Mistercliff's Page

I'm always finding great articles and videos from BoingBoing about Publishing. Here's a great video about ways to address the inevitable future of publishing:

Here's a great website devoted to introducing us to vintage childrens books that remain interesting: http://www.vintagechildrensbooksmykidloves.com/

Do different colors make you respond differently? http://lifehacker.com/5147887/color-study-suggests-red-aids-recall-blue-boosts-creativity

Here's some royalty free graphics for children's stuff. The resolution is low, but maybe with Illustrator's auto-trace feature...

Though I'm an atheist, I can't help but look forward to the upcoming Book of Genesis graphic novel. A literal adaptation of the first chapter in the bible, it's been years in the making and should come out in fall of 2009. I've always loved mythology and the Old Testament's God vs. Humanity story makes for great potential in a graphic novel. Continue

Pantone predicts that this shade of yellow will be the color of 2009. What are your thoughts? It's bright and happy,… Continue

Here's a site with some of the best book covers of the year.

Here's a really good op-ed post giving advice to publishers in a changing world that I agree with completely.

Here's a beautiful (and free!) font, the Fell family. It has a tried-and-true historical feeling to it and all sorts of features. The font is free although there are some restrictions such as the need to refrence it when you use the font, but never-the-less I can see myself enjoying this one! Check it out here!

Life Hacker, a website I visit frequently, just had a review about a program called TextFlow which is designed to make collaboration a lot easier. I've not used it yet, but it sounds promising. Check out the article, and let me know how the program works if you try it out!

Here's a review from Creative Pro talking about an upcoming paper rating system that labels paper based on environmental options. They have another that describes environmental inks.

Check out an amazing book cover at http://nytimesbooks.blogspot.com/

Pacific Northwest author Sherman Alexie was on the Colbert Report recently to talk about his new book. Check it out online at http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/full-episodes/index.jhtml?episodeId=189697.

I have been in Daegu, South Korea for nearly a week working at an English Language school named E.C.C. For all you editors out there, this is a really interesting (and challenging) way of using your editing skills. I am working with kindergarten through middle-school students. Back in Portland I would spend hours ensuring that documents had the correct em or en dashes, here I help students understand why there is no "twenteen". For those of you having trouble finding good publishing jobs, someth… Continue

I just received this email abotu a bloggers confrence in Portland that may be of some interest to you. Things are definitely changing with computers and the internet with respect to children's literature and this confrence will address it. Here is the email:

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The following message was sent to the JacketFlap friends of Tracy Grand:

I wanted to let you know about an upcoming conference focused on blogs and children's / YA books - the second annual Kidlit Bloggers Conference. You… Continue

A new site from Harper Collins is opening up that will be a "global slush pile" combining social networking with manuscripts where readers can support books they want to see and publishers can comb through for new material. This promises to be interesting. Check it out!

For those of you who make sure that even your text messages uphold the Chicago standards there's a new FireFox extension you might be interested in: YouTube Comment Snob. Its customizable interface lets you literally block comments from YouTube videos that contain too much punctuation, no capitals, all capitals, or too many spelling errors (you can choose how much is too much).

Designer Manfred Klein has posted an insane number of amazing fonts online. Free for personal use, but if you do anything for profit he requests that you donate to a charity like Doctors Without Borders. Everyone wins here! Most the fonts are TT but there are some OpenType mixed in. Check them out here.

Here's a full-screen flash website that mimics a Windows desktop with classic books designed in a fake Powerpoint document that lets you read books when you're at work. It's clever and totally worth a look, but I question its usefullness.

Usually in books dealing with science fiction that takes place in the future people tend to speak in regular English. 1984 was the exception that proves the rule. Other stories like Battlestar Galactica or Red Dwarf hint at linguistic changes by introducing made-up slang but leaving the bulk of the dialog intact. Here's a site in which its author describes in depth what s/he thinks will happen to the English language ov… Continue