If I hadn’t stumbled across this book in the Blurb Bookstore, I would have never found my way to chicagobikepolo.com, and that would be a damn shame. But I did and I did, and now I’m neck deep in bike polo links, and Wheeled Horses is this week’s Book of the Week.
Bike Polo – apparently created by an Irishman named Richard Mecredy in 1891 – has evolved into Urban Cycle Polo, which basically means fewer rules and you can play anywhere. The sport is becoming pretty popular, and was even featured in the New York Times last year (login may be required to read). You can check out more Bike Polo photos and videos here.
Robert Griffin’s book features some great photography, and offers thanks to “all of you with the guts to swing mallets from atop your bike.” Um, yeah. Swinging mallets on bikes is pretty hard core. I’ll stick to Robert’s book for the time being, but I can probably commit to patronizing one of the Chicago Bike Polo Tournament sponsors.
A heads up to NYC area Blurbarians. On Wednesday, September 17th I’ll be leading a workshop at B&H Photo’s event space in Manhattan. Join me, VP of Design and founding employee, and Mat Thorne from Maine Media Workshops for a “Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Own Commercial Quality Books.”
I think both new and seasoned Blurb bookmakers will enjoy and find value in this free three-hour workshop. There are limited seats so please register soon if you’ll be joining us. All attendees will also get a coupon for $10 off of your next book.
Here’s a bit more detail on what we’ll be covering.
This provocative workshop will provide an introduction to the fundamentals of book design as well as a hands-on demonstration of Blurb’s creative publishing platform. First, Mat Thorne, New York based photographer, designer and former Art Director at the prestigious Maine Media Workshops will provide an introduction to book design principles and aesthetics. Topics covered will include: Introduction to design and how it applies to the world of self- promotion; an overview of typography; a breakdown of the photo book format and it’s typical contents; and a discussion of image sequence and it’s importance.
Next, Chad Jennings, VP of Design and founding employee at Blurb, provides a detailed step-by-step demonstration on how to make, publish, share, and sell commercial-quality books using Blurb’s creative publishing platform. Whether you want to make a killer portfolio, client deliverable, or the next great American photography book, this session shows and tells you what you need to know about BookSmart, Blurb’s free book layout software: Blurb’s web tools; and what you need to get started or hone your bookmaking chops. Part inspiration, part instruction, you’ll get some great tips straight from Blurb’s top designer.
Topics covered:
• Introduction and overview on Blurb’s creative publishing platform
• How to use Adobe Photoshop to prepare your images
• The whys of design planning and what to think about before
starting your book
• Basic as well as advanced tricks using Blurb’s BookSmart software
• Color management and the Blurb platform
• Online marketing tools and our Set Your Price program
• How to create your own custom layouts in Adobe Photoshop and
InDesign
• Pacing and sequencing of your book, including effective use of
white space
• Utilizing sample and inspirational books created by professional
photographers
Hope to see you there. Wed, Sept 17. 1:00-4:00 pm. Sign-up Here.
One of the staples of today’s Web 2.0 companies is the existence of Guitar Hero or Rock Band in the office** (we have both, thank you very much), and frequent jam sessions with an adult beverage or two. It’s like the evolution of the foosball table I suppose. (Yes, we have one of those too.)
Anyway, BusinessWeek Small Business wrote a story on entrepreneurs boosting company morale, and Blurb was featured for our Rock Band jam sessions. Truth be told, these sessions have been less frequent of late, but maybe a little love from a national business magazine will help inspire us to rock out more often.
Of course if you’re in the Bay Area this weekend you can get plenty of inspiration from real-life rockers at the SF Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival in Golden Gate Park. The lineup includes Beck, Radiohead, Wilco, Tom Petty, Cake, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper, Steve Winwood, Primus and about 60 other bands. Good times, hopefully we’ll see ya out there.
*Yes, we’re poking fun at ourselves.
