Setting the table for success is a phrase I heard on the Book Marketing Tips & Author Success podcast. This thought was fitting for a post-Thanksgiving episode. The podcasters, Penny Sansevieri and Amy Cornell said, “Look at everything you’re doing as a way to present your book to the reader—setting the table for success. You can’t force…
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Elegantissima, the Design & Typography of Louise Fili by Louise Fili is a beautiful book filled with impressive designs—a compilation of identity projects, branding, and logo designs. While I was watching an online course called, “Expressive Lettering with Swashes and Flourishes,” the speaker, designer Dan Forster, was inspired by Louise Fili and showed examples from her book. I was…
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When co-authors Bob Stuckey and Ken Cooper contacted me about designing their business book, The Control Catastrophe: Why your organization is wasting money and how to fix it, they gave me a brief description of their manuscript and identified their target audience—corporate executives, managers and supervisors. The Design Process I began my process by looking at other books…
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First-time author James Gibson contacted me about designing his memoir, Just a Long Walk. I asked if his manuscript was finished and if it was professionally edited.* It was not, so I suggested that he contact Andy Doty (Editwright.com) for editing and book coaching services. Andy got the project and circled back to me to design…
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Seasonal holiday promotions begin in summer, way ahead of fall. “Pumpkin Spice” is everywhere, and Christmas displays are popping up already. All of these products are competing for buyers’ attention, and one of them certainly captured mine. While I was shopping at Target, I saw new boxes of Halloween cereal that stopped me. A separate…
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Today we purged the majority of old printed samples we have kept in the basement for more than twenty years. Why did we purge? The shelves were full, and we needed space. Recently, we talked about how to manage those shelves. What should we do with all this material we had once thought was so…
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After a busy afternoon, I went to the library to pick up a book on order. While I was looking around, I saw a special display with books about dogs. One children’s book caught my eye because I recognized the author, Mem Fox, and the illustrator, Mark Teague. I stopped to read their story, Cat Dog. It…
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This summer, we went to the Art Institute of Chicago to see the Van Gogh exhibit. It was fabulous. We were dazzled by more than seventy-five paintings and drawings by master artists Vincent van Gogh, as well as Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Emile Bernard, and Charles Angrand. While we were enjoying the paintings, we saw a book…
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