says his epiphany began as he saw the family begin to pass: There had to be a safer way for families of limited means to travel in an increasingly mobile India. Tata began sketching, thinking and, in the end, decided that enough was enough and that the masses in India needed and deserved a “people’s car” and Tata was the company to provide it.

He tasked a team of more than 500 engineers to design, develop and mass construct the Tata Nano.

In Nanovation: How a Little Car Can Teach The World to Think Big & Act Bold, authors Kevin & Jackie Freiberg and Dain Dunston, tell not only the story of how the Nano was developed, but how the project succeeded despite a spate of setbacks, as one might expect. The tome, topping 500 pages, is a gold mine of thinking on innovation, some of it recognizable, but much of it innovative itself. One of the highlights of the book is its sidebars called Nanobites, containing bursts of insight culled from the Nano story. An example:

Nanovation is often born from a desire to make the world better.

Nanovation begins with clearly defining the problem.

Nanovators see problems as invitations.

Nanovation is action-oriented. If you see a problem, act on it.

Nanovators frequently ask, “What if?”

The bursts are often followed by questions designed to get the reader to think and apply the Nanobites that preceded them. The questions that followed the Nanobites above:

How many times have you looked at a situation in your country or company and thought, Someone should do something about this?

What if you were that someone? Or what if you supported someone who shared your vision and was in a position to make a difference?

And forget changing the world for a moment: How about in your job? Is there some problem in your workplace or in your industry that you think “someone” ought to address?

What would it take for you to lead the change?

In all, the book uses a layman’s language to describe a plethora of useful innovation ideas, many of which will inspire and instruct you. Along the way, you get to read the story of the creation of a safe, low-polluting car that cost about $2,100 American when introduced. The most exciting pages are dedicated to the ripple effects the car will have around the world. For example, global parts vendors were charged with finding ways to lower the costs of their parts by 80% for the Nano. The innovation that those vendors used to accomplish that will be transferred to other manufacturers, lowering the price of cars for buyers in other countries.

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November 17, 2011

Brand Thinking with Debbie Millman and Tom Peters

Filed under: Advertising,Blog,Design,Marketing — Jon @ 9:00 am

As mentioned yesterday, today we’re featuring part of a chapter from Debbie Millman’s new book, Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits. What’s the book about? It’s a collection of Millman’s interviews with some serious minds from the ad industry (and beyond) about what branding is, how it affects us, and how to better understand our relationship with it (both as professionals and as consumers). It’s a compelling read about a subject that involves us all (whether we like it or not).

In the chapter featured below, Millman interviews management expert and design conscious thinker Tom Peters. This is just one example of the type of thinking you’ll see throughout the book (and a pretty good one, in my opinion).

Here we go!

(A reminder: Questions are by the author, Debbie Millman, and answers are by Tom Peters, taken from the book, Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits)

Why do people care about branded items? What do you think it does for the human psyche?

One part of it—which is less relevant today than it was in the past—is once they got connected with companies like the Unilevers and the Kimberly-Clarks and the P&Gs, a brand was a guarantee of reliability. This did not exist in my grandfather’s store in rural Virginia. Have you read Thomas Hine’s book on packaging? One of my favorite examples from his book focuses on Quaker Oats. Hine talks about how, in 1870, oats were something you fed to an animal. And suddenly, you had a cardboard box with a Quaker on the outside, and oats became a human delicacy—due entirely to packaging—in the short space of 20 years.

First, branding was about safety and reliability, but let’s also acknowledge that human beings are an emotional species. I was in China for the first time in 1986. As soon as Deng Xiaoping took the lid off of regulation, women went from wearing gray, shapeless Mao jackets to sporting colorful wardrobes nearly overnight. This need to express our individuality and vibrancy is obviously a fundamental, basic human need.

Why do you think it’s a basic human need?

I have no idea. It may be that giraffes are colorblind, so they have patterns on their bum that other critters don’t. I assume at some point, in some sense, it’s a version of peacocking. I assume that there was probably an aspect of Darwinian selection to it. My bet would be it has something to do with this, though I do have a proclivity for being fairly Darwinian in my beliefs. Frankly, I have no idea what the history is.

