In Pictures – Cass & Penguin: Design Your Own Book Cover

The blank ‘Design Your Own Cover’ editions from Penguin are certainly not new. (They brought out the first six titles in 2006.) However, it seems like the partnership with Cass Art is much newer indeed and they certainly missed a trick by not making this connection back then!
Cass, in partnership with Penguin, are running weekend workshops (for kids and adults alike) in which you can take and design a book cover in-store absolutely free. We went along to flex our arty muscles.

The Lost Art of the Letterpress

As it may have been mentioned in a previous post, I have been loudly singing the praises of block printing in the Annexe HQ recently. The art of the printing press has been a long standing love of mine and any chance to share it is readily  jumped upon.

Now, while I could bore you batty with an intricate history of printing through the ages, the main reason for this article (and the reason I’ve become a source of annoyance in the HQ) is the discovery of a collection of artists working with block printing today. Are you sitting comfortably, then let’s begin.

An Interview with Hamish MacDonald (also a brief review of his book The Willies)

Today we have a feature on Canadian born, British based author Hamish MacDonald.

MacDonald is a champion of self-publishing. He writes, typesets, prints, binds and publishing his work singlehandedly. No mean feat by any stretch, but an astounding skill given the sheer magnitude of the work he puts out. I stumbled upon his books at the Alternative Press Fair this year. Nestled in amongst the zines and prints on show that day (beautiful pieces in themselves, but nowhere in the same league) MacDonald was presenting his novels. The massive benefit of the self publishing trade, for the potential reader at least was that I had the chance to speak with MacDonald about his books and after a lovely chat about the whole writing and binding process I bought a copy of The Willies. Set in the near future, The Willies starts out as clever speculative fiction set in a world where bioengineering is at its peak, animals are created in labs and the prospect of creating humans is a very real possibility. Ethical and moral conflicts run rampant. Within the first thirty odd pages, the action (quite literally) explodes and what ensues is a fast paced romp through espionage drama, survival thriller and existential crisis. While that would be too much for most other writers, MacDonald easily turns the multitude of angles into one tidy story that draws the reader through to the climax with no hint of drag or filler.

Recently I caught up with Hamish and asked him a few questions about his writing. Read the interview after the jump.