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Copyright © 2001 Daniel Will-Harris, www.will-harris.com Need help with a project? Ask me | |||||
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Book Covers I'm available for work no matter where in the world you are. If you're interested in having me work for
you,
This is the first in a series of "Thinking in" books. The author wanted a very distinctive cover that conveyed both the hand-made aspect of programming, and the idea of "classes" of objects. I translated this into classes of insects--or bugs--so the design alluded to several levels of programming at once. Typeface: ITC Rennie Mackintosh. Here’s the second edition:
These are the very first concept comps I did for this series/ I call this style “Neo-DaVinci.” The above may have been too literal in it’s “thinking” motif. This was the first hint at an Art Nouveau style, which eventually became “craftsman.” This was my first book cover design, for my second book. Even though a lot of the book was technical, I wanted to
make the cover as non-technical as possible. The beautiful marble paper really stood out on the shelf otherwise filled with high tech (and usually ugly) books. It helped make the book a best-seller. For the Windows edition of the book, I wanted to use the same motif, but make it seem more graphic (as Windows is more graphic than DOS was). I also wanted to show that the
book was a little wacky (I went a little wacky--yes, wackier than usual) while writing it. So I drew this caricature of myself and added it to the design. The back cover is intentionally cluttered--all those little “post it notes’ are really quotes from reviewers, a powerful sales tool on a book. DeTours is a catalog-based travel agency that also offers travel accessories. DeTours and the date are set in Smudger from Letraset (the splashes to the left of and under the date are Smudger Alternates). The illustrations are all from Letraset's DFJourney's typeface. The Glass Eye is a new software program created specifically for the design of stained glass windows. So it made sense to turn the cover of the documentation into a stained glass window. The Dragonfly logo (see in the lower right corner) is also made to look like a stained glass window. Frank Lloyd Wright was the inspiration for this design where only square and round objects were used, in keeping with the theme of the book. Typeface: Bank Gothic from Bitstream. Marbled cheesecake meets marbled paper. Letraset Citation, Copperplate, and Flemish Script. Marbled paper from ArtBeats CD, cake from Letraset DFOrganics. The author, (my mother of all people) thought the lady bug in the lower right corner looked like a "cock-a-roach" (oy!) so I removed it from the final version. This little book (5x5", the size of a CD) was based on my belief that people's computers are like their brains--they rarely use more than 10% of their potential. The 120 pages
of this book were written and designed not to tell people every single detail they'd never use, but just the extra 5% of stuff that if they knew, would save them hours a day, days a month, and a month a year. It answered all the most commonly asked questions by users, both novice and experienced. While this book was groundbreaking, it was not recordbreaking. So what I learned is that people seem to
want to pay too much for books that tell them more than they want to know in ways that make it difficult to find what they need. |
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