Let’s assume that we are hardwired to want to be attractive to each other for some deep-seated procreational need. How is this connected to oats transforming into a delicacy when the food is put in a package decorated with the image of a Quaker?

In Darwinian terms, we’re suckers for stories. Stories are the way that humans have always communicated. The Quaker Oats box is not only visually attractive, but it’s a story. Since Aboriginal times in Western Australia—and I’m sure if one goes back thousands of years, or hundreds of thousands of years before that, you’ll find the same dynamic—a good story has always been a good seller. A brand is a story. Period. Frankly, I would rather dump the word “brand” and use the word “story.” I think we’re in the process of wearing out the word “brand.” At some level, when I’m a brand, I’m more commercial. When I’m a story, I’m more human.

So what do you think the Quaker story was at the turn of the 20th century?

I presume that—to your point with plastic bags and diapers—as late as the beginning of the century, sanitation sucked. The pharmaceutical companies should get none of the credit for our life expectancy going from 50 to 75 during the 20th century. The two things that account for 90 percent of this improvement are sanitation and diet. So here comes a cereal that’s reliable and clean and that you could buy for your dearly beloved children without any fear they would get sick when they ate it.

How was the quaker telling that story? What did the quaker represent?

Doesn’t a quaker, in theory, stand for reliability? If it’s good enough for a quaker, then it’s got to be good enough for my little Martha.

One of my favorite stories revolves around the Morton Salt Girl. She is all about metaphor. Morton chemically alters a salt crystal so that it won’t stick to other crystals when it’s wet or humid outside. The Morton Salt Girl is holding an umbrella while the salt is pouring freely. So when it rains, the salt pours. But you don’t have to read a word—it’s all expressed by a visual puzzle that you have to figure out. I think this is why people like it so much. People love puzzles—they feel better about themselves when they correctly figure them out. That’s why people like the “I ♥ New York” logo so much. It’s a puzzle made out of a word, an abbreviation, and a symbol.

I remember reading an article about a social psychology experiment relating to this and being totally unsurprised, as I imagine you would be. Two sets of subjects are given two lists of the same words to memorize. One of the lists is of the words “farm,” “basement,” “bar,” and so forth. The other list is the same, except that random letters are left out, so instead of basement, you’ve got B–A–S, underscore, M–E–N–T. In terms of subsequent recall, the people who had the list with missing letters outperformed the people with the full words by a dramatic margin. Cognitively, you had to work your ass off, so it stuck in your mind.

Yes, the experience of figuring out the words creates a deeper neural pathway in the brain.

It’s extraordinary the way the brain works. . . .

I hate economists.

Why? Why do you hate economists?

Because they’re impersonal bastards. They believe in the rational model, which makes them dumb. When the great recession of 2007–2008 descended upon us, it was not an economics issue. It was a psychology issue.

How was it a psychology issue?

The behavior that got us there was herd behavior. The government has convinced people of the emotional need to own a house. If you look at the economics studies, in many respects the housing market doesn’t go up all that much over a long period of time. There are a million studies that will tell you that renting makes more sense than owning. But psychologically, owning a piece of turf is incredibly important. So I understand why people—who had no money and were given the chance to borrow money—were total suckers for it. And I use “sucker” not in an abusive sense, but in a realistic sense. Then again, you’ve always had herd behavior on Wall Street.

They’re now saying Silicon Valley is the “green” crash. The current punchline is that any human being, including you and I, can put together a business proposal tomorrow morning. And as long as we use a computer and include the word “green” a sufficient number of times in our proposals, the venture capitalists will be showering us with money by dawn the day after.

I’m obviously using hyperbole, but that’s where we’re seeing more of this herd behavior. In terms of the rational-mindedness, I’ve trained in that. I was trained as an engineer, but now I’m a reformed engineer, a “born again” engineer. The reliance on rational models—or models in general—to me, makes economists highly suspect. I don’t believe anything they say. That is very close to not being hyperbole. In the 1970s, when I was getting my PhD, my classmates and I read books by psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Tversky and Kahneman invented “behavioral economics.” This is the hottest branch of economics right now, the “Freakonomics” branch.

