Pineapple

The best part of today was when my CPC friend Melissa gave me a pineapple to cheer me up after my teammates and supervisors roundly rejected the book jacket I made yesterday. The book is called The Forager's Guide to the Southwest, and apparently my design was too kitschy and cluttered. Melissa attached a note to the pineapple: "Some southwestern inspiration? Maybe a stretch." Maybe... maybe a little too far west? But the pineapple sat by my side all day, and everyone who passed by did a visible double take. They'd stop and ask about it, which gave me a chance to talk about what a bad day I was having, which is all I really wanted.

I did end up designing a successful second cover for the Forager's Guide (it was actually my 5th attempt, but who's counting). It was kind of a collage of southwestern plants. Then I emailed it to show Ivy and she was like, "Whaaaaaaaaat? That's Mt. McKinley in the background!" Sure enough, I had put of photo of Alaskan fireweed on the cover, and when I went back to check the original website, it said in big letters at the top of the page, ALASKAN WILDFLOWERS. Oh.

But I'm not going to change it. It doesn't matter! It's all make-believe! In this respect, I suspect I may have it easier than my teammates. After all, no one checks my covers for factual accuracy. And I don't have to ask permission to use anyone's artwork, I can just pull whatever I want from the internet or magazines or whatever. Meanwhile, my editor friends have to contact real authors about writing fake books. I have a lot of freedom to design my own stuff (until it ends up scrapped) but my job isn't hard. Yes-- emotionally wearing and kind of tedious. I spend many many hours image-googling and learning how to use Photoshop. I'm happy to be acquiring these skills, and they're goin' on the resume, but I don't know if this is really what I want to do in life. Of course, in real life I wouldn't have to design 6 book covers a week.

It's funny, all the designers, we're in our own world in the 5th floor computer lab. Everyone else has already started casually throwing around catchwords like comp titles and tip sheets. "What the hell is a comp title?" one of the other designers asked, and the rest of us said, "I have no idea! I'm glad you don't know either!"

And we're learning our own jargon: slugs and bleeds and trims and PPB.

I made one other book jacket today, and I really think I'm improving. It's not kitschy, not cluttered (I hope). I remembered to save it as jpg and not pdf so I can upload it this time: