Cook Partners

Cover Design Gallery

The covers of Penguin's science fiction titles can be seen all together on one page. Click on each title to see more details about the book. Click on the contents page to learn more about the different eras and styles represented by the cover designs, including an initroduction to the site, classic cover design, the vertical cover format, the transition from typographical to pictorial covers, modern art, pop art, and more.

If you were to do this with your titles, what  impression do you think your readers would form about your cover designs and your company's products?

South Africa: Printing Company Fire

Graphic Repro Online reports that on April 17, 2009, a fire broke out and completely destroyed the Paarl Print Plant in Dal Josafat Industrial Estate, Paarl, Cape Boland:

Eleven employees have been hospitalised and seven fatalities confirmed ..

‘This is a great tragedy for the whole Paarl Print family and the Paarl Media Group,’ said Mike Ehret, managing director of Paarl Print. ‘Our people are passionate about this company and are very shocked about what has occurred.’ He also expressed his heartfelt sympathies with the employees and their families.

... Paarl Print specialises in the printing of books into South Africa and Africa. All clients affected will be individually contacted by Paarl Print management.

One Christian publisher impacted by the fire is Struik Christian Media. Elsabé Barlow, publishing manager, writes that

The Afrikaans edition of Reading Your Male is due for release at the beginning of May. But there was a terrible disaster at the printer where we printing it. Ten days ago the printing factory, one of the largest and most modern in Africa, burnt down to the ground. All the titles that they were busy printing and binding , as well as completed print runs that were waiting to be delivered, were completely destroyed. The worst and saddest part is that 11 people died in the fire and several people are in critical condition in hospital.

Please pray for the victims and their families. Barlow adds,

So many people are affected - Paarl Print is one of the biggest employers in Paarl - a beautiful town in the Cape Winelands - thus affecting many families. The prayers would be much appreciated.

The company is planning to rebuild its Paarl operations.

Children's Books May Contain Lead

A Seattle television station, KIRO 7, reports on lead in children's books, noting that some of the tests it conducted on older children's titles titles demonstrated these have illegal levels of lead. KIRO 7 also questioned the reliability of a study that showed most children's books are not hazardous, noting that the majority of the titles cited in the study as having no toxicity were published after 2004. Read more here.  

Stories About Darkness and Light

CNN interviews Ted Dekker, a bestselling author who grew up in Indonesia as the child of missionary parents:

"I grew up in one of the darkest places in the world you can imagine, in [the] jungle, with cannibals. I know we have certain images in our mind when we talk about cannibals, but we're talking about animism, heavy spiritualism, tremendous amounts of fear," Dekker tells CNN.

... "I grew up in this environment, and it affected the way I viewed light and darkness. My parents brought into that very dark [and] ominous setting hope, light, penicillin, hygiene. The culture changed dramatically, not as a result of Christianity -- at least not upfront -- but as a result of them bringing into a very dark place hope and light. My stories reflect that paradigm shift."

[He adds] "There's also a large group of people who find my presentation of the darkness a little too much."

Malaysia: Catholics Protest Bible That Uses "Elohim" Instead of "God"

AFP reports,

A Malay-language Bible that does not use the word "Allah" has caused controversy among Malaysian Catholics, as the church here fights a court case to guarantee its right to use the word.

The Catholic Herald newspaper, in its Sunday edition, criticised the release this week at an international bookfair of the new Bible, which uses the Hebrew word "Elohim" instead of "Allah" for God.

The new Bible, published in Indonesia and available from eInjil.com, has not been approved by the Indonesian Bible Society.

Muslim Calligrapher Prepares Gospel of Luke for Pope

The Associated Press reports that Yasser Abu Saymeh, a Muslim calligrapher, is "writing the Gospel of Luke in ornate Arabic script," at the request of Bethlehem's mayor, Victor Batarseh. The work will "be presented to Pope Benedict XVI when the Roman Catholic leader visits the Holy Land next month." 

Improve Designer/Client Partnerships

Fast Company interviews Adrian Shaughnessy, author of Graphic Design: A User's Manual, where he recommends that people who want to be better designers become clients of designers also:

By becoming a client we discover that as designers we have a pretty one-sided view of the design process. I can't deny that in the case of certain strong willed designers this singularity can produce wonderful results. But it is also dangerous, and can lead to conflict and misunderstandings. Personally I prefer the notion of an equal designer/client partnership. Yet this doesn't happen naturally. It has to be worked at. And it was only when I become a paying client that I realized how best to achieve this ... being a client taught me more about being a designer than anything else I've ever done.

India: Book Cover Design

How book covers are selected by different Indian publishers:

Karthika V K, chief editor of publishing, HarperCollins, explains, “We have an elaborate cover brief. It’s a brief by the editor of the book, in consultation with the author, on what the book is about. Then the designer is made to read a few chapters marked by the editor. The author and the designer don’t meet, unless the author wants to.

Nowadays, the author looks at the design through e-mail, sends across suggestions and so on. Sometimes, if the writers do have any designers on their mind, we take a look at their work.”
Whereas in the case of Tara Books, things function a little differently, stemming from the fact that their books are design intensive. I recently overheard someone say, “Oh Tara books, their work is an art by itself.” Gita Wolf, editor of Tara Books, says, “Our designers do more than the cover. The design concept is evolved together with the designer and they have a great say in how it will look finally.”
In some cases, they even consider the designer as a co-author to the illustrator.

Read the rest of the article here.

Design Grab Bag

What should a publishing house's logo look like? Check out thoughts on the matter in Design Week's "Branding Concepts in Publishing." 

Fonts matter. Designers know this, and some have mounted a worldwide campaign to ban the use of Comic Sans, a font described by the Ban Comic Sans movement's manifesto as "showing up for a black-tie event in a clown costume," according to this Wall Street Journal article.

Want to see how a magazine cover photo shoot? Check out "Brain Dance," a video on the making of the March 2009 cover on for the New York Times Magazine.

Malaysia: God vs. Lord and the Use of Allah

The Malaysian Insider reports on the Roman Catholic Church in Malaysia's legal battle for the right to use the term "Allah" to refer to God. While the case is pending, the

...editor of The Herald, Rev Father Lawrence Andrew verified that the weekly had stopped using the word “Allah” to refer to the Christian God in both its English and Malay-language sections.

“At the moment we’re not using the word ‘Allah’. We’re using the word ‘Tuhan’ in the Malay section, which is not the correct word,” he told The Malaysian Insider, adding it had received letters from concerned Catholics who were confused by the sudden change in the theological terms used to tell apart the different aspects of God.

“When do we say ‘God’ and when do we say ‘Lord’?” Fr Lawrence highlighted, pointing out that “Allah” was used to differentiate God the Father from His incarnation as Jesus, the “Christ” which also means “the Lord”.