woodswoodswoods:

Yesterday I wrapped up work on Coming & Crying, the Kickstarter-powered first release from Melissa Gira Grant and Meaghan O’Connell’s Glass Houses Press. The perfect cover photograph is by Nikola Tamindzic, and I handled design duties inside and out.

There was nothing about this whole process that wasn’t a total joy (despite some contradicting claims). Melissa and Meaghan are two of the most enthusiastic, appreciative people you could hope to work with, and I feel totally privileged to be at least a tiny part of their incredible project. It’s the first hardback I’ve worked on, and it’s being printed by Oddi, who you may know as the printers behind some of McSweeney’s most beautifully finished books. It should be available in the next couple months.

Oh, also - Dolly is a hell of a typeface.

meaghano:

I can’t really explain how cool it was to just email a person whose work you (really really, hang up in your apartment- level) admire and say, HEY I KNOW THIS IS CRAZY, BUT DO YOU WANT TO DESIGN OUR ENTIRE BOOK? AND IT’S DUE TO THE PRINTER IN A FEW WEEKS?” and have him write back in a series of all caps and exclamation points, saying YES!!! before we even worked out any details.

We’re so excited and so grateful to be able to work w. Jez. It takes a special (patient, compassionate, forgiving) type of person to deal with two people making their first book—frantically flipping through my bookshelf at 3 in the morning wondering what exactly goes on the colophon and engaging in a 3-hour debate about the Table of Contents. Dots? No dots? Italics, all caps?

It’s so fun and it means so much.

And yes, Dolly is one goddamn sweet ass typeface.

melissa:

Jez is godsent. He took to all of my attempts at design direction — “You know me, I’ll always go for more muted” / “I’ve been listening to a lot of 4AD stuff right now” / “You know that cool machiney New Order record cover thing” / “I defer to you” / “I defer to you” / “I defer to you” / “Pink? Really?!” / “Okay, so. Magenta?” — and still wrote us back every time. Our transatlantic work sessions made the last two weeks melt by like the salt on my brow and bottom of my chair. God it’s still done, isn’t it? Now that his work is being hammered into metal by wonderful machines, and we can’t take any of it back.