The third edition of Karel Martens’s Printed matter / Drukwerk is being printed by Thoben in Nijmegen now; sheets will then be sent to the binders, Hendricks–Lützenkirchen in Kleve, across the border in Germany. The binding will be done in batches and will take some weeks, but we should have copies at the end of this month – just in time for the Frankfurt bookfair.

Copies of Otto Neurath’s ‘visual autobiography’ arrived in London a few days ago. The book has been designed and its pages made by one of its editors, Christopher Burke; it was printed by Die Keure in Bruges and bound by SVK Boekbinderij, also in Belgium. Unusually for us, the book is a cloth-covered hardback, with a loose jacket. We felt that we should give this degree of permanence to the first full publication of Neurath’s text. Three different papers are used in the book, to distinguish and support the three main sections: the introductory material, Neurath’s text, and an appendix that shows a sample of his extraordinary collection of visual material. The book goes on sale in Europe at the end of this month. Copies are now just starting their journey by ship to our distributors in North America.

Some previous posts here have offered indirect criticisms of the shop Amazon.[1] Now here is a direct assault on the behemoth, made by a publisher with much mainstream experience, just starting out on a new venture that will work outside the existing book trade and sell direct to customers.

It’s been suggested elsewhere in these web-pages that we can judge the quality of a book by looking at its production as an object for carrying meaning. The space between the lines will tell us something about the quality of thought in the editorial-design processes, and so – because editor and writer might work hand-in-hand – in the writing too; and the glue on the spine will tell us something about the thinking in the publishing house.[1] The recent book of conversations between Lee Konitz and Andy Hamilton may test this thesis to near-destruction.

The Bach Players’ Nun komm! arrived from the printers and CD-multipliers some days ago, just in time for a launch-party for its subscribers. The CD is now waiting for its official UK release, after the summer holidays, on 20 September.

We have added an annexe to this website: Extra. Click on the right-hand tab above. (Thanks to Jane Cheng for engineering it all.)

Some years ago – I recall events and publications in the early 1990s – there was some noise about the ‘designer as author’: graphic designers would have a hand in writing (or maybe ‘authoring’) the texts that they also designed, and designers could even be considered as authors. It follows from the technology: the text gets shaped by designers, and the last touch before publication may now be in a designer’s hands. And there is the fact that content is always embodied in its form, and so to make form is also to shape content. But it does not follow that the designer needs to become an author. I don’t believe we should give up on the ideal of the designer working hand-in-hand with an author: listening, thinking, suggesting possibilities, making changes to first proposals, and often following an author’s wishes. There are clear advantages in a separation of the two roles: designers see things that authors can’t, and vice versa. (Against all this, the arrival of another new technic – screen displays of content – may take this process in another direction: away from the hands of any designer and into the domain of the ‘browser’ and its settings, and of the particular screen that is used.)

Last December, Michel Aphesbero and Thomas Boutoux came to London to interview Robin Kinross, for the rosab.net web-magazine, made at the École des beaux-arts de Bordeaux. The interview lasts for 51 minutes and is slow stuff, but has things not told in public before. But first you have to find it: wait for the page to load, then zoom out – a lot!, then scroll to the left and you will see ‘A studio visit to Robin Kinross in London’.

Idea magazine is pleasantly print-fixed: none of the words it publishes are put online, so anyone wanting a taste of it simply has to go out and find a copy. The current issue, no. 341, has an article that refers to Hyphen Press and its efforts. This essay, ‘Subterranean modernism’ by Randy Nakamura and Ian Lynam, is perhaps the first published piece by unconnected observers to address ideas that we’ve been busy with for now 30 years. This is very pleasing.[1]

Simon Esterson’s lecture on ‘British magazine design, 1960–200’, at the St Bride Library, London, January 2008: an insider’s view.