What happens when a designer is let loose

For ages now we've been wanting to do a book that really goes out there. With NZ publishing budgets though that can be a really hard ask. Then along came Katie Haworth from Penguin.
'this is a project I’d really like you to go to town on. Go nuts, go mad, have fun, dance on a figurative design table and kick the plates off.'

So Anita did and we've just got to see the printed copy and are thrilled with the results of the Great Rescue Race by Raymond McGrath.

Click on any of the images if you'd like to see them larger

Raymond's illustrations are so zany and full of action that it took us a proofing round to really let loose and catch on to the wackyness that Raymond was trying to portray. Coloured text is not usually something that publishers are keen to let loose with. It limits the opportunities for selling International Rights as translating into other languages costs more for reprinting in all four colours. But sometimes the effect is just too good to pass by.

We are very aware of the need to balance illustrations and text. You know, white space and room around the words to let them speak. It's so awesome to see this book throw all those rules out the window. The text and images all become one and with the text being multi coloured it just works. The whole zany feel just flows into one and creates a page that jumps out at you.

Thanks Penguin for the opportunity to produce this book. It's one we are going to be really proud of for a long time to come.

Thank you!

A big thank you to you all for your continued support since the earthquake. We really appreciate your kind words, it's really nice to come to a workplace where your clients care so much.
The other day we also received a beautiful package. A special thank you to Sandy (Sarah's mum) for sending us this gorgeous gift and lovely message all the way from America. Sarah was out of commission for a few days before the earthquake - luckily she was sent home a couple of days before Feb 22. We love the chocolates and are all enjoying the yummy treats.

THANK YOU! :)

We are back

It's so great to be back in the office and back into an almost normal routine. We are so grateful to all our wonderful clients and the lovely messages you have all sent and the blissful work you keep sending us. Contact with the outside world and knowing that things are still operating normally somewhere is so important at the moment. It's really helping us all get our lives back together as well.

Our team: We are all feeling very lucky to be able to account for all of our immediately family and most of our friends. Plus we all have our homes. YES!
Anita and Trisha's homes have suffered the most with Anita's house inside the cordon and having no power there or at her mothers house were she is currently living. They did find though that their log burner had a wetback and with the little water that is now coming into the property have hot showers that rock. It could be another couple of weeks before power is restored to their area. "Flash" camping has become another new Christchurch catch phrase.
Trisha is in Brookhaven which has been badly hit with liquefaction. Horrid stuff. We had a big dig there on Wednesday to try and get rid of most of it. But now there is wind and the dust is unbelievable. Just as well there is no water for clothes washing as it wouldn't come back inside clean.
Sarah is reacquainting herself with a port-a-loo (or as they are know in America a port-a-potty) having only just got rid of one from the September quake. But they have power which is huge.
Maria is lucky to be living in Hornby which hasn't been too badly affected. Thank goodness as she has been keeping things running for us while we all try and put our home lives back together.
Anna has power now, but no water or sewerage. She's taking a bit longer to get her head back together and will be back with us shortly.

Digging at Trisha's.

Our studio: Out here in the country as far away as we can get from the CBD is blissful. We've been really lucky this time and haven't been very badly effected. We lost power for 30 hours, but that is all. Our water is still running and our lovely septic tank is working overtime. It's great to be a haven for everyone in town to come and sit, sh*t and shower. Those small basic luxuries in life mean such a lot when you don't have them. And now with this wind, it's great to be out of the dust.

Our work: Yah, couriers are running again as of today. You should have seen the pile in the letterbox this morning! Our internet is working at 90% of it's normal speed. It is going down occassionally, but under the circumstances it's very workable. This means that our email and ftp server are up and running. So we are all feeling very lucky to still have our place of work and jobs to come back too.

Our head space: I saved this one till last as it is probably the biggest. Everyone is moving forward to put their lives back together. Our first day back involved lots of tears and many stories. The feeling of relief that we are all still able to be together is fantastic. The worry for family and friends and the stories that you hear around town are all things that will change our lives forever. On our first morning back I recorded our cup of tea and chat as everyone arrived. Zeta our wonderful cleaning lady was here to. It's in 3 parts if you want to listen (although I do apologise for some of the language :-).


part one


part two


part three



Yesterday (Tues one week on) was a biggie. We all went up to Victoria Park at the top of the Port Hills and sat in the sun looking out over our broken city. It was a lovely way to spend the two minutes of silence and reflect. For me it helped turn a corner and focus on moving forward.

