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Why were New Zealand women first in the world to achieve suffrage?
If you know anything about New Zealand history at all, you probably learned that New Zealand women were the first in the world to achieve the right to vote in 1893.
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Recoloured Images On Book Cover Design
Recoloured images can defamiliarise the real world and encourage viewers to see their own familiar worlds afresh.
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The All Typography Book Cover
It was Paul Bacon who invented the all-typography cover. This cover will be familiar to you because it has come back into style.
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Skeuomorphism in Book Cover Design
Skeuomorphism is the design concept of making items represented resemble their real-world counterparts. Paper folds, dog-ears, rips, holes, burns, scrapbooking collage, scrap cardboard, plane tickets, letters, post-it notes… These book covers are designed to look like derivative objects. A DAMAGED PRODUCT Some book covers look as if they’ve been defaced with scribblings and crossings-out: Book covers […]
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Transgender Jokes Which Are Actually Funny
So we’ve had decades and decades of jokes where trans people are the butt of the “joke”. This has extended to children’s media, where stories about gender transgression of any kind, but especially boys dressed forcibly as girls, have propped up the gender hierarchy by making it seem legitimately punishable to transgress. We’re in a […]
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Symbols and Metaphor on Book Cover Design
All book covers sit somewhere on the metaphorical continuum, because covers must convey the essence of an idea.
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Tricks for Writing A Lengthy Work
How do you write a lengthy piece of writing — a book, a thesis — without giving up? Various writers share tips and tricks. Here are a collected few.
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The Hand-Lettered Look In Book Cover Design
There’s a style of art and illustration, frequently seen on book covers, and I have no idea what to call it. Let’s call it the hand-lettered or hand-drawn look.
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Book Cover Design With A Large Central Graphic
This book cover design layout is very common and does not call attention to itself. Still, I’ve collected a number of these covers for a compare and contrast.
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Margins and Spacing in Book Cover Design
Let’s take a close look at how graphic designers alter margins, kerning and leading when creating contemporary book covers. First, by way of contrast, a small selection of book covers which are centre justified. Note than in all of these examples, the symmetry is broken by another stand-out page element, be it a marketing blurb, […]
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Blur and Glitch Effects on Book Covers
This is a collection of book covers which make use of blur, glitch and other distortion effects. The set of four Tove Ditlevsen book covers each exemplify a different kind of blur and glitch effect, so it’s nice to see them all together: Another trio: Here are some other examples of blur and glitch. These […]
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1960s-1970s Lettering in Graphic Design
A designer called Paul Bacon was influential in creating a mid-century look which is back in fashion.
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Dear Marjorie: A Short Crime Story
Dear Marjorie, I wonder if you’ve had much to do with law-enforcement. Twice now, I’ve had the experience of an official rat-a-tat-tat at my own abode…
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What architectural style is the house of Psycho?
The Psycho house is similar to what is now called ‘Second Empire Style’. What makes this style of architecture feel so creepy?
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Making a Posterised Book Cover with AI
Images are posterised when the graphic designer creates large, flat areas of colour or tone. This style is reminiscent of 20th century pop art popularized by Andy Warhol, influenced by the arrival of photography. Photography technologies changed the course of painting forever. And here are some Warhol style capsicums I painted recently, with the photo […]