Month: July 2010

Learn which company provides the best photo books

While searching for a place to print a family photo album I came across a couple photo book companies. I’ve used both Blurb and Shutterfly and am not particularly fond of either of their final product. Maybe I’m too much of a graphic design snob, but I really don’t enjoy the out-of-the-box templates and the poor image quality of the final printed photo book. Of the two, I prefer Shutterfly, but only because iPhoto makes it easy to order photos. Digital Home Thoughts provides a detailed product review of 10 other photo book companies and their top picks. I may try their top pick for my next photo book project.

Link: The Great Photo Book Round-Up Review: Who Makes The Best Photo Books?

While searching for a place to print a family photo album I came across a couple photo book companies. I’ve used both Blurb and Shutterfly and am not particularly fond of either of their… read more »

Learn which company provides the best photo books

Publishers typically sign on new projects, do some big-picture editing, then pass the project to the editor, who does the more painstaking work of carrying the project from its detailed editing and design stages to production. The life of an editor and publisher involves more reading than you can fit into a day at the office. We have to keep up with the publishing world, know what people want to buy, work closely and diplomatically with authors, and lug around heavy satchels of manuscripts. People often liken editors and publishers to midwives. The industry is dominated by women who aren’t paid all that well, but who are working in this helping, nurturing role, counselling authors and helping bring their “baby” into the world.

The scoop on working in publishing (via fluffynotes)

How do you like that emotionally rich, evocative headline? Copyblogger offers 12 other emotive headlines with emotional benefits explained after each headline. The emotional benefit to the above… read more »

How to Take Command of Any Meeting

How to Take Command of Any Meeting

How do you like that emotionally rich, evocative headline? Copyblogger offers 12 other emotive headlines with emotional benefits explained after each headline. The emotional benefit to the above headline, How to Take Command of Any Meeting” is “feeling respected.”

Link: 13 Emotion-Based Headlines That Work

polyglot

wordjournal:

adjective • 1) containing, or made up, of, several languages. 2) versed in, or speaking, many languages.

noun • 1) one who speaks several languages. 2) a book containing several versions of the same text, or containing the same subject matter in several languages. 3) a program written in multiple programming languages (programming).

From Greek, πολύς (many) + γλῶττα (tongue, language)

30 poems in 30 days challenge: update two

30 poems in 30 days: days 3 & 4
pages of poems for days three and four

Deborah offered a challenge to write 30 poems in 30 days. I took up the challenge and so far I’m on schedule with one poem a day. Maybe after the challenge I’ll translate the poems from handwritten form to digital, but for me the urgency is to get it all down first. It’s kind of like catching butterflies or lightening bugs.

One interesting item is that the poems have developed a theme. When I accepted the challenge I wasn’t planning on writing 30 theme-based poems, but somewhere under the surface it appears in each page of the poems I’m composing. I guess I’ll find out if it changes course by the end of the challenge.

Poem: Inland

I could swim in these lines from “Inland” by Chase Twichell for days:

Above the blond prairies,
the sky is all color and water.

It’s as if the poet read the pages of my mind and wrote a poem based on the reading.

I love painting more than poetry.

The spare details used created such enduring images that’s hard for me to let go of the poem.

love is folded away in a drawer
like something newly washed

I could swim in these lines from “Inland” by Chase Twichell for days:
Above the blond prairies, the sky is all color and water.
It’s as if the poet read the pages of my mind and wrote a poem… read more »

Poem: Inland

T-shirt design: Why I am a designer

Interested in a "why i am a designer" t-shirt?

A couple years ago I stumbled upon this graphic on my Tumblr dashboard. Recently, I contacted the designer behind the art and asked if he planned to release the design as a poster or t-shirt. He replied he might if more people were interested in a t-shirt.

So, David Sherwin wants to know if anyone, beside myself, is interested in ordering this design as a t-shirt?

