/** * @article Black Classic Press * * @since February 22, 2008 * @package Book Design * * */
Probably my most satisfying job of all time was working for Black Classic Press. The Press has been around as a publisher for thirty-odd years, publishing new scholarship and forgotten source material dealing with hard-to find pieces of Black history. During the 90′s, they also opened their own commercial digital printing company, BCP Digital Printing—moving toward owning their own means of production. I worked full-time for BCP Digital for close on seven years, making copies, binding books, cutting paper, whatever… I loved it.
I got to look through books and files of Emory Douglass illustrations to choose cover images for this. What could be better?
Two amazing pictures, and a chance to use ITC Kabel that actually made sense.
Along the way I got to try my hand at layout and design on a few new releases. These are a couple of my favorites. Mainly because of the quality of the source material, but also, there’s something that just feels important about keeping books like these in print. Its like preserving a bit of history… bringing little bits of “street knowledge” into the academic mainstream and preserving the stories that would be forgotten otherwise.
The technology involved in reprinting some of these books is pretty amazing, too. They’ve taken books printed in the 1920′s on some small-run specialty press or in the 1950′s on manual typewriters and mimeograph machines, scanned them, cleaned them up and deskewed them, and in a couple cases even indexed them so that they can used as functional reference materials today. Its a very cool process, and one I’m very glad to have been a part of.
I’m still called in from time to time for design work. Here’s a recent cover design: