Interview with Designer and Illustrator Risa Rodil

Back in May (where has the summer gone?), I featured some of Risa Rodil's work. I loved the playfulness and clear literary fan-girl-ness.

Seriously, her Harry Potter pattern is something I want printed on all of the things.

A 21-year-old designer, illustrator and letterer, Risa is an impressive woman who I can't wait to see more work from. She was kind enough to do a short interview with me for To Be Shelved and I'm happy to share it today.


When did you know that this world of design and illustration was where you wanted to be working?

When I was young, my original dream was to become a dentist. I’m not so artsy back then. I don’t know how to draw, I don’t carry a sketchpad with me and I struggle so much to pair up one color with another. Around 7 years ago, I found these really cool photo manipulations online and I thought to myself, “Wow it’d be so amazing to learn how to do that”. Getting my inspiration from there, I self-studied Photoshop when I was 14 and things just fell into place after that.

I enjoyed the challenge of being able to communicate with people through visual design. Of being able to convince people to watch the same shows I watch and read the same books I read, by doing designs that will make them look twice. And when these people start to notice and acknowledge the hard work you put into each piece, it feels very fulfilling. That was the time I realized that yes, this is something I’m willing to do for the rest of my life.

Keep reading...

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Thank you, Risa, for taking the time to share some of your life and work with me. I'm excited to see what's next for you!

You can see more of Risa's work on her website or her Behance portfolio. Her blog also keeps you up-to-date on where you can purchase her designs on a variety of items.

p.s. — I'm always looking for designers and illustrators to interview! If you think you or someone you know would be a good fit for To Be Shelved, email me! 

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an interview with Matt Roeser, before he was a full-time cover designer

if you're looking for a book to read, try this

but first, lemme take a selfie

INTERVIEW: Alan Trotter

Back in July, I received an e-mail from the wonderful Alan Trotter, letting me know about a video project he was working on for Penguin's new line of Mini Modern Classics. The concept for the new classics line reminded me a lot of Melville House's Art of the Novella series, but that's not to say Penguin isn't doing something great here. 

Alan was kind enough to answer a few questions for me about his work with Penguin and the process of putting these videos together.

To Be Shelved: For myself, and I'm assuming many other people as well, "Penguin Classics" are such a well-known, trusted collection that somehow seems to be more part of the past than the present. And to me, video is very much a present and future medium. How did you bring that beloved spirit of Penguin into the videos?
Alan Trotter: It's hard, for me anyway and my guess is for other people like me, to imagine a cultural landscape without Penguin Classics, and I think (I hope) that's what you mean when you say it's 'part of the past'. It's such an institution at this point that it's easy to take it for granted. But so much care and attention goes into good publishing, and a lot of it not immediately obvious to readers, that making the videos seemed like a good way to draw out all that hard behind-the-scenes work, all the thought and rigour that goes into everything from the blurb to the selection of author photograph and from the design of the series to the proofreading...
   So for example there's an artworker who had to adjust by hand the letter-spacing of each of the fifty quotes that are on page one of the fifty books, because the typeface they're set in looks better when it's tightly kerned. So there's a willingness to do a lot of work on every last detail because the books deserve it.
    And I think the 'spirit of Penguin' comes from that kind of dedication, and the videos are hopefully capturing some of that dedication, as well as the pleasure everyone involved feels in getting to work with truly great books.

TBS: How did you decide what to include and what not to include in these videos?
AT: Really it was just a case of speaking to everyone I could who was working on them in Penguin, and going out to the printers to film the books being printed, and then the editing process is largely a matter of condensing everything down in a coherent way.

TBS: I love the music you've placed with the videos. How did you choose that?
AT: The band's called Good Old Neon and I stumbled on them online and immediately developed these grand plans for how perfect their music would be for the videos (this is before filming had even started). The only downside was that they might not have been interested.
    But they're named after a great David Foster Wallace short story, so I took that was a sign they might have some affinity for the Mini Modern Classics, which include a lot of the best short story writers of the last 100 years (though no DFW, sadly), and be willing to help out.
    I'm just lucky that as well as making great music they're also well-read individuals of discerning literary taste. You can download their music, including everything in the videos from their website http://goodoldneon.com/.

