Isn’t the book perfect as is? Like the wheel or the ice cream cone.
John Gall
In 2007, I started a blog called “Speaking of Design…”. My first post was about John Gall, the most famous, or at least one of the most renowned book cover designers.
I needed a cover to begin my blog, and I wasn’t going to design it; I wanted the best designer to help me, all symbolically, of course. And today, I find myself starting again, and I am facing the same problem.
But I will design it myself this time.
Rule one: Read the book
The first challenge I encounter is that I could not follow his first advice:
Of course it is important to read the book. I don’t necessarily read every word, nor even finish everything, but I try to read as much as possible of the books I am personally working on and have some working knowledge of all the books on the list. If an idea gels 1/3 of the way through, so be it, but it’s really important to get a feel for the author’s voice. Believe me, I’ve tried to not read the books. Doesn’t work out too well.
Interview 2007
This is the first post, so there is yet to be anything to read.
Rule two: Inspiration comes from everywhere
Of course my inspiration will be John Gall to start with. But as a designer, I have many notes, saved URLs and a brain full of graphic input.
Rule three: Be thrifty with fonts
I will have to see what sits nicely. This is going to be a modern blog about curiosities in design. At the moment, I am thinking Futura, as is my brand font. But Helvetica, a classic that sits well with everything, or if I need a serif font, maybe Sabon; I always loved it.
Rule four: Practice sound time management
My timeline on this will be Fridays. So, I do have a deadline. Let’s see how it goes. But I think I will follow rule 5 quite a lot!
Rule five: Rules are meant to be broken
David Carson is an excellent example of a rule breaker, but this will be another post.
Work in progress ↓
