Rightho — this is something I should have done a couple of weeks back. It’s a heads up for a (free) talk I’m giving on book cover design, specifically on the Text Classics series, Australian classics, rather than from o/s. You can see the thirty covers here, and hopefully you’ll have seen them (yellow: Aussie [...]
Just a note to say that the excellent designer, Sandy Cull, has posted a (long-promised) piece from me on the design blog, About Book Design. (She is a VBP [very busy person]; how she keeps that blog-ball in the air, too, is admirable.) An extract: After he had put in his prescription at the pharmacy [...]
Or, a wick-ed picture of a candle in the Sun. Putting my puns down, this is the image I came up with for the March cover of Australian Book Review. It goes with Joel Deane’s very timely review of (former journo and political thinker) David McKnight‘s new book Rupert Murdoch: An Investigation of Political Power. [...]
An official announcement happens tonight, but I can reveal my result* now. The winner of the Mens’ Franklin Award for 2011 is: Chris Womersley for Bereft. [update below] Congratulations, Chris, for a great effort, and only your second novel! (*A note on the methodology: This decision is based on the principle of the recently institution-sanctioned [...]
Just a quick note to say I’ll be interviewed by the Breakfasters at RRR this Friday 3 June at 8:15 am. Keen to fit in with their style I’ve been swotting up on poetry and religion, though producer Michelle Bennett has mildly hinted they may want to talk about book design and blogging. They’re a [...]
Appropriately shameless, I’ve nicked the title of Norman Mailer’s unflinchingly immodest self-portrait. Last night at the book design awards for the Australian Publishers Association I managed to score a kind of quinella, but that’s not quite right, a quinella being a first and second. My jacket for Lloyd Jones’ Hand Me Down World won a [...]
I’ve been meaning to put up this picture of Julian Assange, which is the latest in my project of print portraits. (Lately, the phrase “I’ve been meaning to” is cropping up a lot. Which is a sign of my relationship with time; it and I need counselling.) This print rejoices in an ornamented title: The [...]
Somewhat self-consciously, the Mulcher informs readers that an interview . . . oh alright, the Mulcher (that’s I, me) was interviewed about book cover design, specifically the jacket of Hand Me Down World, by Lloyd Jones, who was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Mr Pip three years ago. (A sudden and thrilling emergenge of [...]
November 17, 2010 – 10:06 pm
Because I can, I’m naming Lloyd Jones’ Hand Me Down World as my favourite manuscript of the year. (How’s that for an uncommon list-making category?) I think it’s extraordinary. Now that it’s published, the Guardian has tagged along: ‘This is, to make a bold claim, an extraordinary novel.’ So extraordinary, the classic Canadian rockers The [...]
September 15, 2010 – 10:08 am
Tony Blair’s reviled-and-yet-bestselling memoir has, I think, a rather disturbing cover photo — flattering but also slightly manic, crazed. As a book designer I have commissioned, selected and cropped a stack of author photos — Hazel Hawke and John Button, Helen Garner and Tim Flannery, Kate Holden and Robert Manne et al — and inevitably [...]
