Monday, October 10, 2011: Mint

Wednesday, October 12, 2011: Growing with Plants

Friday, October 14, 2011: Things We Make

Saturday, October 15, 2011: print & pattern

Monday, October 17, 2011: small measure

Wednesday, October 19, 2011: SF Girl By Bay

Friday, October 21, 2011: Pikaland

Sunday, October 23, 2011: The Spunky Coconut

Tuesday, October 25, 2011: Reading My Tea Leaves

Wednesday, October 26, 2011: The Post Family

Thursday, October 27, 2011: Book By Its Cover (I’ll do a peek at all the cover designs!)

Friday, October 28, 2011: Design for Mankind

If you’re not sure what Drawn In is about- check out the previous posts to catch up here, here and here.

The book was originally supposed to be 45 artists.
When all of the sketchbooks were photographed and sent back to the artists (via FedEx-thank you for being so reliable!), I started sending out the interviews. All of the artists sent them back except for one. I couldn’t get ahold of Patrick Gildersleeves. He had disappeared! At first we were so worried, but then I found on his blog that he had left for a big trip and wouldn’t have email for a while. So we waited and laid out his pages. Weeks went by and we were on to a second review of the book and still couldn’t reach Patrick. I should have let him know sooner when I would need the interview and assumed he’d be available. Sadly, as time flew by we decided we had to cut Patrick from the book. We had great images of his sketchbook, but no interview and no signed release form. This meant I needed a replacement sketchbook and that I would have to plan a shoot for another sketchbook. I had two spreads to fill. How could I rent all that equipment again? Could I just change the artist count to 44? What about the page count… there were four pages blank?

Ultimately, I decided to use the leftover space to add an illustrated foreword to the book. I really liked Dave Eggers foreword to The Exquisite Book came out, so I decided to do the same type of thing again. I immediately thought of one of my favorite comic artists Vanessa Davis. I was thrilled when she agreed to work in my extremely tight deadline. She wound up making a funny, amazing series about sketchbooks that creates a great light-hearted start to the book. We were able to photoshop it so it looked like it appeared in a sketchbook. I am so pleased with the results- here’s one of the spreads:

I was super sad that Patrick’s sketchbooks couldn’t be included in the book and when he returned, he felt terrible that he missed the deadline. So today I wanted to share some of the pages from his sketchbook that we shot:

Uh oh it’s upside down!
When the book was all done, the files were in and it was off to the printer I was so excited. I had just run into Leif Parsons, one of the artists from the book, at the Outsider Art Fair. Leif was one of the few artists in the book who had a very different kind of sketchbook. He handed me a huge portfolio box full of drawings and called it his sketchbook. So we shot all his drawings as piles of loose pages. After seeing Leif at the fair, I emailed him and randomly decided to show him his spreads in the book since I was pretty excited about how good they looked. Leif emailed back something along the lines of-”cool (the drawing on the second page is upside down, but it does not really matter).” I read that line and almost had a heart attack! I opened up the file and saw, yes if you look at the drawing the right way there is a man(?) smoking a cigarette.

Here it is upside down (right top drawing)

Oh no! I felt terrible. I was supposed to be sensitive to this type of thing as an artist myself and as a fan of his work. I should have looked more carefully. The book had gone to press and it was a Friday afternoon. I immediately wrote my editor and designer at Quarry. They completely understood the mishap but told me it probably wouldn’t be possible to fix at this stage in the process. Leif seemed pretty unconcerned when I apologized but I still felt awful. Luckily, I got a email from Quarry on *Saturday* that they would be able to stop the printing and fix the error. Whew!! I was so happy and thankful to Quarry for doing that. My weekend got so much better. There’s is a little clue that this was once upside down though. If you look closely, you’ll notice that the shadow cast from his drawings is now at the top. But at least the funny smoking duck is visible:

After doing our first book, I’ve learned to expect to notice a handful of tiny mistakes when I receive my advanced copy. Making a book is such a long process so when you finally see the end result it’s a bit underwhelming. You’ve looked at all the pages hundreds of times so seeing them again, now bound, is not as rewarding as you might expect at first. For me the reward comes later. Watching people look through the book and getting feedback is the most fun part. I love hearing what friends favorite pages are or things that these drawings remind them of. With Drawn In, the biggest and most common compliment I’ve gotten is that the book has inspired them to revisit their sketchbook or start their own. That’s a wonderful feeling to know that maybe some sketchbooks have been used or started as a result of looking through this book.

Big thanks to Patrick for letting me share his pages and the story behind them! You can see even more from his sketchbooks right here.

As readers of the blog, you might have noticed I’ve been posting less and less. This isn’t because of the lack of books coming in because there is a huge stack of beauties right next to me. I have been taking on way too much work and I am forced to put that before this blog. I am looking for some help!

I am looking for 1 to 2 interns to help with Book By Its Cover for about 5-8 hours a week. You would be coming to my apartment and working in my kitchen/studio so you need to be local, in the Brooklyn or NYC area. Responsibilities will include updating Book By Its Cover, writing posts, photographing books, emailing artists, mailing things, helping to organize events and archiving the library. I can offer small stipend of $12/hr and/or school credit. Perks may include free books from time to time. Start asap.