Kahneman won a Nobel Prize in economics, but he was a social psychologist, period. I am royally pissed off that these f’ing economists have appropriated psychology and now call it the coolest thing in economics. Screw them. These straightlaced, rationally thinking economists have appropriated social psychology, and it pisses me off for reasons that are totally childish on my part.

Why childish?

Because it’s stupid. I’m delighted that the irrational realities are beginning to seep into economics. The rational me is delighted that irrationality is seeping into the rational profession, because maybe they’ll get some things right.

Look, I have a very strong smart-ass streak. I have learned to be “appropriate” and politically correct on many scores over the years. To the extent that I must, I guard my “smart-assery” when I’m giving speeches to middle managers from financial services companies. But the smart ass lurks no more than one glass of chardonnay below the surface.

I’ll remember that when I need to get your honest opinion on something. In the past, you’ve said, “Design is so critical it should be on the agenda of every meeting in every single department in the business.” Why do you believe that?

The term I’ve used for 20 years—and maybe I stole it from somebody or maybe by the grace of God they’ve stolen it from me—is “design-mindedness.” Design-mindedness is about bringing an aesthetic dimension into a discussion of anything. I am a great fan of Carly Fiorina. A lot of the reason was that she—kicking and screaming—brought a design aesthetic to Hewlett-Packard. I know this because I lived next door to Lew Platt, Carly’s predecessor, in college. Prior to Ms. Fiorina, Hewlett-Packard ranked 200 on a list of 199, in terms of design sensibilities. When she left, they were a significant consumer goods company, and that was Carly, pure and simple. When they gave her successor, Mark Hurd, the credit for having a great design team, it made me want to barf. Carly was not a good chief operating officer, and she probably needed to be let go at some point. I don’t deny that for a minute. And she had an ego that was a little bit out of control, and I don’t deny that for a minute either. But she brought about a cultural change at Hewlett-Packard, which makes the work that Lou Gerstner did at IBM and Jack Welch did at GE look like chump change by comparison.

Do you think that anything can be successful now without being highly positioned?

Yes.

Really?

Well, we obviously would have to spend the next two weeks defining “highly.” As the ethos of quality that began to bubble up in the United States during the 1980s took root, the major fast-moving consumer goods companies started having significant problems going up against store brands. Once store brands became reliable, they began to market and brand themselves. Then Wal-Mart came along, and the average American started saving something like $900 a year, which isn’t small cookies for people making $45,000 annually. The things they’re buying at Wal-Mart might be much less sexy, but as long as they’re quality products, this is perfectly acceptable. The recession obviously has pushed people even farther toward this model.

Look, I own a Subaru. I own a Subaru because they’re perfect for Vermont. But the quality revolution has taken such root that, in terms of quality, I’m probably just as well off with a Kia as I am with a Subaru or a Mercedes.

Do you really think that the quality is that comparable?

Yes.

So it is really just branding and positioning?

Well, branding, positioning, and people who like to have sex with their car. The electronics in BMW and Mercedes cars allow you to do a whole lot of things that you really don’t need to do. But in terms of a vehicle that can travel 30,000 miles without ever having to go into a shop, I would bet that a Kia is very, very close to these other brands.

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September 1, 2010

Conference Room B

Filed under: Design,The Company — dylan @ 6:47 pm

“The irreducible essence of leadership is that leaders are people who live their deepest personal values without compromise, and they use those values to make life better for others—that is why people become leaders and why people follow leaders.”

—Stan Slap, Bury My Heart at Conference Room B (Portfolio, August 2010)

If you follow Jack Covert Selects, you may recognize the quote above from Jack’s most recent review. It’s a quote that Jack and Carol appreciated so much that they asked me to put it on our conference room wall. It was fun project, and completed today.

You may notice I also put a “B” on the conference room door. That is not only an homage to the book title, but a recognition that this is our second conference room, the first being a place we sometimes meet after work and have christened Conference Room H. (We don’t yet have a Conference Room A.)

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April 29, 2010

Joy Panos Stauber is a Cool Friend

Filed under: Design — dylan @ 4:22 pm

If you’ve looked at anything our company has produced in the past five or six years, whether it’s our website, a ChangeThis manifesto, In The Books, The 100 Best, or an invitation to our book awards, you have witnessed the wonderful work Joy Panos Stauber does. She is not officially employed by 800-CEO-READ, but has been a part of our team for many years now, creating our visual identity and helping us communicate with you more effectively.

