Jacket Mechanical

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Sat, 04 Oct 2014 16:31:00 +0000

This blog is defunct. What you are looking for is

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Jacket Mechanical

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Sat, 20 Sep 2014 16:43:00 +0000

I'm shutting down Jacket Mechanical.

After seven years, this blog is moving on—I've decided to have all my work and thoughts under one roof; a different roof. So, from now on, all my work will live:

HERE

Though the only thing that will change in terms of the blogging side, really, is the URL and the name of the site, I still feel a little wistful. The day I began my professional life as a designer—my first day at Vintage books—I was asked to make a "jacket mechanical" for my boss. (For to those of you who aren't designers, a jacket mechanical is the paste-up board containing the entire book jacket, including flaps, backad, barcode, etc., with all the printing specs indicated on a vellum overlay). Though I was expected to make a mechanical, I had no idea, then, what the term meant, and was too raw and sheepish at that moment to ask for help. So I googled the term. I got back a load of links relating to machinery and automotive mechanics, and a fair few relating to menswear. But nothing, not a single link, that explained the phrase as it's used by graphic designers. Luckily, a kind colleague, Claire Williams, whose office was next to my cubicle, sensed my confusion and helped me out. She showed me where the cardstock was kept; where the lasers came out; how to tape down the vellum and affix the PMS chips. But that feeling of being utterly at sea remained with me, and, when I created this blog all those years ago, I thought to myself: maybe in the future there will be a designer somewhere, also suffering their first-day palpitations, and they will be asked to make a jacket mechanical, and they will google the term. And when this happens, when this possible future greenhorn googles the term, they will get something different back from Google: they will be given design links; they will see book jackets. Nice ones, preferably. (I even intended to have a helpful definition of a jacket mechanical at the top of the blog, but never got around to making it.) So that—here at the close—was how the name was chosen.

(Of course, we no longer make jacket mechanicals at the office. We rip PDF files. Everything has changed. As everything does and should.)

Anyway, I hope you all will continue to visit me online in my new home. I'll try to update it frequently with information about my work, and information about the work of others in my profession; information about my books, and future books of mine.

So that's it for the jack mech.

Bye now.

Peter

•

WWSWWR Teaser #3

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 19:46:00 +0000

It's that time again. What We See When We Read Teaser Number 3, by Brian Rea and Pablo Delcan!

Teaser #3 on Vimeo

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Bone Clocking

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 16:22:00 +0000

Me and Oliver Munday made this here jacket for David Mitchell. It was one of my first true collaborations with another book jacket designer. Oliver and I are working together a ton these days so look out for more.

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At 192 Books with Leanne Shapton.

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Mon, 25 Aug 2014 01:19:00 +0000

Hey guys, I know it's short notice, but: are you free this Wednesday evening?

Me and Leanne Shapton are having a conversation at 192 Books in Manhattan.

It should be interesting! Lots to cover! Come join us!

192 Books Wednesday, August 27 at 7:00pm

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Teaser Number Two

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 20:13:00 +0000

Teaser Number Two on Vimeo

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WWSWWR Teaser Numero Uno

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Tue, 05 Aug 2014 15:44:00 +0000

A new one every week!

Teaser on Vimeo

By the incomparable Brian Rea and Pablo Delcan.

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Launch

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 15:43:00 +0000

VINTAGE BOOKS & POWERHOUSE BOOKS INVITE YOU TO A LAUNCH PARTY TO CELEBRATE THE RELEASE OF PETER MENDELSUND’S TWO BOOKS.

Peter will be in conversation with Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club, followed by a brief Q&A. Both his books (Cover, and What We See When We Read) will be on sale at the event. Please join us!

August 5th, 7:00-9:00 PM. PowerHouse Arena. 37 Main St, Brooklyn.

http://powerhousearena.com

***

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE READ:

"What We See When We Read is brilliant. Peter Mendelsund has peered into our messy heads and produced an illuminating, kaleidoscopic meditation on reading. Also on seeing. And understanding.”
—James Gleick, Best selling author of Chaos, and The Information

“Peter Mendelsund has changed the way I think about reading. Like the Wizard of Oz tornado, Mendelsund's lucid, questing prose and his surprising, joyful visuals collide to create a similar weather system inside the reader. Not only are you carried off to Oz, but you're aware at every moment of the cyclonic action of your reader's mind and your reader's imagination. It's so smart, so totally original, so beautiful, so good. I want to order copies to give to all of my friends.”
—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove

