Memoir: The Truth of “Liar, Liar”
The fact that Minnesota is a hotbed of musical talent was established long before “the purple one” broke out. In the summer of 1965, the Castaways, a garage band started in the suburbs just south of Minneapolis, would take their hit “Liar, Liar” all the way to #1.
While the story has been documented before, the entire story, including the band’s meteoric rise and return to Earth, as told by songwriter, keyboardist, and band leader Jim Donna, was a project long in the making.
So it was that, fifty-seven years later, Jim and I were talking about how to turn his collected notes and pictures into a book.
Design Challenges
- Incorporate a wide array of photographs
- Work at multiple levels, for the readers and the skimmers
- Keep the price point manageable for direct sales
- Ensure the book feels substantial
- Build both a b&w print and a color ePub edition
- Fun! This book is for the memories of the kids who first watched the band in the ’60s
Cover Development
Playful, ’60’s, rock-n-roll. We wanted a cover that was both catchy and true to the era. Jim provided me with several comps—other books about bands from the era, particularly those from Minnesota. Some were good, while others left a lot to be desired. But at least it seemed we would feature an image of the band. And we agreed that a square softcover book, an 8 x 8, would be a good balance of size, cost, and reminiscent of an album cover.
I worked up some ideas based on their publicity photo, in some cases digitally manipulating the photo to achieve a better composition. I was trying out a variety of styles to see which one resonated with Jim the most.
First round of cover concepts
Jim loved the blue-toned photo of the band in concert (the fifth option shown here), as did many former colleagues of Jim’s—anyone who was in a band at the time.
Second round of cover concepts
But ultimately, we decided together that the version with the light blue field (a screened back version of the original sheet music of Liar, Liar) was stronger. However, I made sure to include the band picture on the back cover, as I had worked up a couple of alternative placements to test the market. The original design really connected with people.
Layout & Typesetting
The decision to create an 8 x 8 square book was based on the idea of layout flexibility. It would be poor design to run text across the full width of an eight-inch page—the line length is too long for comfortable reading. So I set the book up with a nominal four-inch column and a generous sidebar space. The sidebar allowed me to bump out photos and various pull quotes and excerpts from the story.
This layout gives the book more energy and surprise while reading. Additionally, it enables readers to easily skim through the content, flipping through to find photos and quotes. I could also use the sidebar area for chapter titles. And the fun bit of tchotchke that Jim really wanted, a scan of the original promotional ’45 of “Liar, Liar,” rotating a bit with each subsequent chapter. Cliché, sure. But still fun!
Since the target audience for this book was teenagers in the ’60s, Jim also wanted to make sure things were easily readable. Not necessarily large type, but definitely clear type. I created a few sample pages for Jim in various fonts and type sizes to ensure he was satisfied with the results. Once that was nailed down, I could take the fully edited manuscript and flow it through my designed layout.
A word about font choices
I chose to use PS Fournier (Adobe) as the body text because I wanted something that, while still eminently readable, had a bit of character. Something with a bit of contrast (thicks-vs-thins), but that would still work on the planned digital press. Plus Stephane Elbaz’s work offers many weights, and a clean, well-paired italic.
Headings and subheadings are in all caps Futura, very apropos for the time period of the book (1960s), and one of my favorite fonts to use. It is clean, readable, and well styled in its thin weight. The title and pull quotes are where I could really have fun, and I chose Mouse Memoirs by Astigmatic, a font I’ve used previously, although only in children’s books. Its playfulness seemed to capture the mood for these teenagers in the late 60s, heading off on their wacky adventure.
For the subtitle, Whiz Bang Pow (Brittney Murphy), another children’s book repeat, kept the funky hand-drawn unevenness idea going.
Photo editing
This book contains fifty-four images. As is often the case with most of the memoirs I design, some of the photos are good—sharp, clear, and well-scanned. Some of the photos require a lot of work. Touch-ups, noise and dust removal, repairing tears, and generally cleaning up older photos are par for the course. It is important to me that we always get the pictures as good as we can.
