Covermakers Chat Thread

[bart]

Happy New Year!!

Today I posted my 199th cover for the Short Poetry Collection.
I was planning to hand over this collection to someone else, after #200.
Any takers for the next 100!

I gave every 100 covers a different lay-out:

So it's up to my successor to come up with a new design.

Bart

[Basquetteur]

Hi Bart and other friends!

I would like to first lay my hat for your enormous contribution with the 200 covers for this series. Wow!. And that is on top of your other contributions, the other covers, the admin tasks, the dutch site, to name a few I am aware of!.

If there is not anyone else volunteering, I would offer to do the continuation, but only for 30 editions. 100 looks very daunting to me.
I understand that this series is produced once a month, and that frequency is challenging.

I am currently doing already a number of series (and some finished), the longest ones are the compilation de poemes in French (in fact I took over from someone else), and Tappan's "the World's story" (16 volumes, and I have done 8 so far).

I do not know if it is possible or desirable or feasible to share the making of the covers of this series by more than one person. It would be desirable, I think, in that case to give continuity, so a common template would have to be shared and use in common, (and agreed). It might be helpful that the two persons should probably use the same or compatible software for drawing and editing the preparatory working raster images. I use gimp. Or, if not using the same software, to use common layered formats for the preparatory files. That would be: .xcf (for gimp) or .PSD, or .ORA. May be that is overly complicated.

Happy New Year!!

Today I posted my 199th cover for the Short Poetry Collection.
I was planning to hand over this collection to someone else, after #200.
Any takers for the next 100!

I gave every 100 covers a different lay-out:

So it's up to my successor to come up with a new design.

Bart

[annise]

The advantage of series like this is you can make them in advance - all but the pdf. So it isn't so much of a continual tie. Once you've decided on the "image" you are using you can make a batch.

Anne

[Availle]

I'm happy to take over / help with the poetry covers. I agree with Anne that once you have a design fixed, you can batch process pretty much everything except the .pdf - and if you drop the reader's names and final length from there, you can even do that in advance.

It would be nice to have the next batch of 100 in one same design to continue with what has been done before, but that would be more than 8 years, so it's a bit much to ask for a single cover designer perhaps. But then again, one could indeed share the template if it's getting too much, we hand over BC projects, so why not covers too?

I also work with gimp.

[annise]

It's usually the fonts I have trouble with when people have dropped out of series, but as long as I can clear the background I just copy and paste.

Anne

[Availle]

If we agree on a template, we can note down the font. The next designer can then just download the font and install it on their own computer. No big deal.

[Basquetteur]

If we agree on a template, we can note down the font. The next designer can then just download the font and install it on their own computer. No big deal.

Dear Availle,

if you wish, we can then do this series "in duetto". I do not think that is proper English. We both use the gimp and therefore we can share the xcf file template. As regards the fonts, I tend to use public domain fonts (or at least freely available, not commercial ones). As you indicate, we can as a minimum share the name of the font(s) in use in the template. If they are public domain we can even exchange the font files.

So the next things to discuss would be how to decide which ones we take, alternating?, every two?. Also, the time limit, I proposed 30 covers. The idea would be to go on until the 300, but at the number 30 it would be offered for other covermakers to continue. Would that 30 be fine for two covermakers?. May be 50?.

And of course another other element is agreeing on the template. I like the series compilation de poemes: simply rotating a set of colours and the position of the Librivox logo results in a wide variety of covers. Each of them is different, but similar, may be too similar. This was not my original design. I simply evolved the design a little bit.

https://archive.org/details/librivoxaudio?and%5B%5D=compilation+de+poemes&sin=&sort=titleSorter

This compilation series is open ended, as far as I understand. And so is the short poetry collection.

Availle, I like very much many of your covers. So I am curious to find how the collaboration would come out.
I am just only a cover maker and you have a lot of different tasks.

Surely there are other aspects I am not considering.

Basquetteur

[KevinS]

Lovely cover for The King of Elfland's Daughter, msfry!

[TriciaG]

Bart - thanks for doing the poetry covers for so long! I have admired the latest design, although I never said anything about it. The deeper colours appeal to me more than flowers and pastels. It is just personal preference, of course.

A collaboration for the poetry covers sounds complicated. IF no one wants to take them on alone, then maybe I could see one person doing every odd-numbered month, another person doing every even-numbered month. But anything beyond that (even coordinating the design) sounds like more work than it is worth.

It doesn't have to be a 100-month commitment. We could even have one person do a year of covers, then pass it on. Or one person could do it until they get tired of it, no set number of months to begin with. (They would need to give a month's warning, like Bart just did, so someone else could take over.)

[Availle]

I'm happy to work something out with Basquetteur

I think a shared template for the next 100 is feasible, and since Bart started with it, we should keep it up, if only to honor his own commitment. Beyond that "I do the odd ones, you the even ones and in leap years..." that's too complicated I think.

If Basquetteur is willing to take on the next 30, and IF he doesn't want to go forward and IF I'm still around afterwards (that's in 2.5 years after all), I'm happy to take over (or come up with another solution then).

We could also work on a shared template, but that's up to him.

[TriciaG]

Well, okay then - never mind.

[Basquetteur]

I am sending a pm to Availle with some proposals

Cheers

Basquetteur

[annise]

I'm happy for you both work out a plan, bearing in mind that none of us can be sure of being able to make a January 2001 cover, let alone 8 years away, real life has a habit of interfering, or we just might get bored with it. I know I don't get a creative thrill with those I've started or taken over - what seems a good idea for number 1 does not see so good 10 later.
And take https://librivox.org/group/609?primary_key=609&search_category=group&search_page=1&search_form=get_results - Salvationist started this series and faithfully continued it until he married and hopes to come back sometime so I've made the later ones - if you look hard you can tell but it still looks like a series and as I've found out there are 50 books in the series, someone else may need to take over sometime

Anne

[Lion24]

I have a question regarding the collections with multiple poems or chapters. Since I claimed https://librivox.org/les-fleurs-du-mal-by-charles-baudelaire/ how do I have to handle the cd case when this happens? Should I write the name of the readers only or do I have to insert all of the 152 titles in the single page?

[TriciaG]

You don't have to put the readers' names or section titles on any CD cover. They're nice to have, but they're not necessary.