TBS: Do you have a favorite video so far from this series? Why that video?
AT: So far I like the second video, on the origins of the series, but I'm both really looking forward to (and dreading a little bit) the editing of the video on the series' design. The designer was Jim Stoddart, who's also responsible for the design of the Modern Classics, on which the littler books are based.
    I'm endlessly interested in Penguin's design history and Jim is an endlessly nice guy, so we talked for a long time – longer than it would have taken most people to tell me to screw off because they had more important things to do. I hope the end result manages to convey all that went into these apparently very simple designs. 

TBS: Anything you'd like to add about the process of creating these videos?
AT: I don't think so. I will say that the none of the work's diminished my enthusiasm for the books, which are an absolute treat to read and I can't recommend highly enough. My favourite's probably the Barthelme, though he's not to everyone's tastes (I will never understand why). Though the Borges includes two of the greatest short stories ever written, so that's right up there too.

To view the rest of Alan's videos for Penguin, CLICK HERE. And, Alan's website is pretty wonderful so I suggest heading over there and clicking around.

By the way, that quote up at the top is from the second video, said by Penguin Classics Publisher Adam Freudenheim. Good stuff.

INTERVIEW: Emma Holder

One of the best things about having a Tumblr addition (and addiction?) for To Be Shelved is the awesome work and talent I've found through my followers. One of those awesome designers is Emma Holder, a recent graduate of Bradley University who has "the ability to have 20 ideas at once, a semi-reliance on coffee and a knack for taking things one step too far".

Emma recently created a nerd-friendly book collection for high school students called Thick Rim Books. I'm happy to share a small e-mail interview we did and some of her work.

 

To Be Shelved: How did you come up with the concept for Thick Rim Books?
Emma Holder: While finishing up my portfolio this past year, we were encouraged to revisit past projects and take them in any direction we wanted; since I hadn't had the opportunity to design book covers since my second year, I though I would give it another shot. I'm also very interested in identity design, so I wanted to work with a set of books which I would be able to brand as a unique, cohesive unit. I think it's kind of standard to look to the classics when designing book covers, and I was noticing that many of the titles I wanted to design for were ones I had first encountered in my high school English classes. This got me thinking about what I would have wanted in a book when I was reading them the first time around, not just for pleasure, but for the imminent tests, quizzes and papers that were sure to be in the future. And that is how I decided on a set of books for students like myself, who underline passages, scribble in the margins, and let's just say it - are kind of nerds.

TBS: Why did you choose to target AP English books?

EH: Like I mentioned, a lot of my favorites are books I read in high school, and I figured if anyone is likely to be a little nerdy over books in high school, it would be students preparing for AP English exams.

TBS: Can you tell me about the process you went through designing these covers?

EH: Because I was looking at the books as part of a set, I began by designing for the overall brand of Thick Rim Books (logo, etc), and moved on from there. I thought the old-school academic feel of the tweed-y plaids and argyle would sit well with my audience, and I decided to keep the covers minimal, while still hinting at their content, by using a cut-out shape referencing the book (a pig for Animal Farm, Gatsby's car for The Great Gatsby, etc.). Honestly, once I had one of the set, the others fell in place pretty easily - the hardest part was that I had created too many patterns, and had to choose only three to use!

TBS: How did you find designing a book cover to be different than designing an advertising campaign or a poster?

EH: The nice thing about this particular project was that the target market was, essentially, myself. So I had a lot of freedom that way. In general, though, I think that books are very personal in ways that advertising or posters aren't, usually. And since I already knew the books pretty thoroughly, a lot of elements came naturally; there are always so many different things to consider in design, already being familiar with the content and audience lightened the load a bit.

TBS: What's next for Emma Holder?
EH: I am a recent grad, so naturally I am on the prowl for gainful employment - which means the next thing for me is completely up in the air! To keep myself busy while I search, I have been setting myself imaginary briefs for local businesses, and giving them entirely new identities. I also read a lot.

