That dude is so boring, I can't even watch past the first minute.

Ha! That's crazy.

If he invests in a nicer shirt he could be the Sam Harris of typography.

I just finished all his videos. Once you get over the fact that you intensely hate him, he is more right than wrong.

He must be a great designer ... I mean, he is wearing a black t-shirt.

I agree with Nick - this guy is awful!

Oh yeah, popup windows in print. I like those too.

-=®=-

I dunno - I’m sort of all for “a unique wavy shape that sets a vibrational frequency and brands the book instantly.” Who can argue with that???? :o)

It used to be called a radio spot.

What a talented guy!

I'd much rather see a spread that looks like it's under water than that boring old-fashioned black-and-white format. Now I know what I've been doing wrong all these years - I must tap into my vibrational frequency and do something about my dynamism on the page; two things that I didn't even know about until now.

Thank goodness he's out there giving us the benefit of his knowledge.

It's strange that he gave no mention of taste and discernment.

Nick Cooke

It’s strange that he gave no mention of taste and discernment.

That's because he has none.

I'm dealing with a client who also has none - he is the product of market research and focus groups. It's incredibly frustrating because he can't have a plain old reaction to anything, it's all about whether that approach has been successful in the marketplace. We're talking about cookbook design here, not branding strategy. The editor mentioned she liked the design of the Dean & Deluca cookbook and his reaction was: that's a great brand. Which misses the point.

The guy makes the point that plain traditional book typography leaves the text open to interpretation, and doesn’t allow the author to specify the exact points they feel are important. It’s interesting that this criticism is leveled at holy books – any crackpot can read any interpretation they like into a given text. Taken to its extreme maybe we should do away with books completely and have a series of bulleted lists, or better yet a PowerPoint deck?

Hey wait a minute, isn't this GOOD NEWS for designers!!!!

I mean, it's not like we just get to design *one page* for a paltry fee, and then an editor dumps text into the format to fill up the rest of the book.

Now we get to apply design leverage to EVERY PAGE in the product, and that means: MORE MONEY.

So why ya'll bitchin'?!?!!

God Nick. This all makes me think about this nutty marketing guy at a college textbook publisher I worked for. He came in with this intro Spanish book and had the on-staff book designers create every single page as if the whole project was one big Dynamite magazine. This book eventually consumed a full third of the design staff, designing and redesigning for more than two years. When it was finished the whole thing flopped.

I'm afraid there is a perception that for children to learn the entire universe must resemble a box of Lucky Charms.

Maybe we will all evolve until the phone book comes in 200 volumes and every entry resembles a MySpace page.

one word: lithos

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I am reminded of music in the 1980s - I liked songs and had my own interpretation of them - and all of a sudden there was MTV. I felt sorry for the generation growing up with that music - they would never be able to go into their minds and see what could emerge.

So true, Jackie.

Personally, I am not about to sit down with a picture book — and have “pop-ups” come into my life. I block them on the net - and I will block them in my reading.

Have you seen the commercials for Blu-Ray DVDs? More pop-ups!

Damn, Si, I am having enough trouble finishing a typeface, now you want me to write a book to print it with, too? Let's see, I will set it in Froggy Passionate :-)

ChrisL

After gradually recovering from the tramua of viewing most of this, I started googling to get the story on this crew. The leader seems to be this Kirchenbaum, who says in a self-published interview that she never had an art or design lesson in her life and is bad at dealing with technology.

She teaches middle school in New York City.

The target of her 'Beyond Guttenberg' book are self-publishers like herself, who don't know anything about design and want to learn. This talk, though, was given to the National Speakers Association, which has nothing to do with either design or publishing. It was basically showing off their skills in BS--oops I mean public speaking.

The guy in the video posted by Patty is I don't know who. The contact person at Stunning Books (they sure stun me!) who supposedly is her publisher is called Martin Rimm. Perhaps the other videos mention who the speaker is, if not him.

I don't know if it's the same guy, but there is a Martin Rimm who was an engineering undergrad at Carnegie Mellon who in 1995 wrote an infamous research report about internet pornography, which got into the Georgetown Law Review. But though referred to by Time Magazine and quoted in Congress, it was so bogus that it led to an inquiry and criticism by the Carnegie Mellon faculty. This same Martin Rimm seems to be the author of the book "The Pornographer's Handbook: How to Exploit Women, Dupe Men, & Make Lots of Money".

I find all this information strangely reassuring. So Patty, you might breathe a little easier, as I have, knowing that in all likelihood this crew has never been hired by anybody to design anything.

I have some snake oil that I might contact them about selling, though.

I don't think the the Martin Rimm of stunningbooks.com is the porno dude. In one of the videos he mentioned that he had been a student of Milton Glaser [sic]. Anyhoot, another woman involved in this is Ruth Rimm (wife?), and I found this stunning press release about her endeavours into postmodern [sic] design.

Didn’t Eric Gill publish the odd tract set in Perpetua?

Certainly, quite a few.

“Bursting with information and ideas!”

The yellow pages?

Excuse me for just jumping in here, but I can't resist commenting on something like this. Apparently, Milton Glaser really likes this Goodbye Gutenberg Book.

http://www.atlasbooks.com/marktplc/01295.htm

"...what world renowned graphic designer Milton Glaser described as 'the visual history of the universe and its relationship to writing.' "

"Bursting with information and ideas."
Milton Glaser, world renowned graphic designer

ugh.

As a snotty Canadian I could not help but note their distribution strategy...

"This special limited first edition of Goodbye Gutenberg is being made available to United States customers only."

Hmm pity.

"There's a new one born every minute" is what comes to mind most.

How old is Milton Glaser, again?

dr

Maybe Glaser was taken out of context with “Bursting with information and ideas.”?
If you add some more words the meaning changes quickly:
“Bursting with information and ideas...” which make you want to throwup!

ChrisL

PS: Milton must be 30 years older than I am and that makes him quite capable of a senior moment :-)