You need to be web savvy, have an interest in art and design, detail-oriented and a decent writer (hopefully better than me!). You need to like dogs!

To apply, please email me at julia@also-online.com

Include a paragraph about yourself and tell me 5 of your favorite artists and why. Send me links to sites, blogs, artwork if you have any.

Thanks so much!

This is a book you fill out and give to your love. Each page has something you write in that describes how you feel about them: reasons why they are beautiful, how they smell, what dreams you’ve had about them, what music that reminds you of them. While it’s all in Dutch, it’s easy to understand what each page is about because there are beautiful illustrations and photos all cleverly designed. For the music page, you fill in your answer by writing on a photo of a cassette tape that’s been printed about actual size. For the dreams page you write your answer on lines that look like they’ve been needlepointed into a bed pillow. I actually love this book so muchIi would have a hard time giving it to my love. But maybe my love will fill it out and give it to me… even better! Check out the designer/illustrator Deborah van der Schaaf’s site- she has some amazing work. You can buy this book here or here.

Now here’s the interview:

How did this book come about and what made you two partner together to write it?

Joy: We met in 2007 after we did the Stationery Show together and quickly became long-distance friends. We often looked to each other for constructive feedback on our work and discussed working together on a project in the future. After the success of Meg’s book, Craft, Inc., Chronicle wanted to expand the series. We began brainstorming for ideas and with our joint backgrounds as freelancers, it was natural to write about that topic. We also felt there wasn’t a go-to bible in the market for any creative type looking to go freelance.

Meg: I pretty much just begged Joy to do a book with me. Tears were involved. She eventually caved in.

How is your book different from the other books that already exist about being an artistic freelancer?

Joy: There are various freelancer books out there, but most focus on one particular freelancing field. We wanted to create a book that combines several fields and includes things we felt were missing in other freelance books: relevant business advice, interviews with other freelancers in a range of creative fields (including you!), and approachable guidance on the highs and lows of all aspects of freelancing.

Meg: We’re in a golden age of creativity. With fields cross-pollinating and blurring–it’s hard to be just one type of creative in a single medium. Many creatives, like Joy and I, are “slashies” (i.e., illustrator/designer, photographer/director/stylist)–so we wanted to create a book that encompasses different kinds of creative freelancing. There is a lot of overlap across fields as well as differences you can learn from and apply to your own practice. In fact, the most interesting freelance practices I learned were from photographers–and I’m not a photographer!

As freelancers yourselves, what has been the toughest challenges you’ve had to face?

Joy: The toughest challenges are the irregularity of the business, changing from a regular paycheck, being your own boss, getting your own clients, and then managing it all. Those are the things that make most freelancing newbies (or those considering it) apprehensive. However, the upside is that once you’ve figured out how to manage those areas (which we cover in the book), those challenges become your rewards: the flexible schedule, getting to be your own boss, getting to choose clients, and having it all be on your terms.

While researching information for the book, did you learn any new things that have changed your own freelance business model?

Joy: We found the interviewees to be super inspiring and such a great a confirmation of the truism: if you want new opportunities, new clients, and new types of work, being pro-active and being a go-getter is the best way to make them happen. Most of the freelancers we interviewed didn’t start off with dream clients or the exact type of work they eventually wanted, but they created self-initiated work for their portfolio, took some jobs initially for very reasonable prices, or approached companies they’ve always wanted to work for. With hard work and perseverance, they started getting the jobs and clients they’ve always dreamt of. This has been a great reminder for our own businesses to never settle and keep going after the projects you want and haven’t done yet.

Which section of this book was the most fun for you to write? Which was the hardest?

Meg: It was fun to write Chapter 7, “Balancing Your Business and Personal Lives,” because it’s great to think of ways to recharge, relax, or step back from your business. It also gave us a moment to think about how to improve our own personal lives by toning down our workaholism. I can’t say there was ever a “hard” chapter. The best part about having a co-author is you can hand off a chapter to her and ask her to fill it with more information!

What is on the horizons for you guys?

Meg: Not much, just total world domination.

Ha! Thanks so much to Meg and Joy for such a useful book!

At Zine’s Mate – Tokyo Art Book Fair this weekend there was a special exhibition – History of Early Artist’s Books in Japan (Focus: Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki) which is where I found this book. I had seen Nobuyoshi Araki’s work before but had no idea he was so prolific – turns out he’s published over 350 books. This one’s called Kakyoku – which (after a very long discussion with some Japanese friends) might mean something like “flower-song”. It’s full to the brim of these wild, saturated, sexy flowers. Everybody loves flowers, right? According to wikipedia Araki started taking pictures of flowers after he was diagnosed with cancer. This book is from 1997. Since it was viewable only with white-gloved staff person at hand I’m pretty sure you can’t afford it which is just as well because I wasn’t able to find out where to buy it.