002 — All About the Book (The Object)

Revealing the book's cover and design details

Sep 27, 2024

Let's get right down to it. Here's the cover, front and back, of "THE OBSERVER'S GUIDE TO JAPANESE VENDING MACHINES":

From the start, the guiding design inspiration behind this project has been old nature field guides. And to some degree old textbooks and reference books. Compared to the glossy photographic covers that characterize these kinds of books today (photos that inevitably appear out-of-date two years after publication) the older versions were pretty plain. Their covers were bound in leather or linen with little more design than the title debossed in gold foil lettering.

They don't often make books like this anymore. Even the classic Audubon Society Field Guides were recently updated to current design conventions and now what was once a unique set of books that looked good on a shelf is more boring than ever. There are exceptions though, and I aimed for "THE OBSERVER'S GUIDE TO JAPANESE VENDING MACHINES" to be one.

So we did things the old way. I worked with the multi-talented designer Viscaya Wagner (who also happens to be my partner) to create a cover design that features the title in English and in Japanese thanks to translation aid from Sam Godin, a Yokohama-based friend and photographer who shares my affinity for old cameras and ultralight hiking packs. Then there's the author's name (Hey!).

The back cover features the same drawing that serves as the icon for this newsletter. That drawing was inspired by old patent drawings I found during my vending machine research and also the scientific illustrations that are in many field guides. (If I hadn't insisted on drawing this myself, this book might be out by now.) There's another very small drawing on the spine; I'd show it to you now, but some surprises should be saved for when we can all get our hands on this thing.

All of this is debossed with white foil into the Forest Stewardship Council-certified bookcloth that we chose to wrap the cover boards with. The gold-yellow color is a nod to the hues of ginkgo trees in the fall, when many of the photos were taken.

So that's the cover. And here's a look inside:

Choosing the paper was a big decision and I tortured myself about it for weeks. We went with an 80-pound stock that's bright, smooth, and FSC-certified. It's matte, not glossy, and has a nice feel when flipping pages—these things are important. The pages are fastened with a Smyth sewn binding, which I've read is "archive-quality;" I chose it because it allows the book to lie as flat as possible, which is better for looking at the photos.

A lot of decisions are required to make a book. One of the benefits of self-publishing is that I had full control in making them, down to choosing the pattern on the headband—that little piece of cord that covers the glue where pages meet spine (look at a hardcover on your shelf and you'll see what I'm talking about). Decision-making can be agonizing, too, and I sweat out every single one, but it means that every detail that makes "THE OBSERVER'S GUIDE TO JAPANESE VENDING MACHINES" was put through a thoughtful wringer. Like the color of the endsheets (green to reference the forests we walked through during my second trip to Japan) and the choice to work with a small art bookmaker to paint the outside edges of the pages sakura pink (expensive, unneeded, and in my mind 100-percent necessary).

None of this has ever really been about necessity though.