Now that Joe and I have wrapped our talk about “Structure and Typography” at BookCamp Toronto 2010 and the aforementioned announcement has been publicly made in front of living, breathing human beings, here’s the scoop — I, along with members of the Estate of Marshall McLuhan will be publishing the first official (read: legitimate) digital editions of Marshall’s work.
Laws of Media and The Gutenberg Galaxy in Apple iBooks (not yet available)
We’ll be starting with Laws of Media written with his eldest son, Eric, along with The Gutenberg Galaxy with the goal of releasing both either towards the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011 in order to coincide with Marshall’s centenary. Not coincidentally, a much needed new site for the McLuhan Estate will also launch around the same time.
What about his other books? The answer is complicated, but ultimately “we don’t know… yet.” We’ve started necessary conversations and hope those will be available in due course.
That said, as was discussed today during our talk, and subsequently, some books may demand a physical artifact. They may not be ‘translatable’. Art books or highly art directed books for example; at least not in the open-source ePub format which is how we’d like to see these digital editions released.
This is arguably an experiment and will not be easy for many reasons — sorting out electronic publication rights (in at least one instance), editorial and design challenges, as well as handling divergent digital formats.
If important books such as McLuhan’s are going to make the jump to digital successfully, they deserve to have the same care and attention put into them as their printed counterparts — and we’re in the best position to ensure that happens.
This coming Saturday, May 15th is the second annual BookCamp Torontounconference. As one might expect, as someone who’ll be speaking at said event, I’ll be talking books — but not alone. I’m lucky to be sharing the desk/podium/stage/whatever with my friend Joe Clark to pontificate specifically about electronic books, publishing models and everything that’s right, but perhaps more importantly about what’s wrong in those worlds with a particular focus on independent publishing.
The 2010 BookCamp Toronto logo
The event is being held at the University of Toronto iSchool, which is appropriate given the timing and content of my portion which will be both relevant to the institution itself (and/or may tick some people off in the process) as well as recent exhibitions from the Scotiabank Contact Photography festival. Our session will be at 2pm in room #2 in case you were wondering.
During my bit, I’ll be making the official public announcement about a couple projects that will be occupying a significant portion of my time throughout the next year or so.
One of these has been in the works for some time, but the stars have finally aligned to do something about it. The other one might ruffle a few feathers at U of T. Enough about that for now. I’m sure there’ll be more to say in a few days time.
BookCamp 2010 is sold out but there’s still a waiting list up at EventBrite if you’re interested in attending. I haven’t done this type of public speaking in a long time — it’s not quite the same as design presentations to clients, so if you’ll be in attendance, please be gentle with me.
It’s hard to believe it’s been about six month’s since Luke, Carolyn and I launched Ligature, Loop & Stem (and of course with help from our good pal Grant). It’s also hard o believe how busy we’ve all been since then and how guilty I feel that there’s been almost no time at all to dedicate to any of the long list of ideas I’ve got for the next LL&S releases.
LL&S Ampersand print polymer letterpress plate
But that’s slowly changing and things will get back on track. That said, we were all pleasantly surprised to find out the other day that the Ampersand Print was selected as one of the 10 winners (out of about 800 submissions) of a 2010 HOW Poster Design Award.
I’d say the award is further validation that we’re on the right track with the idea in the first place. We’re in good company with the other winners too — a hearty congratulations to each of them as well.
To quote competition judge Steve Hartman,
Overall, I was impressed by the posters I was given to review. In the end, I picked posters that met three criteria: What did it do for the overall brand of the organization (if applicable)? Was it something I wish I had designed? Would I hang it on my wall? I have to say that what I chose fits all three. Really nice work, all around.
Thanks to Steve and the fine folks from HOW from all of us involved in LL&S.