Thanks so much to everyone out there who is allowing us the opportunities to pick up our lives again and for the support you are all offering. Our thoughts are with all the families who have suffered so much loss. It's great to be a kiwi and to be part of such a caring community.

All the best from the team at Book Design

Anita, Sarah, Maria, Trisha, Anna and Kim xx

Digital Rights Management and eBooks

EBooks are continually evolving. As they are now, most eBooks are a file you download and keep on your eReading device. With this setup there is a whole world of questions regarding Digital Rights Management (DRM). What is the best way for publishers (and designers) to protect their digital products from theft and piracy? One possible solution would be to have eBooks stay permanently on the internet, hosted on a website. This cloud-based service would allow the consumer to access the eBook with just an internet connection. The advantages are explained further in an article by Martin Taylor, the director of the New Zealand Digital Publishing Forum.

"...cloud-based eReading approach has several advantages over today’s eBooks which work primarily with downloaded files. First, the only thing you need to read these eBooks is a web browser. This covers every device from PCs to smartphones to tablets, even the Kindle which has an in-built browser. The Booki.sh reading experience is surprisingly good (try it on an iPad or smartphone). Secondly, because you can’t download these eBooks, you won’t need DRM. That should be a benefit for a lot of consumers and publishers.

Contrary to what you’d expect, you don’t actually need to be permanently online to read them. Modern browsers support an increasing range of HTML 5 features, including “offline caching”, a temporary way to store files on a local device such as a PC or smartphone so they can be accessed securely when you’re offline. This feature isn’t quite ubiquitous yet but there are plenty of browsers that already support it, including Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome, and Firefox. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer will also provide support for it."

Read the full article here.

This seems like a good way to address several issues regarding eBooks. Will this be the way of the future? Will eBooks just become websites? Will book designers become eBook designers become web designers? In the meantime, we are learning code as fast as we can.

Exploring what is out there

A good way of getting back into work was to get out the office again.
We all took a trip down to our local children's book store The Reading Bug and explored their shelves. The notes and pens were flying (as well as the noisy chatter) as we all discovered and devoured. With each of our designers focusing on their individual clients needs we could really target what we were looking for. Then we just had to convince Trisha of the really good reason for why we just HAD to purchase this book!

Kim and Anita totally lost in enjoyment

Sarah got stuck in the non-ficiton section ... perfect for designing educational books

Maybe it was something we all had in common

Then it was off to Borders to explore across all genres. Everyone had to choose a book that caught their eye and bring it to the table for coffee. It was really interesting what took everyone's interest. But texture and monotones certainly took the day.

Trisha gearing up for her new Production Co-ordinators role. Surely Kim didn't do all the talking!

Our team. What a bunch.

Introducing Anna

The employee stalk has come and visited us again. Anna Golden (nee Hutchinson) has arrived to  join our team from Booksellers NZ.
We all think she's very brave to want to come and live in rattley old Christchurch, but marriage can make you do strange things.
We've thrown her in the deep end with Te Kura (The Correspondence School) work swamping her up to her ears. But she's still smiling and we are extremely grateful.

Welcome Anna, we are all looking forward to you being part of our team.

Ebooks and the New Year

As designers for print, we've been following the hub-bub about eBooks really closely. This is going to be our year for diving in head first to produce them here in NZ. The biggest obstacle ahead is learning the xml and css coding behind an eBook. Luckily InDesign will do most of this for us. But in order to troubleshoot and verify an eBook, we still have to understand what the #XML@* is going on! So a self-guided crash course in coding is underway at the office.

We are very particular about what a final product looks like (obviously, or we wouldn't be here!) With an eBook, the consumer can do whatever the #XML@* they want to its appearance. So as a designer, building eBooks feels a bit like being a parent...we build it the best we can, prepare it for any situation, and if we've done a good job, it will still look good dressed in Comic Sans. Perhaps that's the mark of success for an eBook designer?

Continue to check back for more updates with our progress on eBooks!