Design your own easter egg

Happy Easter everyone.

We've been exploring interactive media and have come up with unique way to design your own easter egg.

Come, have a look and give it a go ... it's very basic, but that's due more to our marketing budget that what can actually be achieved.

We'd love to see same samples of your eggs appearing.

http://www.bookdesign.co.nz/easter.php

Margaret Atwood on Twitter

I know a lot of our clients aren't following us on twitter (or this blog actually ... ummm), but I've just been tweeted a link to this great article. Just another reason why I'm really enjoying social media.

http://blogs.nybooks.com/post/482335188/atwood-in-the-twittersphere

Last Post

I leave Book Design tomorrow to take up a full-time position at the University of Otago (here in Christchurch).

The last six years have been:

fun

busy

humorous

rewarding
educational
challenging
delicious (morning teas)

It has been great to watch Book Design grow over these past six years; the new staff, the new offices and chocolate biscuits in the cupboard! Kim has such great passion for books and this rubs off on all of us.

Kim, Anita, Peter and Maria are a fantastic team to work with. I will continue to enjoy reading their 'blogs' and keeping up with all the news from Book Design.

Happy Easter ...

Some things never change!

It's fascinating to see some things never change. Here is a design rough from what's possibly the first printed European book – The Nuremburg Chronicle – printed by Gutenburg in 1493. This is a design rough for a spread, with the corresponding printed pages. It even includes thumbnail roughs as instructions to the illustrator/woodcut engraver.

This is no different to what we do today. Illustrator roughs are invaluable to us. They are a great communication tool, which help the book designer to understand the illustrators thoughts on layout, typography and space, and save a lot of headaches later in the process.

The Lost Art of Bookbinding

If only we had the time and money for this sort
of craftsmanship these days!

bibliodyssey.blogspot.com/2010/02/beautiful-bookbinding

Communication

Recently I have started communicating with clients via email and realised how important good communication is. Assuming is easy but can end up in a big mess. Here at Carpe Diem l  Book Design we are encouraged to always perception check. 

This worked really well for me this week when I had two lots of corrections come in for the same page of a project. A quick phone call to the client solved the problem and saved them some money as they didn't need two different editors checking the same thing.

Communicating left me with a clear head and a good understanding of what I needed to do :)

Chocolate and Books

Easter is nearly here, but ... I only have two chocolate books on my shelf at home. I discovered many, many more while having a wee search online. 

Here's the link to a website I thought had lots of different and interesting CHOCOLATE books!

http://www.stuffedchocolate.com/book.htm

Easter is such a wonderful time of the year!

Interactive Content

Today has been a real blast. The Book Design website is live (although unless you read this blog you wouldn't know that yet as we haven't blasted it to the rest of the world!)

We really do want to blast it off well and have decided to incorporate the big launch with our Easter promo. So today we've developed an interactive Easter Egg. You'll be able to go into our website to colour and decorate your own Easter Egg, then save it and show it off to others.

That's all turned out to be the easy bit - the main problem I've been having is setting up an email newsletter so we can broadcast this with our brand attached. Would you believe it! Website done (big tick - easy) Interactive Content done (big tick - easy) Email (oh how hard can this be!)

Has anyone got any helpful ideas, we run a filemaker database and I'd love to be able to send the email directly from here.

Just as well I'm up to the challenge - next week should be exciting.

Who said barcodes are boring!

Well, we found some that aren't!

www.vanitybarcodes.com

Awesome designs!

Being the newbie, today I decided to look through our work book shelf of books that have been designed here. I have found some really well designed books!!

Here are just a few of my favourites:

St Patrick's Day with a Limerick

Green pikelets with jam, and pesto savory pikelets are another way to get designers away from their desks! 

St Patrick's Day Limerick

St Patrick’s Day green was our theme for the day

one designer forgot, the rest remembered – hooray!

Maria’s green shoes were very sweet,

Kim’s face paint clover was really quite neat!

Peter forgot … we weren’t offended, no one got hurt!

Anita kept warm in her green t-shirt.

All the food was eaten, a laugh was had …

Now back to work designers before client’s get mad!

Why do we get so hung up on spelling?

Nothing against the wonderful editors we work with, but I can read this quite easily ... ??

It's Live!

After many weeks work, our new website is live. Check out www.bookdesign.co.nz

We've included a live feed to our blog, and an new, interactive portfolio.

It is visually cleaner, simpler, and more user-friendly. Just like us really!

We'd love your feedback. Drop us a line. Let us know what you think.

What a project! For the last three months I have been working my way through converting New Zealand lingo into text for the American market, in approx 120 children's learning to read books for Macmillan Education.

For example: mum mom

rubbish garbage

travelling traveling

space outer space

colour color

km miles

cm inches

Mr Mr.

Centigrade Fahrenheit

photo picture

holiday vacation

favourite favorite

and the list goes on....