To view more of Emma's work, CLICK HERE. She's done a lot of nice things outside of the book cover realm so I definitely encourage you to check those out as well.

INTERVIEW: Andrew Henderson

Since I first discovered designer and illustrator Andrew Henderson's 50 Days/50 Covers project, I've wanted to do a feature on it. But with such a big project like this, that the designer is clearly very passionate about, I wanted to do it justice. Andrew and I both had some pretty busy schedules over the past 47 days (yes, the project is almost to an end) but I'm really happy with what we've come up with for this post. Over the course of the project he's created some very unique covers and had very interesting answers to all my questions.

And so, I am happy to finally present my interview with Andrew.

To Be Shelved: I love your 50 Days/50 Covers project. How did that get started?

Andrew Henderson: Thank you! I first had the idea after hearing about the quiet retirement of the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers competition. I was inspired by the petition to bring the contest back and even more so by it's success. The idea of designing 50 covers in 50 days seemed like a great challenge but I couldn't decide what 50 books to use. I thought of compiling a list of my favourite books but that seemed a little too easy. I also thought of asking book designers and authors to submit a book for me to re-cover but it didn't quite work out in my head. After having the project on the back burner for a few weeks I then found out about the John Gall curated 30 Days, 30 Covers project from the Office of Letters and Light. It actually put me off the project considering how similar they are but then I stumbled across a list by SuperScholar entitled The 50 Most Influential Books of the Last 50 (or so) Years and decided to go for it. I even contacted Letters and Light and to make sure I had their blessing before kicking off.

TBS: What is your goal with the project?

AH: I want to challenge myself with tight deadlines and push myself creatively. It would be easy to design 50 covers in 50 days if you stuck to the same template of a black and white photograph and Helvetica (I've not resorted to that quite yet) but I want to try as many different styles as I can with the project. There are a lot of ideas I've had in my mind for a while that I've never had the chance to put into practice and I'm hoping that with 50/50 I can put them to use. Unfortunately that means not all the covers are likely be a success but I'd hope people won't be too critical considering the quantity. I'd also love to get some work from the project, maybe a rogue publisher or aspiring author could stumble on the site and end up asking me to work on a jacket for them. I've never had one of my covers published so that would be pretty amazing

Click through the jump to see more photos and read the rest of our interview, then make sure you head over to 50/50 over the next few days to see the final covers and dig through the project's archive.

INTERVIEW: Matt Roeser

I'm not sure which came first, my adoration for Matt Roeser's New Cover project or my love for his LOST re-watch site. But since this is a book blog, I'll just be covering the first in this post.

New Cover is based on a pretty simple idea: Matt creates a new cover for each book he reads. He has yet to have a book cover published, but after positive feedback from people in the industry, he hopes to have his first published cover soon. New Cover has really inspired me to continue working on my own personal projects and to always keep creating, so I was really excited when Matt agreed to do an interview with me about his own design process and his views on book cover design.

ALAINA: So how did New Cover get started?

MATT: Since I was a child, I've always enjoyed reading and in high school and college, I fell in love with graphic design. In the back of my mind, designing covers for books has always been a sort of dream job for me as it melds these two passions. After graduating college, I went to work for Atomicdust, a graphic design agency in St. Louis. For the past five years, I’ve been making creative matter with them, and a few months ago, I decided that if i'm going to pursue my dream of cover design, I would need to actually focus on creating some covers.

So, I started taking some of my favorite books and giving them the covers I thought they deserved. As a lover of these books, nothing would bum me out more than someone walking past one of these titles in a bookstore because it happened to get stuck in a poorly designed cover. Thus, New Cover was born and my mantra was simple: I read books and then design new covers for them.

My interview with Matt is a little bit long, but he has some great advice and some great insight on the design industry. So if you have any interest in books or design or humans I encourage you to click through the jump to read more (if you don't like any of those you're probably lying).

Also be sure to check out New Cover for yourself.