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What printed books still offer all of us:

Trillions of words float in the online ether, to be clicked on and read—or not. Book texts sleep inside electronic tablets, to be read—until videos or photos or emails or games beckon from the same device. That versatility is amazing, but our freedom to instantly click/swipe away from words has cheapened them. Choosing to read a printed book, though, implies a commitment of time and of focus—and in exchange it offers us a rare and worthwhile reward: depth.

 

San Diego, California
I am not seeking new clients at this time. Over three decades I have designed texts and covers for several hundred books in a wide range of genres. This has been serious fun—I have worked with many talented people, and have been able to bring interesting items into projects: infrared Hubble star images, crime scene tire tracks, Ronald Reagan’s handwritten speech cards, stereoscopic views of Cro-Magnon skulls, Andy Warhol’s birth certificate, scrawls by a few Poet Laureates . . .

Here are some book-related web sites worth looking at.

On the history of making books: http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/codex http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/educator/modules/gutenberg/books/

On the 8th-century “Book of Kells”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Kells

Gregory Smith Book Design

phone: 619-298-7536
Feel free to contact me via this ancient web site if you would like my take on any aspect of book creation, circa 2016.
Okay, what does a book designer do?