A Beautiful Book

I have a confession to make. 

Any former English professors of mine can turn away their eyes for the next line or two. Even with my chronic reading habit and English background in school, I have never read Moby Dick. And even worse, (in some eyes) I have never even wanted to. Not even a little bit. I know what it is about, and I just haven't been motivated to pick it up. Ever. Well, until one day. . .

A few months ago I was perusing the website Fonts In Use, and came across an article about a small (short run) edition of Moby Dick. The article discusses the beautiful use of fonts and space in the layout of this edition of the book. The original Arion Press edition uses hand-set metal type and hand-made paper. It also includes many woodcut engravings, and the initial caps and titling was done in a font specifically created for this edition, named rather appropriately Leviathan. The article tells us that not surprisingly, this book won an award for being one of the "100 Most Beautiful Books of the Twentieth Century."

Well, needless to say, I suddenly wanted to read Moby Dick (well, not just the book, but this exact edition of the book). To whet your appetite, here's the first page image that Fonts In Use used with their article.

 Doesn't it just draw you in? I highly recommend you go over to the original article to see the other mouthwatering images of this beautiful book, so you can ooh and ah over them, too. Plus, Fonts In Use is just a fun website to visit. I particularly liked the article on the Brooklyn Superhero Supply Co.

Now I have high expectations, and I will only read Moby Dick if I get my hands on a copy of this edition. Luckily for us little people, the University of California Press has reprinted this edition in a paperback format. While not using handmade paper or metal, hand-set type, they did keep the layout intact, and the price is a lot more affordable. So maybe some day I will eventually read Moby Dick.

An Online Resource for Creatives

I've been browsing around the website http://www.creativepro.com/.

It has some great resources, reviews, tips, tutorials, blogs, and some all around good info in topics such as fonts, graphics, photography, print, and web or mobile.

For example, in one article I learned about a cool InDesign feature called Quick Apply. It's easy to turn on and off, and it allows you to keep your hands on the keyboard instead of searching through menus for those features that don't have keyboard shortcuts (or for features that have keyboard shortcuts, but you just can't remember which key combination it is) (Here's the link for the article.) I think I'll be trying this one out.

There are articles on more than just InDesign. I also found some reviews on products I'd heard of but didn't really know much about, some articles on kerning and type that were informative, and even some free Photoshop brush downloads that were tempting.

But, just a warning, you could get sucked into browsing the site for more time than you expected.