Customer Reviews

Art of McSweeney's

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2 star:		(1)
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I really love this account of the making of the first 30 issues of the McSweeney's Quarterly. Not quite unbiased as Oddi Printing who'm I work for have printed a large number of their issues. But still it's a great insight into the way Dave Eggers and the people at McSweeney's do things both as far as content goes but not less interesting the actual making of the books - design and production. How they have tried all sorts of crazy and unconventional things and the result is a showcase of modern bookmaking and this book is a must read for book designers and publisher.

McSweeney's was started as a literary journal in 1998 as a quarterly journal to publish new fiction, stories and articles that attract the interest of the publisher/editor. This has been combined with an open, carefree design that seems to know no boundaries beyond the limit of what can be printed on a piece of paper. As a result they have developed an eclectic style that is clearly all their own. To be more specific, each of their issues, published more or less quarterly, is made to look, feel, and be very different from the last. 'Normal' magazines, say Time Magazine has a standardized look, red border, the word Time at the top, etc. Issue number 18 for instance bares no relationship to issue 17 which was put together as a packet of mail, while 18 is a bound book.

This book, in turn, is a rather random description about how each of the issues came about from a design point of view. Each issue is its own story, told by the people that came up with the idea and put it together.

You talk about thinking outside the box....

I mean literally stinks. Maybe my copy was hot off the press and the ink is still fresh or something, but- phew! I even had to wash my hands with soap after touching the pages, to get rid of the smell. (Not something I've ever included in a book review before, and although it doesn't help matters any, not the reason for the rating I gave it.)

This book is a great example of the chance we take buying things on the internet. If I'd seen it in a bookstore, opened it up and flipped through, I never would've bought it. Based on the description ("...this book showcases their award-winning art...it features hundreds of images...") I expected a compilation of the best page designs from the actual McSweeney's Issues. Like a "greatest hits" album. Well, maybe their words are technically true, but I feel they're misleading. If you really want the award-winning designs, you have to cough up the cash and collect them issue by issue.

I can't get into reading it, and I found out I don't like Chris Ware as much as I thought I did. I put off reviewing it because I feel bad about giving low scores (hence the 2-stars instead of just one) but I wish there had been a review that said this back when I was deciding whether to buy. so here it is.