**This trend may have actually jumped the shark already, but if that’s the case we’ll just play ironically.
I love discovering cool things that I had no idea existed…but when they’re really cool, I tend to hate that I wasn’t first on the scene. And so it is with this week’s Book of the Week, Recordheads: A Photo Book by Rick Hebenstreit.
When we found this book we thought, “hey, cool idea.” Little did I know we had stumbled onto a full-blown craze also called Sleeveface, defined by Wikipedia as an internet phenomenon wherein one or more persons obscure or augment body parts with record sleeve(s), causing an illusion.
I dug deeper. (I always do.) And what I found is that Sleeveface is more than a craze, it’s a way of life. Check out the website. The YouTube how-to video. The flickr group. The Facebook group.
That’s good times right there.
To quote the YouTube Sleeveface video, “once the principals of Sleeveface are mastered, the possibilities are endless.” Thanks Rick Hebenstreit - we’re believers.
Enjoy urban portraits? So do we. The Tate Modern has been hosting the exhibition, Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photography, since May. The exhibition closes on August 31st, but will live on in a Blurb book. Blurb has partnered up with the Tate Modern and Flickr to create a photography book of 100 urban portraits submitted by the public.
The competition is now closed, and the Tate Modern has announced the 100 winners whose work will appear in the Street or Studio book. All 100 winners will receive a copy of the book, which will also be available for purchase in the Blurb bookstore. The winning photographs were selected by a panel of curators, artists, photographers and others. The 100 photographs will also form a slideshow in the gallery and be archived on Tate Online as part of the exhibition’s website.
To see a slideshow of the winning entries, click here. To visit the Flickr group with the winning entries and discuss, click here.
There is some truly outstanding work here - congratulations to everyone involved, we can’t wait to see the book!
**image above courtesy of Ciarli Cappa, and will be featured in the Blurb book as one of the winning photographs. To see more of Ciarli’s images on flickr, click here.
If you’re an old hand at marketing your Blurb books, you probably know all about our promotional tools like Badges, Bookmark It, and turning on Book Preview.
But those really in the know make the most of their personal networks by using the Announce feature. With Announce, you can email anyone a personalized invitation to come check out your book (even if that book is marked as private). The only problem for those power promoters has been risking RSI by typing in all those friends and family email addresses.
With our new “Import Contacts” tool, it’s a whole lot easier to quickly build your invitation list. Just choose your email service (Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, or Hotmail), log in, and all your contacts are there for your perusal – just pick the people you want to invite. If you’re more of an Outlook person than a webmail person, we’ve still got you covered. Import Contacts can also upload contact files in CSV - a file format that most popular email clients allow you to easily export to.
Contacts can be securely saved on Blurb.com, so you don’t have to repeat the import process each time you want to announce a new Blurb book.
If you’ve created a Blurb book and want to try out the new Import Contacts tool, go to any of your book’s detail pages, and click on the Announce link (which you’ll see just below your book’s cover image). Once on the Announce page, click the Import Contacts button to get started.
Paul Melcher, named by American Photo as one of the 50 most influential individuals in American photography, says, “Olivier Douliery does not capture faces and places, he gets their soul.” After checking out Olivier’s book, Portraits, and selecting it to be this week’s Book of the Week, we’d have to agree.
Olivier is an award-winning photographer who covers the White House and news inside and outside the United States. In addition to his White House and news photography, Olivier also captures such stories as Michael Phelps preparing for the 2008 Olympics. (Visit his website and click on Portfolio to see this collection. And nice mustache Michael. We approve.) Among his subjects in Portraits include Sir Elton John, Brad Pitt, Barack Obama, and George Clooney. It doesn’t get much more A-list than that.
This isn’t Olivier’s first Blurb book - he submitted his book 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to Photography.Book.Now too. Looks like Olivier could probably create an entire library wing of books with all the amazing photography work he’s done. And as long as he keeps shooting them, we’ll keep printing them.
Congratulations on all your success Olivier. And feel free to put us on the list for your next book release party.