A couple years ago I stumbled upon this graphic on my Tumblr dashboard. Recently, I contacted the designer behind the art and… read more »

T-shirt design: Why I am a designer

POETRY PUBLISHERS that offer no CONTESTS

30 poems in 30 days challenge: update

30 poems in 30 days: day 1 & 2
Poems of days one and two

In spite of a very crazy week I’m still on track with the 30 poems in 30 days challenge. The rain delays on Monday afforded me time to compose a page-length poem. It’s no where near the ideal of composing 75 lines of poetry per day, but it’s a much needed discipline just to fill a page in my moleskine notebook.

Business: Growth versus Innovation

Recently, I heard, or read, someone responding to the question of which is more important: growth or innovation. The person responded innovation, because innovation feeds growth and not the other way around. HBR provided the following points of innovation:

  • population
  • penetration
  • price
  • purchase

Link: The 4 Ps of Innovation

Recently, I heard, or read, someone responding to the question of which is more important: growth or innovation. The person responded innovation, because innovation feeds growth and not the other… read more »

Business: Growth versus Innovation

The Shack – Impressions – Tim Keller

Ray Gonzalez’s prose poem “Beginning with Two Lines from Rexroth” begins with the opening line:
I see the unwritten books, the unrecorded experiments, the unpainted pictures, the interrupted…
read more »

Poem: Beginning with Two Lines from Rexroth

Never read one of his novels… but I hear he’s a pretty good novelist.

I write like David Foster Wallace

Poem: Beginning with Two Lines from Rexroth

Ray Gonzalez’s prose poem “Beginning with Two Lines from Rexroth” begins with the opening line:

I see the unwritten books, the unrecorded experiments, the unpainted pictures, the interrupted lives, a staircase leading to a guarantee, the glowing frame of wisdom protecting me from harm after I escape the questions of a lifetime.

There’s an urgency to these lines that remind me of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl.” Also, there is a strong collision of abstract ideas and images as in the following line:

There is no agony and waste, only the steps into the frontier where it is easy to hide.

There’s an interview with Ray Gonzalez on Bombsite where he discussed who he crafts line and prose poems.

Mechanical, thoughtless and unengaged: a Facebook story

A writer laments that he has a huge Facebook following, but it doesn’t convert to readers of his book. From AdPulp:

Gregory Levey, communications professor and author of Shut Up, I’m Talking, says, “if my online fans can’t even grasp that the fan page they’ve joined is for a book, I’m not particularly optimistic that they’ll read the book in question – or any books at all, for that matter.”

Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco opines: “Facebook has become such a burden and a time-suck that they’re only able to devote a fraction of their shattered attention spans to it. They’re reacting to friends’ updates and clicking ‘like’ buttons and joining fan pages like Pavlov’s dogs — it’s becoming mechanical, thoughtless. The opposite of ‘engaged.'”

(Link: Yet Another Facebook Story: A Mile Wide But An Inch Deep)

After reading this I may just pull the plug on my Facebook account (though I know, like the Hotel California, Facebook doesn’t really let you leave).

evangelion

wordjournal:

noun • 1) a reward for good news. 2) good news. 3) gospel.

From Greek, εὐάγγελος (bringing good news) from εὖ (good) + ἄγγελος (messenger).

If my voice is not reaching you add to it the echo— echo of ancient epics Afzal Ahmed Syed‘s poem “If My Voice Is Not Reaching You” offers such a great opening stanza. A poet can go almost… read more »

Poem: If My Voice Is Not Reaching You

Poem: If My Voice Is Not Reaching You

If my voice is not reaching you
add to it the echo—
echo of ancient epics

Afzal Ahmed Syed‘s poem “If My Voice Is Not Reaching You” offers such a great opening stanza. A poet can go almost anywhere with those opening lines and a reader will follow with intrigue.

E-readers take longer to read than books

The title says it all: Kindle and iPad Books Take Longer to Read than Print:

…reading speeds declined by 6.2% on the iPad and 10.7% on the Kindle compared to print.

(Link: Kindle and iPad Books Take Longer to Read than Print)