Is Designing for Poetry Like Dancing for Architecture? II Charlie Orr—guest blogger

Today I'd like to focus on some of the work I've done with poet, and best friend Shanna Compton. Throughout these posts you will see her name pop up again and again because without Shanna I would have never met so many poets and writers, and probably would have never got involved with publishing or book cover design at all.

As both a poet, and poetry editor for softskull press Shanna introduced me to a range of writers, and most of the covers you will see this week are directly or indirectly a result of Ms. Compton. Shanna is the publisher of Bloof Books which includes in it's stable such wonderful poets as Danielle Pafunda, and Jennifer L. Knox who will be featured on tomorrows post.

Early on Shanna and I produced a couple of chapbooks Opal Memos Nonchalant, and Big Confetti—which she collaborated on with poet Shafer Hall. Here are the covers.

Opal Memos Nonchalant

 

This was an early effort of mine, and if memory serves it is probably one of the first covers I ever made. I've tried to make that overlapping type trick work again, and again over the years on different projects, but am still not happy with the results—maybe someday. I still like the logo I designed for "Half empty/Half full" although if I redesigned it today, I'd probably use a sans serif font.

Big Confetti

 

Big confetti was a collaborative chapbook with Shanna and Shafer Hall. The choice of type was derived from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's "Pictures of the gone world". I liked the way it looked and no one was using that kind of old-timey slab serif at the time. It also made me think of Texas where Shanna and Shafer both hale from.

Bloof Books

Here is a logo I did for Shanna's publishing endeavor Bloof Books. I chose a bee as the icon because she is always as busy as a bee, and also as something of a reference to softskull (her former employer) whose logo features an ant with a pen nib as its lower abdomen. The bee's stinger is a pencil tip (subtle, I know).

Portrait of Shanna

This is a typographic portrait I did of Shanna for her birthday a few years ago. The weird part is that it really does look like her.

Tomorrow Jennifer L. Knox

Comments

[Amy A.]

"Opal Memos Nonchalant"; a very nice cover, in my opinion---