Tuesday 23 June 2009

Making Your Own

Here's an excellent idea stolen from Alan Trotter's ≥ blog. Like many people, I have a backlog of things stumbled across on the internet that look as though they'd be really interesting if I ever got around to reading them, but which are longer than I want to read on-screen. Trotter suggests putting them all together as a one-off print-on-demand book. A fine idea, which I have just finished doing, as an experiment in using the Lulu POD system.

My own version contains a mix of articles, short stories and artwork gathered from all over the place. Now, instead of these things sitting on my hard drive, forever unread, I'm looking forward to having a physical book to read (allegedly I'll have it in about a week). Of course, this also allowed me to indulge in a bit of cover design.

This is what the book should look like (more pictures when it arrives). Click for bigger.



The cover image is a photo I took of one of the residents of our backyard, a bluetongue lizard, and the title was suggested by his/her rather judgemental look. This lizard (which is about 30cm long) likes to come out and sunbathe during the day, but then has to deal with our cat, who is compelled by lunatic instinct to rush past it at regular intervals, tagging it nervously with a paw in passing, and then getting the hell away before getting a savage gumming.



UPDATE: Alan Trotter points out that the original idea comes from Thoughtwax.

4 comments:

Alan said...

There's something disturbing about how intensely human that eye and expression look. And I'm glad you liked the idea! (Though clearly all credit goes to thoughtwax.)

Ian Koviak said...

great image and title to go with it.

Steerforth said...

I wish I had lizards in my back garden.

JRSM said...

Alan: The lizard JUDGES YOU! I'll add that link to Thoughtwax to the post.

Ian: Thanks, Ian--glad to see that an actual talented book designer who knows what he's on about likes it!

Steerforth: Having big benign lizards in your backyard round these parts is also usually a sign that you DON'T have big malign snakes, which is comforting.