I never realised how much the english language is different from country to country. I guess I wouldn't have a job if everyone was the same!

Have a great end of week! :)

Chocolate Fish

One task I find challenging is posting chocolate fish. We include chocolate fish in courier bags and deliveries to clients with their proofs, final files and printing. I also post one off to say thanks for account payments. I LOVE chocolate, and bidding each fish farewell without a wee nibble is not easy!

Very occasionally, NZ Post decides that 50 cents is not enough postage on an envelope containing one of our chocolate fish! Yippee! The envelope returns to me! The fish is often a little squashed and definitely does not look good enough to repost to clients, so I just have to EAT IT!

I may even forget to put a stamp on an envelope this week!

ps: I ate the one pictured above!

Do you wanna know what an ebook is?

This is one of the better articles I've come across that explains all the intricacies of ebooks and why people just can't get their heads around reading on a screen.

Plus it shows the importance of a book designer - ummm wonder why I like that so much?

http://craigmod.com/journal/ipad_and_books/?dsq=38486331#comment-38486331

Te Tai Tamariki

We've just begun developing the new 2011 Te Tai Tamariki calendar.

Te Tai Tamariki is a charitable trust, founded by a group of enthusiastic professionals in the field of children's literature in New Zealand. Its vision is to be a national centre for the collection, preservation and exhibition of manuscripts and original art from authors and illustrators of New Zealand children's literature. It aims to encourage a wide range of New Zealanders to celebrate and cherish their children’s literature.

Te Tai draws it's inspiration from similar organisations overseas, including:
Sven Stories in the UK (http://www.sevenstories.org.uk/home/index.php)
and Dromkeen in Australia (http://www.scholastic.com.au/common/dromkeen/index.asp).

Book Design has had heaps of involvement with Te Tai Tamariki over the last few years, puting together design material for Te Tai Tamariki’s brand, print material and exhibitions. Kim plays a significant role as a trustee, and we are always rolling up our sleeves to help with Te Tai Tamariki projects, whether it’s putting together the latest newsletter or installing a new exhibition!

Check out Te Tai Tamariki's website for the latest news:
http://www.tetaitamariki.org.nz/

Typography turned illustration

Marion Bantjes has been a source of inspiration for me since seeing her at Semi-permanent 2008 in Auckland. Her wonderful talent for combining typography and illustration (whilst always using a different medium), always continues to amaze me.

If you would like to find out more about Marion Bantjes go to www.bantjes.com

WAHOO! 3 of our books have been selected as finalist for the NZ Post Children's Book Awards

Congratulations to the publishers, authors and illustrators who were shortlisted in this mornings announcement for the New Zealand Post Children's Book Awards.

It's an awesome line-up and I'm really looking forward to reading all the finalists books. I hope the authors have just as much fun travelling during the festival and meeting everyone.

You can see the full list at http://www.booksellers.co.nz/awards/new-zealand-post-childrens-book-awards/finalists-2010

We've been lucky enough to work with Scholastic NZ to produce Wonky Donkey (which wasn't hard with Katz Cowley's great illustrations and wonderful text that you just can't help but sing-along to, by Craig Smith) which is a finalist in the Picture Book section.

My Story: The Mine's Afire! by Susan Battye and Thelma Eakin is also a finalist in the Junior Fiction section, published by Scholastic . This title is another we really enjoyed designing. Like all the My Story series the story is told in diary form and this one has come out very authentically.

Then an awesome follow-up from 2008 when Snake and Lizard was selected Children's Book of the Year, is it's sequel Friends: Snake and Lizard. A finalist in the Junior Fiction Category. Huge congrats to Joy Cowley and Gavin Bishop. Published by Gecko Press. It's all very exciting.

Good luck to all the finalists. We look forward to seeing you all at the awards ceremony in Auckland on Wed 19 May.

Our Creative Designers

I thought it would be fun to see what sort of ‘face’ the Team could come up with for their ‘glove balloon’, using coloured marker pens.

This was a great way to get them all away from their screens for a few minutes!

And for your visual pleasure, here are their creations.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Diane

The boy who was inspired

Murray Ball was Peter's hero when he was growing up as a wee lad. The Christmas treat each year was the latest Footrot Flats book. 

Peter shared the story with us on how he used to absorb and study the characters, practising his own drawing for hours on end. 

Then late last year, joy upon joy, he was asked by Scholastic to help design Murray's latest title. 

It's just come back from the printers - a life in full circle. Awesome!

New Website

We are finalising our new website. It's been a fascinating process, redeveloping our brand and learning the ins-and-outs of Dreamweaver. Our vision is for a site which is visually cleaner, simpler, and more user-friendly. Also a site which is more flexible, and takes advantage of the new steps we are taking in social media. Hopefully we can go live later this week. Stay posted!