We started with about eight thumbnails from Ed. All of them have different variations of the main character, Kevin, in different situations. The one that we all liked the most was the one with the Macintosh on the cover.

I like going in different directions, trying to discover colors textures and other design elements. Here are some early variations cover that I came up with. Most were rejected, but it's when we got to the spine or we all agreed it was an neat idea. It's funny being a contrary designer, because you end up finding things that later work on later projects (the rough "used" idea I later used with Jeff Lemire's THE UNDERWATER WELDER, and some of the type treatments I'm using on a TOP SECRET PROJECT.

Matt Kindt did a variation using photographs, and we liked the composition when Ed integrated the drawn version. Here's Matt's version:

I also did a variation with photographs using the MacPaint window, as well as one that looked like old computer manuals from my childhood (see above). I usually like mocking out the book in 3-D program so I can get a sense of the whole book. Ed liked the rainbow spine, and also wanted to use a green/interlace motif. He later used this on the back cover.

Brett wanted the main character to be on the back cover holding the barcode like he's posing for a mug shot. So Ed came up with this:

While Brett, Ed, and I were thinking about the back cover, Ed brought up designing the end papers.

Brett thought about the endpapers as being inside of a computer, as though you were opening a computer when you opened the book. I thought it would be interesting to have schematics or a hand-drawn version of a motherboard that was extremely detailed—almost hyper real. One of the endpapers Ed provided was inverted. This gave me the idea that it would be interesting to print white ink on black paper, reminding me of blueprints. There was a concern that the white ink wouldn't look right on black paper, so we asked the printer to provide samples. The white ink actually made the paper look almost pearlescent.

Ed and I came up with a rough idea of the entire cover spread, with updates on the back that he was noodling on. I starting building variations with Kevin standing in front of the backcover "screen" were the blurbs would go.

Ed tightened the back cover. I refined the spine and his design of the back, including varying the placement of Kevin, sharpening the olive logo, and moving things around slightly.

This was the tight rough after the book came to me from Ed. A lot of what I do is take a design I worked on (usually with an author) and prepare it for print—sort of like taking a wrench and tightening the design.

I then worked with Ed to nudge the backcover, tighten up the spine (again!), and to note gloss and deboss. Ed and I were simpatico with what we both felt were important areas to gloss and deboss, and I added a slight screen glare and interlacing to the back cover. Then off to press!

You'll notice on the version below that it seems empty around the outsides—this is because we have to design books that wrap around the boards of the book and tuck under the endpapers. You'll see a mirror image on the keyboards that will fool your eye—it's something you'll never see, but like Steve Jobs' father said, we know it's there.

And now it's off to comic book shops, bookstores, ebooks, etc.

Cheers!

—Chris Ross

This is great stuff, from a review of Eddie Campbell's Lovely Horrible Stuff, at Publishers Weekly.

"Campbell is one graphic novelist who has the potential—both creative and intellectual—to reach beyond the typical audience and into the wider world of essayists traditionally inhabited by the likes of Bill Bryson or Christopher Hitchens. Coupled with personable artwork that often seems like it’s torn straight out of a sketchbook, Campbell’s erudition comes off as comforting and familiar, with a conversational presentation of heady topics that brings it all down to earth."

In the current issue of the New York Times Book Review, Neil Gaiman gives Eddie Campbell big love for Alec and From Hell.

NYTBR: "What’s the best comic book you’ve ever read? Graphic novel?"

GAIMAN: "Ow. That’s hard. I think I love Eddie Campbell’s ALEC: The Years Have Pants best of everything, but it’s a hard call."

Um, yeah... that's pretty cool.

• And this just in! Jennifer Hayden Art on a T-Shirt!

FROM JENNIFER HERSELF:
Today Comic Strip Tees introduced a t-shirt with my comic on it! This site just launched and offers a comic by a different artist each day, available on t-shirts you can buy for the next seven days... So you've only got a week to order mine! Oh my God! Available in classic black-on-white.

Last weekend I got out of the house to go to the Museum of Cartoon and Comic Arts Festival in Manhattan, where I got a chance to speak on a panel about memoir, but otherwise I've been pretty much under a rock. I'm on page 220 of my graphic novel, with 117 more to go, and I'm posting my monthly webcomic S'CRAPBOOK at Trip City, and my daily diary comic RUSHES (new this year) on its own blog. Today RUSHES was spotlighted in the "Go, Look" column at Comics Reporter.

And just this month, Underwire got this nice review.

Feel free to drop by my blog if you want to follow my adventures. And thank the Goddess for my friends!

All the best,

Jennifer

Jeffrey Brown talks about Darth Vader and Son, over at io9.

Chronicle has a pretty fifty page on their website just for this awesome book!

Stumptown Comics Fest and MoCCA are both this weekend, and Top Shelf will be representing at BOTH! Come see us if you can. Jeff Lemire and Nate Powell will be guests of the show at Stumtptown. I'm stoked to have these cats gracing us with their presence right here in my hometown. (My 7-year old son Carter — a budding capitalist — will also be present here in Portland, selling action figures from his collection at our booth as well. Good stuff, too!)

If you can't make it to Portland or New York, it so happens that we're having a bitchin' digital comics sale across multiple platforms too… so don't gimme no excuses, come get your Top Shelf on!

Oh, and David Chelsea [one of comics' foremost formalists and an outright excellent cartoonist] will be at Stumptown as well. Here is a link to his Stumptown Preview 2012.

If you want to check out just how smart and cool his comics are, buy his Top Shelf book, 24 x 2!