A spot of punting in Cambridge

I live only around 30 miles away from Cambridge. I love the city for its beautiful historical architecture, parks, river, bridges and shopping streets, yet I don’t visit Cambridge nearly enough – only really once or twice a year.

It’s become a tradition for Ruby, who lives just north of Cambridge near Ely, and I to meet up, in Cambridge, in November every year for Christmas shopping. This is something we’ve done for the last three years (and before that we were both at uni, anyway!). But for some reason we hadn’t met up in Cambridge to enjoy the warmer weather of Spring or Summer until yesterday. Although of course we do see each other more than once a year in other places!

It was a beautiful verging-on-Summer’s-day yesterday and we didn’t really have any plans. So, after catching up over coffee and a little bit of [window] shopping, we wandered to the river Cam and decided to go on a ‘chauffeured punt’ (how pretentiously posh does that sound?!).

Punting selfie!

A punt is a flat-bottomed boat with a square-cut bow, designed for use in small rivers or other shallow water. Punting refers to boating in a punt. The punter generally propels the punt by pushing against the river bed with a pole. A punt should not be confused with a gondola, which is propelled by an oar rather than a pole.

The most photographed building in Cambridge – King’s College.
Plus, on the right, the building that the original White House was based on! 

The ‘mathematical bridge’, built by a student of Isaac Newton.

Pub where Pink Floyd played their first ever gig together!

Charles Darwin’s house (also where he died).

The iconic Round Church.

Also, before all of that, we happened to walk past the Cambridge University Press book shop and a spotted some strangely familiar book covers in the window! Eyes Open and Empower are English Language Teaching book series designed by emc design. Eyes Open in particular is a series that I’ve worked extensively on, from start to finish (and there’re still a few bits to be finished off/wrapped up) over the last couple of years. Nice to not only see the books ‘in the flesh’ but also in a shop window!

In print

Well, I’m practically a published author now! My one and only copy of Five Thousand Miles arrived in the post on Monday and it looks absolutely beautiful.

But I’m not just talking about my design or photography skills – although they are fairly decent – as the overall finish of the book is amazing. It did cost me more than a few quid though, so I expected the quality to be good but perhaps not quite so good (check out Blurb books). It has been so nicely printed, keeping the colours bright and crisp, and uses such high quality paper (although, again, I paid for it!). The cover alone is excellent to behold, nevermind the inside of the book…

I took the book into work for everyone to have a look at (if they wanted to!) yesterday and received some great feedback. I mean, I’ve received positive feedback regarding the web-journal and digital book versions too but there’s something more rewarding about having this travel journal as a real printed book. Plus, I love books.

I haven’t taken too many photos as it is either best looked at in person or, if you’re perhaps on the other side of the world and we’ve never met, viewed the digitally.

I’ve photographed the book with a green tea Kit Kat. Partly for scale – the book is huge! – and partly because I have resisted eating this remaining treat from Japan for a whole year.

Five Thousand Miles: The Book

I am absolutely over the moon to say that I sent Five Thousand Miles to print last night!

Conveniently, today is a year to the day that I left for my adventure of a lifetime in Japan, all by myself. And so, today I have published the 200-page book of my trip online – in digital form. I’ve been beavering away designing the book since Christmas and I can’t wait, not only for the world to see it but, to have the physical book in my hands.

Big thanks to Kat, my friend and colleague, for doing an excellent job of proofing the whole thing for me – picking up on my silly grammatical mistakes. I will be taking her out for [Japanese!] dinner on Friday to say thank you.

And now, without further ado, I present to you… Five Thousand Miles: The Book.

Five Thousand Miles: the cover

This is a little bit of a work in progress… in that I need to take a closer look at how each image here has been cropped. Just to make sure that there are no strange keylines or generally funny-looking bits of photos. Also, I’m not 100% on how I’ve got my name here – not sure how legible it is. Maybe have to shuffle around a few images so that the red text is more clear overlaying whatever photos.

BUT this is the design for the cover of Five Thousand Miles, at least.

There was no way I was ever going to be able to decide on a single image to use for the cover, so this seemed like the best solution! There are even more images on the back cover too, as I’ve (currently) chosen not to have any kind of blurb on the back.

The insides of the book are very nearly complete. It just needs a few final tweaks to scanned images that are in place and a final look over – by someone other than myself! Still on track for printing/online publishing in April.

