The digital marketing folks at the Killarney Hotels Group in Ireland have put together this visual. It's an interactive StoryMap called ‘A Literary Landscape of Ireland’ and features Ireland’s most prolific writers and poets and the places that featured prominently in their lives. I didn't know that JRR Tolkien spent time in Ireland while writing Lord of the Rings and that the origin of the character Gollum might very well have come from the name of a cave in Burren, Co. Claire. Pretty cool.
Business Cards for the Book Set
If you work somewhere within the book universe and have been thinking about updating your business card you might want to have a look at this recent post at Flavorwire highlighting some pretty nifty examples. Here's a taste: Business card for Kristin Partlo, a librarian at Carleton College’s Gould Library Miniature book-shaped cards for the publisher Paul & Marigold by Singapore design firm Foreign Policy Letterpress printed card for Olivia Waite by Boxcar Press A business card that doubles as a bookmark Pictured at top: Business card for Morgan Dillard by Tower of Babel Design More: Bookish Business Card Designs |...
Jack London was an oyster pirate: Weird jobs authors held before they were famous (infographic)
Infographic courtesy of Unplag
Digital Treat: Thanks to Cambridge University we can now see inside the world’s first multicolored printed book
The book is called Shi zhu zhai shu hua pu, ‘Manual of Calligraphy and Painting’ and was first published in 1633 in Nanjing. The book is comprised of eight categories - birds, plums, orchids, bamboos, fruit, stones, ink drawings (round fans) and miscellany - and is illustrated by 50 different artists and calligraphers. It is the earliest known example of multicolor printing in the world: printed by the technique of polychrome xylography known asdouban invented and perfected by Hu Zhengyan 胡正言 (1584-1674). The method involves the use of multiple printing blocks which successively apply different coloured inks to the paper to reproduce...
Bookish gems from the inaugural Seattle Art Fair
The first ever Seattle Art Fair is in the books and by most accounts it's another feather in the cap for the Emerald City. The tech boom with its inherent money showers combined with our proximity to Asia make for an enticing mix and when Paul Allen throws his hat in the ring usually something good happens. I have been saying this for a while now; there are few cities in America as well positioned as Seattle to become one of the leading cities of the 21st century. The show consisted of a healthy mix of local galleries with some of the big boys from...