Rockin and rolling

I’ve been trying to write this all day and just keep putting it off. Sorry to all you wonderful people who have sent us such lovely messages. We’re all safe and everyone’s homes are intact with only minor damage.
Maria was in Auckland when the big one struck. I don’t know if that was any easier for her though as her mother was here going through it all alone.
Anita was away as well in Hanmer Springs and didn’t even wake up for the major event. But no major damage at her house, only a mysterious dent in her car from a stored oil heater in the garage.
Sarah lives the closest to town and it must have been really scary. Hopefully she still wants to stay in Christchurch.
Trisha was here and apart from being a bit scared has only had minor breakages. Her husband may sustain more damage though as he’s had to leave town on work tonight and she’s not happy.
Here in the Valley we’re all fine. My biggest problem was that Cory my 16 year old wasn’t home when the first big quake struck and I patiently sat at home until dawn waiting for it to be light enough to safely go and get him (he was only in Halswell 5 mins away), but when I left here I really did wonder if I was doing the right thing. There were power lines down and the road was a mess. Very scary. Here’s some photos of the roads from around here that we use everyday with thanks to Maria's great photography skills.
Power and water are our main issues. The power came back on Monday morning after 2.5 days. We coped fine as we’ve got all the gas camping gear, but it’s not fun getting after shocks in the dark with no lights to turn on. We really are over it and ready to move on.
That’s the next big issue. We are all ready to get back to being as normal as possible.
It’s just the best to see an email coming in with a call to action. With no water coming on to the property it’s not practical for everyone to be working from here so everyone has their work stations at home and we’re fully operational again. Emails and phones and couriers are all operating as normal.
Deadlines are great as you can see that you have a goal to achieve and you can contribute by doing what you do well at. Life. It’s all part of being normal and not afraid or scared.
Thanks everyone for all your support and for keeping things rolling along. We’re here, ready and able and looking forward to getting on with it. Just keep the work rolling in.

The good news is the aftershocks have been a lot less today, although they do like to come back at night time.

I'm back!

I have recently got back from summery Chicago. I had a really good time but have missed the great team here at Book Design!

I got a really warm welcome back although they are very jealous of my tan ;p

Here are a few photos from my trip ...

View of the Chicago skyline.

View from my apartment on the 29th floor.

View from 104th floor at the Willis Tower (tallest building in Chicago).

A beautiful sunrise..

I was lucky enough to see the Transformers 3 set..

Designing ebooks

I've had the travel bug recently, Auckland, Melbourne, Wellington all within the last four weeks. It was great putting names to faces and catching up with people. Some of the most interesting meetings I had were with multimedia and ebook developers.

I learnt that we're progressing nicely down the right tracks. The multimedia products we are currently producing have given us a nice insight into understanding code and designing navigation. Our thoughts on working smarter with our printed products are right on track with creating clean and consistent style sheets for the printed books we're producing today, which will more than likely be converted into tomorrow's ebooks.

The goal is to create pdf files that can easily be converted into XML as cleanly as possible so publishers are not paying extra costs to have a developer clean up code. Even if it's a digital product it still needs design. Infact I learnt that design is even more important than ever!

Question is though, 'how do we as designers charge for this'. A publisher will still be getting a pdf file in which they can mass produce their product and sell to either the print or the digital market. Do publishers want us to supply a completed ebook product e.g. explore having a developer on our team?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this ...

Graphics is a winner

What a night in Auckland. The judges blew us away with comments like
The school graphics curriculum risks coming across as bone-chilling boring - but not in Year 9 Graphics. Logical, unfussy and economical, its layout and illustrations maintain an accessible feeling that is at once serious and stimulating. A student would not be put off the course when looking through this. It exemplifies the design qualities an educational book should have, being clear, informative and consistent, and is thus a worthy winner.
A huge thank you to Cengage for allowing us this opportunity and the author Paul Bourdot for creating such great material to work with - oh, and the judges. Fancy picking our book, thanks heaps.

The Wonky Donkey also gained a Highly Commended. Losing out for the big prize to another Scholastic title Old Hu Hu. Congrats to Michael Greenfield for designing such a wonderful book.
Here's what that judges had to say about the Wonky Donkey,  The Wonky Donkey, with words and music by Craig Smith and illustrations by Katz Cowley, has been something of a publishing phenomenon, with New Zealand sales already exceeding 30,000 copies and US and Australian editions about to be published. Reading the book, hearing the song and observing the hilarious illustrations supported by loud and quirky typography, it is easy to understand the title's commercial success.

Finally a blog post

My name is Trisha and I was employed at Book Design in April 2010 as Administration Manager. For the last 2 months I have managed to avoid completing my fortnightly blog - using excuses like, "I am not creative, sorry forgot, too busy, can't make administration a interesting subject to anyone except another administrator or just keeping quiet when nobody reminded me" but those excuses are no longer valid and you will be hearing from me every 2nd Friday (bosses orders)!

It has been a real change of environment for me working in a very small team, working from a home office and of course the whole field of book designing. One of my hobbies has always been reading with my favourite series at the moment "Titles" by J. D. Robb but like most people have not given alot of thought to how books are produced! Well that has changed now and am loving learning more about the industry - especially the children's books we help produce. As a grandmother of 3 girls aged between 2 and 10 am taking a stronger interest in purchasing books for them.

Well that's it for my 1st posting - hope it wasn't too painful for you. Am thinking that for my postings it might be fun to include a book review of anything that has taken my fancy.

A variety of cover choices

Here are some concepts Anita's come up with for a novel, none of them are the final one, but we'd love to hear what you like.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Dr. Seuss

Presents!

Wow, its been a while since I've blogged... We've been quite busy here at Book Design but I couldn't miss this opportunity to show off the new screen and tablet I have been upgraded to!



I am flying out to Summery Chicago at the end of the week but Kim says she will look after my new tablet! I just hope she gives it back to me when I come back :)