Japan: 2014 and 2016

Last Sunday, I finished laying out the final pages of my ‘Five Thousand Miles’ Japan 2014 travel journal – the book version (of this). I am now in the process of checking over a full PDF and marking up any amends/additions to the text, plus any photos that require a little tweaking in Photoshop – mostly making images lighter.

This process looks a little like this…

Please note: I’m not doing a proper job of the mark-up (like we do at work!), just doing what is quick for me.

I started work on the book version of Five Thousand Miles just after Christmas and have spent many Sunday afternoons on it since then. It hasn’t been a quick process – there are more than 1000 photos in the book and it spans 196 pages – but I’m pleased that I will soon have a printed copy in my mits. I intend to get these text and image tweaks done in the next week or so. Then hand a new PDF over to my wonderful friend and colleague Kat (editorial and production pro) to have a look over it, as well. I wouldn’t want anything to slip past me – because I’ve looked at it so much and may be blind to the obvious!

When I’m content that the book is finished, I will be sending it off to Blurb to be printed. All hopefully before the 11th April – a year on from when I set off on my trip to Japan. Although, if it ends up being any date after that but before the 27th (when I finished my trip last year) that’ll be okay too. I also intend to eat my remaining green tea kit kat that I’ve been reserving for the anniversary, as I look through the book!

As well as my original travel journal, featured on the website version, I have written a little something extra for the past few pages of the book. I figured I may as well share it here, ahead of finishing the book.

What next?

In the process of designing and laying out the pages of this book I have, unsurprisingly, begun to think about my next trip to Japan. Although, as you’ve seen in the pages of this book, I did pack a lot into my April 2014 first-time trip to Japan, there is so much more that I want to see and do in Japan!

I would really like to visit Hiroshima next time around, including the Miyajima shrine – as recommended by the member of staff at my ryokan in Hakone – and the peace park. Plus, the peace pagoda at Mt Futaba-yama, commemorating peace since the atomic bombs of World War II. Peace pagodas, in particular, interest me as my hometown of Milton Keynes is home to the first peace pagoda in the Western world. I have yet to see my first peace pagoda in the East, but hopefully it will be in Hiroshima.

I’d also like to visit Nagasaki, for similar reasons. But also because many of the books I have read (historical fiction) feature Nagasaki – as it is the port that many Dutch, Portuguese and English trading ships first docked at upon ‘discovering’ Japan. However, I realise that Nagasaki is quite a bit further west than some of the other place in Japan that I would be likely to visit – it’s actually on another island (Kyushu, rather than Honshu). This means that it may prove a bit more difficult, and certainly take a bit longer, to get to.

As I discovered on my first trip to Japan, I have a huge love for Japanese castles. I was lucky to be able to visit five in a single trip – well, three actual castles (Matsumoto, Osaka and Odawara), one set of castle remains (Kanazawa) and one castle that wasn’t really much of a castle (Nijo in Kyoto). Himeji castle is reputedly the most magnificent of all of Japan’s castles. Conveniently, it has been undergoing a lot of renovation work over the past few years, with the work coming to an end in March 2015. So, although it wouldn’t have been viewable in it’s full glory for my 2014 trip to Japan, it will be for my next trip.

I would very much like to visit Hakone again, perhaps for a couple of days rather than just one. I would really like to see Mt Fuji with my own eyes, too! I intend to spend several days each in both Tokyo and Kyoto again, as both cities have so, so much more to see. There’s more of the modern and technology-fueled side of Tokyo to explore and I must make it to the bamboo forest of Arashiyama, just outside Kyoto this time!

Lastly, I hope that for Japan trip two I won’t be travelling alone. My potential Japan travel buddy is well aware of this, and as long as he gets to see the giant Godzilla outside a hotel in Shinjuku, Tokyo, he seems pretty open to seeing all of the above and more!

I really can’t wait for March/April 2016 for Japan trip number two!!

The 7 Wonders of Milton Keynes: booklet

You’ve read the blog series (1, 2, 3 & 4), now enjoy the [e-]booklet.

Sometimes it is appropriate to judge a book by its cover

As I am a graphic designer, I believe to a certain extent that books should be judged by their covers. Or at least, the cover should express the content of the book appropriately with well-thought-out graphic design – whether it be a work of fiction, a travel book or an English Language Teaching book (little plug for my day job there).