“Amazing. . . Sparkling with verbal as well as visual wit and the personable exhilaration of one of the best conversations you've ever had, What We See When We Read opens one's eyes to that special brand of blindness which makes the vividness of fiction possible. It reads as if the ghost of Italo Calvino audited Vladimir Nabokov's literature class and wrote his final paper with the help of Alvin Lustig and the Radiolab guys. Peter Mendelsund should get double extra credit for trying to describe things that I'm pretty sure there aren't words for (at least not yet.)"
—Chris Ware, Eisner award-winning author of Building Stories and Jimmy Corrigan

"What We See When We Read is not a book, this is a sacred text. It inspires, it expands the mind, it proves that Mendelsund is a total freaking genius. Through his images and his words, he speaks the gospel of our now.”
—Heidi Julavits, author of The Vanishers and editor of The Believer

“In this brilliant amalgam of philosophy, psychology, literary theory and visual art, Knopf associate art director and cover designer Mendelsund inquires about the complex process of reading. . . . The book exemplifies the idea that reading is not a linear process. Even if readers follow consecutive words, they incorporate into reading memories, distractions, predispositions, desires and expectations. . . . In 19 brief, zesty chapters, the author considers such topics as the relationship of reading to time, skill, visual acuity, fantasy, synesthesia and belief. . . . Mendelsund amply attains his goal to produce a quirky, fresh and altogether delightful meditation on the miraculous act of reading.
—Kirkus Review (starred)

“Offhandedly brilliant, witty, and fluent in the works of Tolstoy, Melville, Joyce, and Woolf, Mendelsund guides us through an intricate and enlivening analysis of why literature and reading are essential to our understanding of ourselves, each other, and the spinning world.”—Booklist

PRAISE FOR PETER MENDELSUND AND COVER:

“Peter Mendelsund is to the art of book design what Walter Murch is to the art of film-editing. That, of course, is the highest praise imaginable.”
—Geoff Dyer, author of Out of Sheer Rage, and Another Great Day at Sea

“Peter Mendelsund pushes the visual and the verbal into unforeseen alliances. Once we’ve seen these alliances, they feel inevitable. He establishes exactly the right balance between the timely and the timeless. He engages with all the fashionable tropes, trills, and frills of our on-the-go culture, while remaining grounded in a rigorous formal logic.”
—Jed Perl, The New Republic

“Once in a while I'm presented with covers that cross the barriers of cultural reference and visual language. That feel universal. That feel like perfect starts to stories. Covers that I don't want the reader to forget, but to carry with them throughout my books. Those covers are Peters Mendelsund's covers."
—Jo Nesbø, author of The Snowman and The Son

“Upbeat and thrilling to look at, his designs are works of art, and at the same time they encapsulate the writer’s truest goal.”
—Nicholas Fox Weber, author of Le Corbusier, and The Bauhaus Group

“Peter Mendelsund is a true artist.”
—Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet and Leaving the Sea

“Peter Mendelsund has the ability to visually and conceptually distill a narrative in such a way that it seems effortlessly inventive, striking, smart, fresh and yet classic. And he does it again and again and again. How I hate him.”
—Chip Kidd, author of The Cheese Monkeys and The Learners

“He’s the exact visual correlative of what I think contemporary literature should be, but usually isn’t doing.”
—Tom McCarthy, Booker prize shortlisted author of Remainder and Satin Island

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Learning Liszt

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 17:50:00 +0000

"We need someone to (learn and) record Liszt's Années de Pelerinage for the book trailer for the new Murakami novel Colorless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage..."

Warming up at Manhattan School of Music before the session:

Learning Liszt on Vimeo

Trailer and audiobook and other things on this front coming down the road.

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A Poetics of Effluvia

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 20:17:00 +0000

SATIN ISLAND: a new novel by Tom McCarthy. (Approved jacket below)

In S.I., the novel's narrator, an anthropologist, succumbs to a vivid fever dream in which he finds himself flying offshore over an island—an "excrescence, a protuberance"—of waste, runoff, sewage, detritus, crude oil... a beautiful and corrupted "satin island."

(On the jacket: an archipelago of oil; a ballistic aftermath of ink; a Triste Tropique of spillage.)

This dreamscape (Tom just informed me, after seeing the jacket) contains conscious echoes of G.M. Hopkins's poem God's Grandeur:

"The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil..." I quite like "shook foil," and am intending to use a gradient metallic foil on the jacket itself.

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Father's Day

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Sun, 15 Jun 2014 15:41:00 +0000

A collage by my father, Ben Mendelsund.

