Artisan Roast – Edinburgh

With the Fringe programme produced and on the streets (check your local HMV all your Brits, time for another example of things I've stumbled upon and found interesting.


Seen this morning outside Artisan Roast, Broughton St, Edinburgh as I walked to work.

Handstand Press

Live at last.

I've been squeezing the design and construction of Handstand Press' new website in around my rather busy days at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. After too-ing and fro-ing, proprietor Liz Nuttal and I settled on this simple site, inspired by both Mondrian and the Cumbrian countryside, not a usual combination, it must be said.

Handstand Press publishes local history, fiction and poetry by Cumbrian writers and about Cumbria from her home in striking distance of the book town of Sedburgh.



Logo designed and drawn by Ellie Chaney

Inspired by @salidatious who, in turn, was Inspired by @cityferret

Inspired saliatious who in turn was inspired by @cityferret (but I can't find a link to her list, or gave up too quickly), I've decided to track my 2010 reading on this very blog post. Instead of creating a list of what I will read this year, which is a recipe for bitter self-contempt, I'm going to update this list throughout the year and see how I get along. Keep in mind, I'm a mighty slow reader (a little bit dyslexic, but have learned to get around it, and have trouble finding time), so it might not be as extensive a list this time next year as I'd like. But, to begin with... (Bold ones underway, bold notes in brackets are my 'review' once complete.)

Last book of 2009
Phillip Roth, Operation Shylock (eh, okay)

January 2010
Virginia Woolf, Street Haunting (one of those little Pocket Penguins, not even I will take long)(Indeed, didn't take long, but not entirely my style, a bit dated in tone, but it was great to read a Proper Writer again)
Peter Carey, Short Stories, (a reread from 10 years ago)
Forgotten just how entirely brilliant Peter Carey is. I think when I first read these, I stopped after The Crab, which is a rather mind bending story that I find entirely disturbing. By casting it aside back then I managed to miss some of the best, insightful and clever short stories I've had the chance to read. Great.
March 2010
Kazuo Ishaguru, Pale Remembered Hills in my possession, but not started yet and must go back to the library. At least I know where to find it.

Don Di Lilo, Libra In progress, and brilliant. A mix of carefully researched history, conjecture and conspiracy theory. Wish I wasn't so tired I can't read more than a page at a time. (fabulous, great book, interesting history, interesting conjecture. Love Di Lilo)

Stephen Fry in America (don't judge, it was a present, its a good read and better than that Bryson fellow)
April 2010
Gill Scott Heron Vulture, still waiting in the library to pick up. (Man, was that April. Since taken out and given up on, let's just say he was 19 when he wrote it and you can tell.)

August 2010
Hanif Kureshi, The Body
(underway, not going well, however. Premise so far, young body more attractive than old body, so get a young body and get laid. Sigh)

Wish I'd designed that

Taken in Valvonna and Crolla in Edinburgh.

Flax books on Issu Bookshelf

I was glad to see a Litfest and Flax blog with this lovely virtual bookshelf of the digital publications I designed for them as they were uploaded to Issu. Nice to see them all collected together, even if the two at the top left have lost some of their transparency.

Mostly Truthful Postcards

Postcards to promote Flax019, Mostly Truthful I'm very fond of the typography of the monospaced font at the bottom of the cover image.

Unsaid Undone in print

At some point in the development of Flax book's range of digital anthologies, a decision was made to re-purpose the, to offer a de-digitalised version. The digital versions were still given primacy, published first and the navigation marks left in place, but they would be printed so the audience could read them in bed, or in the bath. From Flax017, Unsaid Undone, I began designing the anthologies with this in mind, keeping them within the bounds of an A3 folded sheet so the text would remain at a decent font size. Above is the cover and below an in side spread featuring John Siddique's half title page, and the back cover.





Flax018, The Crowd Without, has also been printed this way and I'm told it is equally successful, but alas I've not had a chance to see it yet.

Both books can be purchased online, download or downloaded to be printed at home (if you have an A3, double sided printer) from the links above.

Found: Henderson's Gallery

I found this lovely bit of gallery advertising outside Henderson's Gallery, part of the Henderson's veggie restaurant complex (2 restaurants and a food store, does that make a complex) on and off Hanover Street in Edinburgh.


The lovely exhibition graphics adorn a wall in a quiet alley and look just great, in my humble opinion.

Mostly Truthful, Flax018

Feeling a bit Douglas Adams in this... Despite the The Crowd Without, Flax018, being my last digital anthology designed for Flax, here's another one.


Mostly Truthful is a collection of non-fiction from authors based in the North West of England. For the cover, we were trying to find something a little humorous, a reflection of an information source which claims to be authorative, but not quite (oddly, on the very day I completed this project, I waited a good hour for my wife to arrive in Edinburgh on a train that, according to railway boards not disimilar to this, had been cancelled – the ghost train arrived, unannounced and unheralded about 55 minutes late).


When editor Sarah Hymas saw this cover in its initial idea stage she laughed, so I knew we were in the right area. As the designs for these anthologies have tended to work in pairs, I wanted to move away from the dominantly white, kind of serious looking covers we did in the spring and move to a more lush and amusing style.


Mostly Truthful is available for free download from the litfest website and contains some really nice writing, including an interesting piece by Kate Feld on long term emigration and what it does to our understanding of our youths to be totally immersed in a foreign culture. The digital publication also contains links to the authors reading samples of their work and to their blogs.


If you are in Lancaster today (October 24th) you can pop to the Storey Building and enjoy the launch event which may or may not involve brass band music.

Design Jack Website

Another update to my website driven by a client. I've been experimenting with driving Flickr images to a website to create a flexible site for a local (Edinburgh) photographer to showcase her work. I came across the excellent Pictobrowser, a free, online gallery maker which can be embedded in your webpage of blog. So you get much of the convenience of a Content Management System without the database hassle. You can change the images called just by editing your Flickr sets. Alas, only for photos.