Introducing Lisa

Lisa joined us in November as our new Studio Design Manager.
She has a spectacular background as a senior designer working in publishing and corporate design.
It was her book design portfolio that totally blew us away and we feel very privileged to have her leading our Auckland studio.
Lisa's wonderful organisational skills have already been put to the test and she just shone.
Thanks so much Lisa for sharing so many of your talents with us. We are really enjoying working with you.

Xmas Trees

I'm really please with our christmas card design this year. Lisa and Sarah have done a fantastic job in putting together this xmas tree original die-line. We'd love to know what you think, please leave a comment and tell us.

Hard work of publisher restructuring begins

Martin Taylor always offers food for thought and this article is no different.

http://activitypress.com/blog/2012/01/25/the-hard-restructuring-begins-but-dont-tell-us-ebooks-are-just-another-format/

Rights Catalogue 2011

It's the week of the Frankfurt Book Fair and I've just realised I haven't mentioned anything about the Rights Catalogue we designed for PANZ earlier this year.  It's been produced to celebrate and promote New Zealand Publishers as the 2012 Guests of Honour.

We not only gained the challenge of putting together this 32 page book featuring 100 outstanding NZ titles, but we also built a friendship with the PANZ team. Pizza and wine will not be the same in Auckland without Nikki Crowthers and her support and patience in working with us while we set up our new studio. It was so appreciated.

Best of luck to all the publishers featured. You can also check out the online version with extras.

Excellence in Biology NCEA Level 2

written by Martin Hanson, published by Cengage Learning

Four colour throughout, this secondary education book is all class. There's times when you don't look at a file for a while and and when you next look go 'wow'. The work that Sarah has put into making this content sing is awesome. The colours are vibrant throughout and the design is fresh and almost bordering on trendy. Just the way your teenager would like it. I'd study Biology if I had a book like this. I hope it makes a huge difference to someone's learning.

There's a Hole in my Bucket

Sung by The Topp Twins and illustrated by Jenny Cooper, published by Scholastic

There's a hole in my bucket dear Liza, dear Liza, 

There's a hole in my bucket dear dear Liza a hole.

Don't you just remember getting the words to this song stuck in your head as a kid. When we read them accompanying Jenny's fantastically quirky illustrations, I just didn't want the song to stop. I love the attitude of  both the Topp Twins song and in Liza and Henry's actions on the page. This book is really cool. I can't wait to see were it will go.

Anita is the clever cookie whose design brought the two together.

The launch for this was held at Storylines in Christchurch last month. The Topp Twins have always been a favourite of mine so you have to excuse this pic, but they were awesome singing the song live.

Kim and Penny Scown from Scholastic posing with the Topps. Where's that Jenny Cooper?

Soup to Nuts - 1200 recipes

Yes that's right 1200 recipes! This book is colossal, over 800 pages. I have a great amount of admiration for Richard to have collected so many different types of soups. There's even one for 'Mock Turtle Soup'.

We took the content to heart in our studio and all had turns at bringing a different soup for lunch - once a week for most of the duration of winter. Maria's Borsch probably took out the top prize (actually I think her mum was the cook), it was delicious.

Editions is a publishing company based in Noumea and it was wonderful to work with Catherine Ledru. Her lovely french accent on the other end of the phone was like a purr when she tried to wrap her tongue around our english words. Meanwhile Richard Tapper is based in Hanmer Springs if you ever feel like a very tasty treat.

This is Maria's first big book project and to see her face when the printed copy arrived this morning was just priceless. There is a lot of passion in this book. Good job team.

Just look at the size of this spine. It's over 800 pages of soup recipes.