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The Shopping Guide You Didn't Ask For

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Mon, 21 Apr 2014 15:14:00 +0000

Where can you buy my books, you (didn't) ask?

Well, they (they being COVER and WHAT WE SEE WHEN WE READ) are not on sale yet in bookstores, but will both be sitting on shelves this summer! August 5th, to be precise.

Please stop in and buy them then at your local hardworking, undervalued, culturally vital, independent bookstore. (My own local, hardworking, undervalued, culturally vital, independent bookstore is the most excellent Book Culture in Morningside Heights.)

So if you want to you can buy my books at

Book Culture

or another fine example of same is

McNally Jackson

or

Porter Square Books

and there are many other Indie bookstores I could recommend; too many to list.
So, luckily, these books of mine are also available at

Indiebound

and of course there is always

Barnes and Noble

and even a small, unheralded, upstart website known as

amazon.com

or you could just call my mom. (I'm sure she will have extras.)

So there you have it.

Thank you!

Peter

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WWSWWR

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Mon, 14 Apr 2014 16:20:00 +0000

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4

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:44:00 +0000

"We want a new, big, explosive look for our third Jens Lapidus novel..." Um, OK.

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One Pub Date

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Sun, 26 Jan 2014 22:30:00 +0000

Hi y'all—just a brief update on my books...

I decided at some point this winter, with the blessings of my various publishers, to release these two books of mine on the exact same day.

Why? Because... well, because it just seemed like a super-duper neat thing to do.

What We See When We Read—A Phenomenology, published by Vintage Books, and Cover, a monograph of my work (with essays by me and others) published by Powerhouse Books, will both have a pub date of August 5th.

So if you are waiting for What We See When We Read, you are in luck because it will arrive early! And if you pre-ordered Cover you will have to wait a couple months longer for it to arrive, for which I apologize. (If you have no interest in either, that's fine too.)

What We See When We Read has just gone off to copy editing (all 448 pages of it). Cover will be out of my life in less than a month. At which point I hope to be designing more and sharing the fruits of those labors with you. There are some very fun projects in the pipeline.

Til then,

Peter

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Translating Kafka

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Wed, 15 Jan 2014 19:57:00 +0000

I will be lucky enough to share a stage with Susan Bernofsky and Jay Cantor on Friday the 31st of January at Deutsches Haus at 6.30 PM.*

"Few writers' works are as self-contained—or as all-consuming—as the literary world created by Franz Kafka. Perhaps for that reason, compelling descriptions and interpretations of Kafka have been rare.Translating Kafka addresses the challenges of grasping Kafka in a variety of different media: in English translation, in graphic artwork, and in fiction."

The event is moderated by Glenn Kurtz. Here's the link to the event.

Hope you can make it.

P

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A new Koji Suzuki

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 04:04:00 +0000

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L'Amant

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 15:49:00 +0000

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The Man with Compound Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 18:58:00 +0000

Pantheon.

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Designing Lolita

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 15:18:00 +0000

The new book Lolita: The Story of a Cover Girl, is mentioned on the New Yorker Blog. I have an essay in this collection on the challenges (aesthetic, interpretational, ethical) of designing a cover for this book.

At left: Michael Beirut's masterful treatment (which features the Mann Act!)

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Design Monograph

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Sun, 04 Aug 2013 15:39:00 +0000

So, I have a book coming out this coming Spring. It’s called Cover, and it is now available for preorder.

And I'm really proud of it.

It occurred to me, a couple years back, that design careers follow a certain inevitable path, and that upon this path there are certain compulsory benchmarks. Namely, after having producing enough passable design to have established a reputation—and after having participated in the requisite interviews, given the obligatory talks, and pursued the necessary whimsical side projects of varying natures—it is de rigeur that that a designer should then publish a book of his or her work.

A monograph.

A design monograph.

A design monograph is a peculiar kind of book. Most books of this sort will state that they are “by” the designer in question—though often this attribution is misleading. The work shown in a design monograph will be (hopefully, exclusively) “by” that designer, but this doesn’t mean that the book is “by” the designer; at least not in the same sense that, say, a novel is “by” a novelist. There are exceptions, but most design books of this sort are really just compilations; collections; showcases. Often these design books seem no different than design portfolio— Not that there is anything intrinsically wrong with a design portfolio in book format, it’s just: the “by” part of the equation has always felt a little off to me.

(A book, I thought, rather smugly, should be: a book- i.e. it should be written; and it should furthermore be written…by its author. This is, admittedly, a personal prejudice.)