She has also been helping the great crew over at tompeters! for the past few years, which is where Erik Hansen recently interviewed her for their Cool Friend series.

Erik: What’s at the essence of what you’re trying to do in your daily work?” Joy, always great at getting to the heart of things quickly, replied:

Joy: You’re trying to help somebody connect with their constituency. At the end of the day, design just helps you communicate better.

Joy later discusses how powerful that seemingly simple task is:

An instructor of mine at school once explained that you don’t burn yourself in the shower because you know the little red dot is hot and the little blue dot is cold. People don’t realize that everything they encounter all day long is designed. And the designer either can make your life better or worse, depending on how well they did their job.

Well, I know Joy has made our lives much better here at 800-CEO-READ and, hopefully through the work she’s done with us, she’s touched yours as well.

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October 7, 2009

Publishing Chat With Ellen Lupton

Filed under: Blog,Communication,Design,Publishing Industry — Jon @ 10:45 am

Another prime cut from the Author Blog, here’s an email interview I conducted with design and publishing thinker Ellen Lupton, who talks about her experience with self-publishing books, and the role design plays in the process. It’s an interesting read for anyone who might be looking for ways to present their ideas to the world.

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Technology has enabled people to publish their own books easier, more frequently, and with more control than ever before, but what is really involved?

Writer and designer Ellen Lupton has published many books that deal with communication design, and has now written a book that addresses the freedom (and work) involved with publishing your own book. It’s called Indie Publishing.

After reading the book (and keeping it as an important resource), I thought it would be great to share some of her ideas with our author audience. The following is a brief interview I conducted with Ellen about some of the ideas in her book, and other insights into the publishing world.

What do you see as the main advantages of self-publishing, and working with a mainstream publisher?

In favor of self-publishing: Keep all the money. Control all the details. Take responsibility for your project. Don’t ask permission to get yourself published. Don’t get lulled into the false expectation that your publisher will make your book successful for you or fix all the problems with it.

In favor of mainstream publishing: Someone foots the bill (less risk for you). You don’t have to do everything yourself (less work for you). Avail yourself of professional expertise, including editing, design, and distribution.

With technology, self-publishing is certainly becoming more possible and easy for individuals, but is it for everyone? What are the main challenges?

Putting together books takes a lot of time, practice, and attention to details. To make a beautiful book requires sensitivity to typography. Traditional publishing is a collaborative process; self-publishing can be solitary–but it doesn’t have to be. You can still band together and get feedback from people.

Should the rise of self-publishing carry ecological concerns?

On the one hand, the rise of self-publishing means more books and more paper (because more people have access to publishing). On the other hand, self-publishing is well-suited to low-volume projects for local audiences, which are not terribly wasteful. Print-on-demand minimizes waste. Self-publishing is also suited to eBooks and other electronic editions.

Your book, Indie Publishing, covers a ton of helpful information on production, design, and even some history of the publishing industry. A whole other book, perhaps, would be to discuss the marketing of self-published books. What advice would you share for a self-pub author to get the word out about their book?

There are many ways to promote your book. You can visit schools, speak as an expert on related subjects, publish articles on related topics, have a blog, contribute to other people’s blogs, and more. Many people think the only way that authors promote books is by doing readings and events at bookstores. In my experience, these events can be awkward and ineffective. I’ve had much better experiences doing lectures at colleges or professional conferences, where people are there to hear about your topic and are receptive to the book.

A major chunk of the book is about design. Whether you’re making an art book or a business book, design is critical for usability and impact. For the sake of this interview, share a synopsis of your thoughts on the importance of design.

A book is a physical object. We hold it in our hands and we see it with our eyes. Bad typography and shoddy construction will undercut the authority of a book, making it look amateur. For example, a book typeset in 12pt TimesRoman with badly justified text will look like it was put together in your office cubicle at lunch. A well-designed book need not call attention to itself; it will just look right.

