Thursday, January 04, 2007

Ledger Awards 2006 - Production Design of the Year

In terms of design, I wasn't that impressed, looking at the covers of the various books scattered around my office floor nothing is really jumping at me - there are some shockers and some decent looking books but very few 'wow' books.

Probably the standount is Witchking, it has a strong cover, sensible layout and fantastic colouring. As a matter of fact most of the Phosporescent Comics stuff in recent years has looked good (Azaerath #10 had a very simple eyecatching cover). Their new website looks really nice (i always forget websites are included) so I think Karen Howard should get some props.

Matt Huynh's Lost Baggage is very nice in its handmade well-considered look, as does perennial design wiz Tonia Walden's Meus Officium Est Abyssus, but part of me thinks that these hand made books are all well and good but are so limited in distribution because of the cost and time required to make them very few people get to see them. Making things for mass market requires an ability to cut corners but still make things stand out. But having said that, these two creators still have produced lovely books.

I very much liked the way Canaan Grall's books were packages at Supanova, simple personalised brown paper bag, (yes i can be easily impressed with brownpaper) the comics themselves were very nice with colourful covers which gave you a sense of what the comic is about. Similarly The cover to Rocksalt #1 is eyecatching but the book suffers from some glaring admissions like price, date and credits.

And I'd like to put up my own name for Sureshot Presents, i'm biased but i think that they are smart looking books that are value for money.

Otherwise for non-comic books Gary Lau's Shiranui looked very hot and as a more traditional zine Bad Teeth by Glenn Manders was hell sexy.

2 comments:

el-jase-o said...

I agree not much jumped out at me this year as well. My only other addition is Plump Oyster, It always has a amazing covers and seem to stand out amongst the others.

However I must say the Sureshot covers were a bit of a let down for me. They looked as if they were done ON a budget,and reminded me of the educational photocopied books we got in school.It just didn't reflect the talent held with in.

Mark Selan said...

Ben's work is not my thing but yeah (basically they freak me out), those Plump Oyster covers do catch the eye.

Whilst, covers do make up a easily defined part of production design, i think i'm nominating Sureshot as a whole.