I’m curled up on the sofa with my coffee and a manuscript for a book I’m working on the cover for. The story is told from a dog’s point of view, which sounds really awful, but it’s actually quite smart and well-written. I’m still trying to figure out what the protagonist looks like and what kind of dog he is, but that information can really only come from the dialogue of other characters in the book (I do know he has one black ear and one white ear). Dogs, apparently, don’t spend a lot of time looking in the mirror or worrying about their fur color.

I made Bruno a new bed on Sunday (big enough for two!), and he’s enjoying it more than I expected he would. I just sewed an oversized envelope-style pillowcase out of linen, and put a really soft down pillow inside. I was thinking about sewing on a circle of boiled wool in the center, but now that the weather is slowly, slowly getting a little bit warmer (I still need a scarf, though), I think I’ll just leave it as is.

p.s. The plumber is coming today! By this afternoon, all of the roughing in should be done.

Within the world of book cover design (a world I inhabit for at least 40 hours a week), Chip Kidd is both admired and despised (I suspect that a lot of the animosity comes from a secret jealousy that we less-famous book cover designers don’t like to admit to or talk about). There is no disputing, though, that he is by far the most famous, the most rockstar of us all. Book cover design isn’t one of those things you just do here and there on a whim—most people I know who work in the field started out there, and will spend the majority of the duration of their careers there, too. This is especially true for those of us who, like Kidd, work in-house for a publishing company. A book cover designer doesn’t wake up one day and decide to start doing corporate identity packages at an ad agency (or, for that matter, book interiors—that’s a whole different world). I know people who have tried to leave the field, but they always come back eventually.

I think the next step for graphic designers is to figure out how to meaningfully generate their own content. That’s what I’ve found that I have been doing, and want to continue to do. Whether it’s a book, or whether it’s music, or a film, or whatever; I think it’s the natural growth, rather than just strictly working for a client all the time.

Kidd is really on to something with the above quote, and his point absolutely applies to every person working in the field of graphic design, regardless of their field of focus. Working in a creative position within a larger corporate environment can be difficult for a person who is visually expressive by nature. The further you get from the creative freedom of your college years, the more you become entirely directed towards satisfying an outside demand (whether it be from a publisher, and art director, or an author). I don’t think this is a simple as defining “Art” as a separate thing from “Design”; I think it’s about nurturing a part of yourself that will eventually die off completely unless you figure out how to generate that original content he’s talking about, even if it’s just for yourself. I know many, many graphic designers who have struggled with this idea for years.

Chip Kidd also has a FABULOUS apartment, which you can see some of in the video. He’s an avid collector of Batman and other comic book-related ephemera, and he definitely knows how to display that collection in a way that is both sophisticated and accessible. The New York Times ran a great article on Kidd and his home a couple of years ago. The Eileen Gray chairs are to die for, right?

By the way, my apologies to those who are seeing this post for a second time today (albeit in a different form). Technical difficulties and further thought required a total reposting!

(Moomin books.)

(From this guy.)

Yay! The Elfa shelving in the dining room is finally up and fully loaded with books. Sorry for the grainy photos, our dining room doesn’t get a lot of light and my camera is fussy.

It was more than a little nerve wracking putting the shelves up: everything hangs from a single horizontal rail at the top! This makes installation fairly easy, but wow…it was scary putting all those heavy books on there. It’s been 36 hours and it’s still on the wall, though, so hopefully everything is going to be okay. We’re very happy with how it looks, and are now planning to put in more shelving on the other side of the fireplace. It will be great to have all of our books (minus the comics and graphic novels…ugh) put away!

Tonight I sat in the waiting room at Grand Central, waited for Evan, and read my new book.

I have two lovely new books to encourage me to sew:
1. Simple Sewing by Lotta Jansdotter
2. Bend-the-Rules Sewing by Amy Karol

I have so many projects around the house to work on, but not until I make at least one little bag with a fancy button that’s just for show.