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.