September 11, 2008
Today I updated crime and mystery writer Donald Westlake’s website with three of his books that are being republished by Chicago Press. (see for yourself) So, why am I blogging about it? Because I admired these cover designs. I mentioned it in a reply to the publisher (“Tell your cover designer ‘Nice job, Bub.’”) and they wrote back that they were designed and illustrated by David Drummand. I Googled him, found his portfolio/blog and added him to my Blogroll. Reading about good design process is always rewarding.
This also gives me a chance to talk about Donald’s website and some of the business lessons I learned. He is a friend of a friend and about ten years ago I heard him mention at a party that his webmaster was changing fields and he needed to find someone to take it over. That is how… he became a client. This was the first time I had taken over a site from another designer and it presented some unanticipated issues. It was hosted on a small upstate telephone company ISP that had very poor support. The site organization on the server was terrible. And I did not like the design. I should have investigated first but I like Don and would have taken the job anyway. He didn’t seem to care about any of these issues but it really bothered me as a designer to be maintaining a site I could put in my portfolio. Was I going to redesign it for free? This was awkward and I mention it because client relations is an art in itself.
Eventually Don did approve a site redesign and then I had another dilemma: The Design!! I feel safe in describing Don’s books as being in the Noir category. Maybe you know his work. It seemed like a no-brainer and how much fun would that be to do a site in a Noir style?!? So why didn’t I? What really impressed me about Don’s method, once I got to know him better, was that he wrote everything on a Royal Typewriter. He has a Mac, surfs the web and does email, but he told me his books are all written on that typewriter. So I photographed it and did my best to make his site feel like it was coming from that place where he writes. Today when I saw the latest covers and the other work by David Drummand, I brought back some of the noir ideas I had for Donald. I should ask him to talk to one of his many publishers about letting me do a cover.
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slideshow
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Field Report
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Kenneth's bookshelf: read
Berger wrote this while Picasso was still alive. Quite interesting to read why this Marxist critic thinks the communist artist failed.
First in the trilogy and my favorite. He reminds me of Louise Ehrdrich. I wrote and told him so.
