Interview with Zoe Sadokierski

A nice interview with Zoe (the designer of Five Wounds) about her work on two recent short-story anthologies has been posted at Allen & Unwin's Tumblr. Here's an excerpt:

The initial direction was clear in terms of what kind of mood needed to be communicated, but initially we were going to use another illustrator whose work was much more linear in style. It was a collaborative process to get to the rich, layered illustrations these covers ended up with. Designers call this the ‘rebriefing’ process; over the course of a project, you need to keep re-looking at the brief and reassessing how to keep all parties (publishing, marketing, sales, the authors) happy. Sometimes this means stopping, reflecting, and changing tack.

Video Interview for The Wheeler Centre

 

This is an interview I did recently for the Wheeler Centre on Five Wounds. Thanks to George Dunford for setting it up.

Five Wounds: Review at Smṛti-Śruti

A very positive review at the blog Smṛti-Śruti (is that Icelandic?), whose author has done lots of research on Dan, Zoe and I. An extract below:

Images and little details within: the excellent cartouches throughout; the Solomonic columns with spectacular capitals and how almost inky black foreground column is; the Rota Fortunae of characters with Crow in his appropriate place; Cur's harrowed reflection on the blade; pipework winding through the text during the banquet; the curlicue of the candle holders and the efficient linework used to indicate the direction of light outside Cuckoo's bedroom door; the fencing diagrams; Cuckoo's seduction scene; Gabriella a replica of a classical Venus in Magpie's dream - excellent.

My favourite piece of art is the beautiful bit of marbling, a mushrooming red blotch against the milk white of the page particularly because it was such a simple but bold and perfect visual analogue for the text.

Five Wounds: Review at 'Vibewire'

Thanks to reviewer Dave Drayton for this very generous write-up at Vibewire. An extract is below.

The five senses are a common theme in Five Wounds and it seems fitting then, that it appeals to the senses in such detail. I have literally tried everything short of licking the book. The hardcover, thoughtful selection of paper stock and red ribbon page-marker makes the book seem like an artefact; it is a privilege to hold it. .... The scribblings peppered through out the book add to its mystery. I feel as if I am reading a diary, a draft, a spell book; something personal that was not meant for the eyes of others. .... [They] lend the book a desperate sense of urgency.

Zoe's Thesis

The designer of Five Wounds, Zoë Sadokierski, recently finished a Ph.D. on VISUAL WRITING: A critique of graphic devices in hybrid novels, from a Visual Communication Design perspective, i.e. how to read books with pictures in them, for those of you not fluent in Ph.D. speak. The thesis is now available for download via Zoë's blog.

Appearance at this year's Sydney Writers' Festival

This year I shall be appearing at the Sydney Writers' Festival on a panel with visiting writer / artist Josh Neufeld (who was the subject of an article in this weekend's Herald). The panel is on 'Graphic Novels vs Illustrated Texts', and the chair is Zoe Sadokierski, who designed my novel, Five Wounds.

The event takes place on Sunday May 23, 1-2 p.m., at the Museum of Contemporary Art, where there is a Zine fair taking place at the same time, so there should be a well-informed audience. Entrance is free.

Zoë Sadokierski

Last year I met Zoë Sadokierski to discuss how the illustrations and design of my first book, Pistols! Treason! Murder!, might relate to Zoë's research for her Ph.D. thesis. Zoë is also a freelance book designer. In particular, she has worked on several titles in Allen & Unwin's new graphic novel imprint, notably Nikki Greenberg's adapation of The Great Gatsby. It was through Zoë that I first met Erica Wagner, the publisher at Allen & Unwin who eventally bought my novel Five Wounds, on which Zoe is - of course - the designer.

On her blog, Zoë explains that:

Books that use graphic elements as a literary device are not a new phenomenon: ... In fact, it could be easily argued that historically, books have been more heavily illustrated than they are today. However, these illustrations have generally been decorative embellishments, rather than conscious interruptions, to the written text. By contrast, Zoë is interested in books that use photographs, illustrations, diagrams, experimental typography. .... in a manner intrinsic to the writing; where the visual does something more than simply reflecting the text.

How does the use of graphic elements affect book production? Zoë explains:

There are designers who write, just as there are writers who design and illustrate. Generally, these people are the exception to the rule rather than the norm. I don’t think merging the two disciplines is a realistic future. I think it’s collaboration. To explore this narrative style in a way that won’t render it a passing trend, writers and book composers (to borrow El Lissitzky’s term) need to reconsider their relationships.

If it’s appropriate for a novel to include graphic elements for narrative, rather than decorative purposes, the writer and the book composer must consider the book’s graphic elements from the initial stages of the process, rather than cake decorating a manuscript once it has cooled. In the tradition of literary pairings from Roald Dahl and Quentin Blake to Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman, I think writers and book composers need to develop closer working relationships; they need to understand the way each other work and think. It’s something that graphic novel writers and illustrators do well.

Parenthetically, it is deeply dispiriting that the area of publishing where a total absence of 'closer working relationships' is most glaringly apparent is that of mainstream photography books, where the authors of forewords and introductions often make no reference whatsoever to the images contained within, or, if they do so, discuss them in a manner so crude and reductive that one wishes they had kept silent (some negative examples are discussed here). This is a problem with the incompetent incorporation of text into a predominatly visual presentation rather than the other way around; but the consequences of this failure to conceptualise (that is: to design) the entire book as an integrated whole are even more catastrophic.