For this, and other reasons, mostly mysterious to me, the whole idea of making a design book felt vaguely distasteful. And I certainly wasn’t interested in publishing one of my own.

The making this book, Cover wasn’t, in fact, my idea (as if that excuses it!)— I was approached by Wes de Val at Powerhouse Books, who had the idea that I should compile a collection of my own work in book form- and thinking that this was the expected thing- I agreed and this is exactly what I did. And now I am glad that I have done so. And I sincerely hope you are too. (Why the change of heart? Keep reading.)

Cover is comprised of my design work—the designs I’ve dreamt up, mostly book covers, from these last eleven years since I left the piano to embark upon this weird and wonderful path.

There is also writingin this book- by me: some of my own stray thoughts on design and books (some of which has already appeared on this blog- some of which hasn’t) as well as essays from some of the writers and designers I’ve been fortunate enough to know, and/or work for and with over this short span of time. The list includes (and I can’t quite believe my immense good fortune in having corralled such talent)

James Gleick, Ben Marcus, Jo Nesbø, Jane Mendelsohn, Jed Perl, Chip Kidd, Nicholas Fox Weber, Tom McCarthy, Alexander Maksik and others.

(!!!!)

This book should be (if I may say so) an interesting read for anyone interested in books, and book design, or just design in general. (And hopefully the pictures will be pleasing and inspirational as well.)

***

So: I recall, very clearly, only now, after having committed myself to the publication of this book, that it was precisely this kind of design book that helped me become a designer in the first place. (I remember this now with some ambivalence.) Without any training, and without the time or money to acquire any, I was forced to haunt the shelves of various outlets of the then-newly-resurrected Barnes and Nobles franchise. There used to be an entire “design” section in these stores (as well as shelves with other kinds of books on them—all of these shelves now housing DVD’s-past-their-expiration-dates, Harry Potter wands, kitten calendars and Avengers desk lamps.) There, at B&N, I bought “how-to” books; manuals on the various software I’d need to know how to use (Quarkxpress 4!) but also books made up of the design work of others—either volumes like, say, “best business cards, 2002!” or “Stellar Identities!” or else anthologies of the work of one particular designer. I learned, like most designers do, through looking.

See, this was how a person used to see much of the interesting design work being done—in book form. Sure, there was the work that was impossible to miss, the ubiquitous “big campaign stuff”—but for the more esoteric brand of design, these books were all we had. The internet, of course, has since obviated the need for such books.

(Though that doesn’t mean they aren’t fun to own —Cover! Only $40.50!)

And the putative obsolescence of design monographs doesn’t help explain why I had developed such distaste for the genre. Why had I resisted the idea so? Why, and when, did the idea of making a design book become anathema to my delicate sensibilities?

Because no one had yet to ask me to make one?

Maybe. But there’s more to it than that.

Nobody wants to seem like they are tooting their own horn. And this is a big part of it too. A book of one’s own work seems like bragging; preening. It is bad manners; in poor taste. (As my boss and friend Carol Carson likes to say: “Get over yourself!”)

And there is still another, deeper origin to my disinclination towards design books. Upon reflection, I recently determined that I seem to have been hedging, and still am hedging, even after all these years, about calling myself a “designer” at all.

I don’t think I’ve ever fully liked the idea of design as a profession. I have never completelyself-identified as a designer. (I’ll plumb the twisted psychology of this at some later date—it obviously has something to do with being obliged to leave my old career, music.) But suffice it to say that somehow, despite all this time I’ve spent designing, I still had still been thinking about design as a stop-gap occupation between being a pianist, and being some glorious third thing altogether.

Well, the publication of this book was a clarion call to myself, that perhaps what I am is what it says I am on my business card.

(We are all, in fact, not what we hope to be, but what we spend our time actually doing.)

So, here it is: I am a designer.

My name is Peter Mendelsund, and I am a designer. And that is that.

***

But then…

***

About a month and a half ago, I was working on retrofitting an essay that I thought at the time needed to be included in this book of mine: Cover. It was a blog post I wrote up over the course of a week, about a year or so ago, about seeing and reading. It was called “picturing books,” and it used to be listed to the right of this post, under the heading “popular posts.”

Maybe some of you read it?

The phenomenology of the reading experience has always interested me, as an avid reader, but since I’ve become (he admits, again) a designer, the sensuous aspects of this act are now a part of my every working day.

Only a week after the post went up, I grew regretful over the topics I didn’t have time to explore in the piece, including sections on metaphor, on synecdoche, and all of the other things “seeing” can mean in the context of reading a book. But my life is very full, and I forgot about the piece, and its gaps, entirely.