I have recently started following a profile on Twitter called ‘Why My Cat is Sad’, which is an amusing account for an 18 year old melancholic cat named The Bear, and another called ‘Why My Cat is Smug’, which similarly is an amusing account for a smug cat named Ralph. They both have the same human – Tom Cox – who, as well as a cat lover, is an author.

This crossed my mind too… I’m sorry, Tony Benn.

He has written three books that feature these two cats, among others – Talk to the Tail: Adventures in Cat Ownership and Beyond, Under the Paw: Confessions of a Cat Man and, his latest book, The Good, The Bad and The Furry: Life with the World's Most Melancholy Cat and Other Whiskery Friends. The latter I hope to be receiving for my birthday and the previous two I shall buy for myself at some point soon.

This article was brought to my attention this morning, even though it was written in December last year, about Tom Cox’s decision to have the covers for his first two cat books re-designed. It is good to know that authors (or this one at least) are aware of how important good design is and how it affects people seeing their books for the first time – whether they are a graphic designer like me or not. We do judge books by their covers.

It [the publishing industry] had already changed a lot by early 2009 when Simon & Schuster, the publishers of my fifth book, Under the Paw, sent me their proposal for the book’s paperback edition. I instantly knew I hated the cover and instantly knew there was not a lot I could do about it.

This is what the books looked like originally:

And these is the newly re-designed versions:

When you write a book, you are forever judged by it. That includes the cover. Most people who’d seen my cat books, without actually reading them, thought I was an entirely different kind of writer to the one I am. Many must also have picked them up hoping their content did match the cover and been disappointed.

You don’t have to be a designer to notice that the cats used in the original book covers are any old cute kittens in cliché situations pulled off a stock photo website. I have no problem with using stock photography in general, but surely it would have been possible to find something a little more appropriate – like a fully grown cat for instance. The kittens they chose aren’t even amazingly cute – ahem. The re-designed versions of the covers use photographs of the actual cats that feature in the books – a simple and effective solution really. Much improved typography too, also fairly simple. Good design doesn’t have to be complicated.

During The Good, the Bad and the Furry’s first, partial week of publication in October, it went straight into the Sunday Times’s non-fiction paperback bestsellers top 10 … Its continuing excellent sales and The Bear’s now almost 60,000 Twitter followers have persuaded Simon & Schuster to change the covers of Under the Paw and Talk to the Tail to images featuring my cats when the time comes for a reprint.

Don’t judge a cat book by its cover and article by Tom Cox, written for the Guardian.

If best-selling albums had been books instead…

I stumbled upon these amazing book covers based on best-selling albums yesterday at the Rough Trade record shop near the Old Truman Brewery, East London.

“The Record Books are cunningly fabricated trompe l'oeil pictures of well-thumbed but imaginary-books, whose titles derive from classic records, old and new. What started as a handful of doodles turned into a labour of love comprising over 100 carefully wrought images inspired by words from the world of music and visuals from the world of words.” – Rough Trade

The images are the genius creation of Christophe Gowans – his website is well worth a visit. There are so many great ‘book covers’ he’s designed but here are some of my favourites…

Joe Wilson

I have come across illustrator Joe Wilson on more than one occasion in the past, yet for some reason I’ve never blogged about him before. At least not directly. He is actually the illustrator behind one of my favourite book covers – and that I have posted a blog about (a whole three years ago). Sadly I didn’t reference him in that post though, so I’m going to make up for it now.

It’s Nice That posted about his film posters today, which sure are great, but I love his whole portfolio.

“Joe’s a UK-based illustrator and film buff working in a style that’s reliant on a phenomenal attention to detail and precision draftsmanship. This boy can really draw. Working in pencil, ink and digital colour, Joe creates rich, complex illustrations that evoke vintage movie posters, pulp novels and comics from the 1970s but with a contemporary feel (often the result of Joe’s digital colour palettes).” – It’s Nice That

Some great stuff on his blog too.

Books that should exist

100 Books That SHOULD be Written is an excellent 100 day project by Tyler Adam Smith, that started in April this year. He comes up with ideas for books that don’t exist but he feels definitely should and designs the front covers. There are so many great ideas (although a lot, as well, that I don’t “get”) and a wide variety of beautiful designs on the blog. Here are my favourites…

And this was his first design…