Some of the design approaches you discuss in the book might be labor intensive. Some authors might be thinking, “I can’t spend too much time on the design. I need to get the idea out there and get people talking about it.” What are your thoughts on this, and how far should authors consider the design and feel of their book?

Publishing is a labor-intensive process. Anyone who has worked with mainstream publishers has experienced frustrating lag times between various stages of submission–it seems to take forever to get feedback and results (even rejections take too long)! When you design and produce your own book, you discover the reasons behind some of that lag time, yet you get to control the time yourself. Writing is slow, editing is slow, and design is slow, too. Our society is starting to value “slowness” again. If you don’t enjoy gradual, repetitive processes, then self-publishing is not for you. (Self-publishers can hire professional editors and designers to help them, though.)

What are your thoughts on digital books, and how effective do you see publishing in that realm to be over physical books?

Digital books are coming of age fast. They are economical, timely, and low on waste. I believe that digital books will enable more authors to get published; however, this will also mean more books out there for people to choose from, and more competition for limited mind share.

Even if someone is working with a major publisher, what are some ways that self-publishing might compliment that work?

Print-on-demand technologies are a great way to develop book proposals to share with editors and agents (especially if your book has a visual component). I use print-on-demand throughout the writing and design process to prototype and share the work as I go. A print-on-demand or self-published work can be the basis of a bigger or formally produced book later.

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About Ellen Lupton:
Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, and graphic designer. She is director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. She is the author of numerous books, including Thinking with Type (2004), D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (2006), and Graphic Design: The New Basics (with Jennifer Cole Phillips, 2008).

More information about her work can be found at:
www.eLupton.com
www.thinkingwithtype.com
www.design-your-life.org

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December 9, 2008

The Oxford Project

Filed under: Big Ideas,Book Reviews,Design,The Company — 800-CEO-READ @ 4:26 pm

Every holiday season there’s at least one big, beautiful book that has everyone buzzing. Two years ago it was the Annie Leibovitz book. Last year it was 100 Young Americans and the illustrated Life of Pi.
This fall, The Oxford Project captured the attention of booksellers across the country, and especially here in Milwaukee. Schwartz Bookshops, our sister company, campaigned for this book and is offering autographed copies via its web site, www.schwartzbooks.com. (Check out their entire selection of autographed books–they make great gifts.)
There’s a great description of The Oxford Project on its web site:

In 1984, Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). Twenty years later, he did it again. But this time those same residents did more than pose. With extraordinary honesty, they shared their memories, fantasies, failures, secrets and fears with writer Stephen G. Bloom. The result is a riveting collection of personal stories and portraits that tell much more than the tale of one small Midwestern town. Because beneath Oxford’s everyday surface, lives a complex and wondrous community that embodies the American spirit.
In the narrative tradition of Studs Terkel’s Working and the photographic spirit of Mike Disfarmer’s Heber Springs series, the Oxford Project is equal parts art, American history, cultural anthropology, and human narrative–at once personal and universal, surprising and predictable, simple and profound.
In a place like Oxford, where newcomers are recognized by the sound of an unfamiliar engine hum, not only does everyone know everyone else, but also everyone else’s brothers, sisters, parents, lovers, dreams, downfalls, and favorite pot luck recipes. This intricate web of human connections among neighbors, friends, and family is the
mainstay of small-town American life, an ethos that is unforgettably captured here in Feldstein’s candid black-and-white, time-lapse portraits and Bloom’s astonishing confessional vignettes. Beautifully designed and illustrated with more than 300 black-and-white duotone images and 12 gatefolds.

Below we’re posting a photo essay to give you a favor for the book. There’s also a slide show available here.

Barbara Boyle

Cayenne Stoakes Hughes

Kevin Somerville

Melody Honn Hillier

Pat Henkelman

Tonya Stratton

The publisher of The Oxford Project, Welcome Books, has a wide selection of beautifully designed and packaged books, including these:
American Farmer: The Heart of Our Country by Katrina Fried (Editor) and Paul Mobley (Photographer)

Canyon Wilderness of the Southwest

China: 3,000 Years of Art and Literature by Jason Steuber (Editor)

New York Deco (Deluxe Edition)

and many more, available here: http://welcomebooks.com/

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