Until I started editing the essay again.

Then I set about filling in the gaps.

Ten pages became twenty; twenty became a hundred; a hundred became three-hundred. Three hundred became….

I illustrated the entire thing.

In these four recent (exhausting) weeks, I had written… a book.

***

A little more background: I’d written books before—I’ve just never seen fit to try to publish them. That is because all of these books were really, really bad.

I was asked by an editor at Knopf in 2008 (?) to write a book on Beethoven, which didn’t work out, as I was incapable of writing a decent book about Beethoven. We hired someone else to write it instead. I wrote a book length un-packing of the book designer’s art, called “Fictions,” which ended up so impenetrable and insular that this was shelved too. Around the time I was designing the new paperback covers for James Joyce, I wrote a very long family history in the style of James Joyce. Let us not speak of that project ever again.

But this book, this new book, about the feeling of reading, it was simply (there’s no other way to describe the feeling of it) publish-able.

(Some writer said on Twitter recently that knowing that your writing is a book is like finally knowing that you want to marry someone: by the time it hits you, you can’t believe how lucky you are. This is how this book felt to me.)

A week after I had something in good enough form to show it around, (last week) I inquired after an agent, showed it around; it was read by several editors at a couple of different houses— (speed was of the essence: I knew that if I didn’t sell the thing that it would become another enormous stack of paper on the floor next to my bed and that I would never re-visit it and eventually it would be thrown out or used as scrap paper for phone messages) and it was bought, by Vintage, quickly, by editor Jeff Alexander. And it will be a French-flapped paperback original (which was exactly how I envisioned it. A hardcover offer was looming, which was eschewed.) And this book comes some mere months after Cover in 2014.

It is called (rather more directly than its original title):

What We See When We Read.

And I couldn’t be happier.

***

WWSWWR is a little book to Cover’s large, art book trim-size.

WWSWWR is mostly words, with some pictures; Cover is the opposite.

WWSWWR describes what I see when I read; Cover shows what I saw when I read.

They are siblings, these two books. And I hope they represent, together, a more holistic view of my professional interests.

***

And as a coda:

How do I self-describe now?

Well most certainly: as a designer. I’m proud to be one. Now more than ever.

I am just beginning to understand that the mandate given a designer is quite a bit broader than what I initially presumed it was.

It took me chaffing at the boundaries of my job description to discover this.

But we can talk more about all that in 2015.

I intend to sleep for a good long while.

It’s been a bit tiring, these last four or so weeks.

Thanks for reading,

All my best,

Peter.

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coincidencias

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:42:00 +0000

“We know that attention acts as a lightning rod. Merely by concentrating on something one causes endless analogies to collect around it, even penetrate the boundaries of the subject itself: an experience that we call coincidence, serendipity – the terminology is extensive. My experience has been that in these circular travels what is really significant surrounds a central absence, an absence that, paradoxically, is the text being written or to be written.” ― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds"

I did an event at Housing Works last night. Afterwards, Amanda Bullock, their excellent Director of Programming took me behind the counter to show me their wares...and it turns out they had this here gorgeous edition of Hopscotch. Which I bought. (Reader, it was only forty dollars—The place is full of bargains. The jacket, if you didn't know, was designed by the amazing George Salter). And, as a strange side-note, it turns out, the book was priced by Sam Sacks, whose writing I love, and who I've had the honor of playing soccer with several times.

Anyway. Last post on Cortázar for a while.

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Still Hopscotching

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 18:07:00 +0000

A small slideshow at the NYTimes on various versions of book covers- featuring a couple of my (self)-rejected comps for Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch. (Some random other covers of mine for the same title- and its partner, Blow-up, below... and at least 20 more of these will be shown, and explained, in a chapter of COVER, coming April 8th) Thank you John Williams!

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Spring 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 19:02:00 +0000

Pre-order!

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Albers

noreply@blogger.com (Mendelsund) — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 21:00:00 +0000

(I finally found some free time today—can you tell?)

Anyway, just saw this online; and I had forgotten that I had played a role in it.

Thanks to Yale University Press and The Josef Albers Foundation...

Josef Albers' Interaction of Color has been made into an iPad app.

All the content from the original books including the color studies, plus interactive exercises, and interviews with artists and designers about their own work with color. Being able to perform the exercises as Albers intended (and seeing the colors in RGB) is pretty neat, I must say. Can't wait to get a copy.

It will be (Yale tells us) available soon at the app store. Stay tuned.

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