Book needs a print-ready cover

[semioticrobotic]

I suppose we should develop a cover for this thing! It's a brave, new world now that our branding has changed and we're no longer beholden to prior templates. I can access internal resources (i.e., a Red Hat designer) to help us with this, but want to offer the opportunity to other community members who might be interested in designing a book in our awesome series.

Issue #1 is a blocker for this. We need to finalize a title before we can plaster it on a cover! @LauraHilliger has already written an awesome preface with me, so that's covered.

Please see discussion in #1 to sound off on title suggestions. Otherwise, let's talk covers here.

[LauraHilliger]

was playing around and i liked my concept. A proper designer could help make this better!

[funnelfiasco]

I love the concept!

[semioticrobotic]

Love the concept too. A few thoughts from me:

• If the title were something like Human at a Distance, should the "highlighted" silhouettes be spread throughout the "matrix of people" rather than clustered together, in a pod of four? In other words: Should they be at a distance from one another, but all the same color to indicate that they're connected?
• I think I would prefer a subtitle without a colon in it, because that would lead to some weird conventions when spelling out the book's entire title (Human At a Distance: An Open Organization Guide: Distributed Teamwork).
• With recent books, we've ceased the convention of listing authors' names on the cover, in favor of offering a complete, alphabetical listing inside (see the Guide for Educators, for example). Of course I do not mean to deny @LauraHilliger the recognition she very much deserves for helping this project come alive; I just wanted to note it here.

[trncb]

Great work @LauraHilliger!

• Similar to @semioticrobotic, my first thought was that the highlighted figures should be "distributed" (😉) rather than in a cluster.
• Also, the colon in the subtitle might be a bit much, what about something like An Open Organization Guide To Distributed Teamwork?

[LauraHilliger]

+a million to the distributed people idea, I had it 2 seconds after i posted the images and then lazily did nothing about it.

Ignore my colon (that's none of your business hahahhaha). But seriously, agree, let's get rid of it...after moving a few of the people it looks like:

[LauraHilliger]

maybe we make a bigger team...

[trncb]

@LauraHilliger The distributed team members look better. What does it look like with another 3 team members added to the cover?

Also, the "To" in An Open Organization Guide To Distributed Teamwork. 😉

[tigert]

The big grid of people is nice.

I wonder how it would work if it was somewhat randomly arranged with connecting lines between people, like nodes?

[LauraHilliger]

heya! I've been super busy this week, so I thought I would just upload the Sketch file i made this in in case anyone else had more time to play ;) It's called play.sketch and is in the repo (@semioticrobotic if that's not kosher, please delete as it has, for example, our logo as a build file)

[semioticrobotic]

Cool! Thanks, @LauraHilliger. I see no issue with it. @tigert from @RedHatOfficial has agreed to lend some design help with the project, and I'm glad to see him chiming in here. @tigert, please do feel free to use the sketch file if that's useful to you. I will also send you our brand guidelines and colors under separate cover.

[LauraHilliger]

Added more people, made them all our navy:

[semioticrobotic]

Love the iteration, @LauraHilliger. My preference would be to eliminate the navy icon in the bottom row of icons (just looks cleaner to my eye), but I am not picky. Thanks for this. So cool.

[LauraHilliger]

done.

[semioticrobotic]

😍

[semioticrobotic]

(See @trncb comment above about possibility of including the word "to" in "An Open Organization Guide to Distributed Teamwork.") 👆

[LauraHilliger]

oops 😊 forgot that! So if we're liking this, maybe you want to link to the proper dimensions? Or @trncb would you be willing to prepare the file for print? How and when should we get this from a screenshot to production? (Sketch file in this repo is the most recent!)

[semioticrobotic]

Thanks so much, @LauraHilliger. I think this is looking great.

Here are the book creation guidelines and dimensions from Lulu. These include required cover dimensions and resolutions for printing.

What we now have (above) is roughly one-third of what we need for the "complete package" to Lulu. That is, in addition to a front cover, we also need the back cover and the spine, all measured and typeset appropriately. Lulu accepts these as a single file in a standard graphics format (usually JPG or PNG). For an example of a print-ready cover, see the Leaders Manual.

@tigert has agreed to assist with polishing and preparing our book cover, and I plan to speak with him about it today, as a matter of fact! But @tigert is working on several community design projects concurrently and I know we are in a queue. So I might propose a preliminary pathway to publication that 1) gives @tigert the breathing room to create a "full" cover and 2) let's us get 1.0 out the door in a timely way.

What if we published v1.0 in electronic formats (PDF and ePub) only? We could use this excellent front cover design from @LauraHilliger as the PDF book cover, since these versions don't typically have the "back" cover included. We'd just need to resize it to six inches by nine inches (6" x 9"). We're already copy editing the guide now, and it could be done in a week or two. I'd need a day to typeset and format it.

And then, when the cover is ready (per @tigert's guidance), we launch v1.1, a flagship feature of which is the availability of the printed edition. We would also include in that version the in-process chapters from @lukefretwell and @LappleApple, as well as a piece that @RonMcFarland is working on.

Just a thought. Open to feedback and suggestions.

[LauraHilliger]

just resized the Sketch file to 6x9! Great idea to do electronic and then offer print later, good for marketing toooo.

[semioticrobotic]

Thanks, @LauraHilliger.

Since that plan seems fine with you, I will do my best to clean the rest of these files up and produce a set of galleys ASAP. Our original launch date for v1.0 was December 15 (tomorrow as of this writing), and while hitting that seems highly unlikely, I am more confident I can get something done by the end of the week. I'd better, anyway, because after that I'm on winter break. ❄️

[semioticrobotic]

Still working on the galleys, but just to confirm with @LauraHilliger that the cover worked perfectly during testing (as looks amazing!).

[semioticrobotic]

Changing the issue's title a bit, refocusing and aligning it with plans for v1.1 release.