I also wanted to run some test pages. By this point in the process, Jim had decided to use Bookmobile to print and bind the book, which is a good decision. Bookmobile generally does excellent work. However, I have had issues with their printing of black and white images in the past, and I wanted to ensure we had everything dialed in correctly before proceeding with the book’s photo processing. More on that, below.
In this book, the task of photo editing was further complicated by the ePub version. In principle, since the print book is black and white and about half of the images were already black and white, I could have simply used black and white photos in the eBook. But being the detail-oriented type, I decided it would be a nice touch to retain the color images where they existed for the electronic version.
I built the ePub after completing, and based on, the print version of the interior. That meant I needed to manage both the color and black-and-white versions of the images in my master file simultaneously. More on that, also, below.
Indexing
While this book is part memoir, and tells the story of Jim’s life during this exciting period, it is also a reference. Since he discusses the music scene of the time—the places they played, the people they met—we decided that this book should include an index. At least a simple one.
The mechanics of an index are easy enough—an alphabetical list of terms, and page numbers. However, creating an index is anything but simple. For a full-blown index, it is necessary to hire an indexer. This specialized professional will read the finished book, using their existing knowledge of the subject matter to build both a list of appropriate terms and concepts, as well as their relevant page references. This is typically done at the very end of the design process, right before a book is prepared for printing.
This, however, is more than we needed for Liar, Liar. Instead, Jim created a list of terms so I could build a simple index (technically a concordance) right within InDesign, the software I use for page layout and typesetting. Given his terms as input, I generate a list of page numbers based on a straightforward text search.
It does mean we need to be careful about how we handle names (to capture people referred to by their full name, as well as first or last name only), and other terms that might appear in more than one form (such as plural). And it still requires a careful review to make sure all the page numbers generated are pertinent.
For example, one of the terms is the name of the band, The Castaways. And as you might expect, the band name appears on almost every page of the book! So this needed to be winnowed down to just the references that a reader would want to use to seek out information on the band. The simple index is imperfect in this sense, but it remains a helpful tool for readers and researchers.
Our additional complicating factor is that this book is produced for both print and eBook. And while an index is less important in an electronic document (you can, after all, search the text), we decided to include the index with the original page number references as hyperlinks in the ePub document.
Production
Test prints, hard proofs
Jim opted to do a small print run of books using Bookmobile, based here in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Bookmobile does an excellent job with short-run softcover color and art books, utilizing one of their digital Xerox printers and in-house PUR perfect binding. They also do a great job with crisp text in black and white books using an Océ printer.
The trick comes when you want to print black-and-white images. For photo projects, such as David Wong’s Beauty in Plain Sight, a pair of photo books, we opted for the extra expense of the color printer. The blacks are richer, the printing is more controlled, and can be slightly tinted as a bonus. But for Jim’s book, we wanted to keep things more economical by using the black-only press for the interior.
Because I knew this had been problematic with previous projects at Bookmobile (issues such as shadows blocking up), I asked if we could run test sheets. Unfortunately, Bookmobile’s schedule wouldn’t allow it. So, after the digital equivalent of dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s, checking everything against their recommendations, we went ahead and had them run a full hard proof.
Test prints for Liar, Liar. Left is the initial test, right is after the printer adjusted their file processing.
The big advantage of a digital printer is that the proof comes off the same press that will actually run the book. So you are seeing “the real thing.”
And what we saw, unfortunately, was still blocked up shadows. Even after I had adjusted every image to compensate for the heavy blacks they produce, the images still all felt heavy, dark. So we rejected the proof.
Fortunately, Bookmobile’s crack prepress folks helped us work through the problem. After chasing down a couple of red herrings, we finally determined the challenge: while the files I generated out of InDesign correctly used only the black ink channel, the combination of InDesign transparency (a slight outer shadow on images), greyscale Photoshop images, and the Bookmobile PDF settings was leading to two different grey color spaces being used. (One of these days, I’ll write a blog post about the technical aspects of this unusual problem.)
A printer’s raster image processing (RIP) software is responsible for converting my output files into a language the actual printer can understand. Theirs was misinterpreting things, resulting in an incorrect mapping of shades of grey. Bookmobile had missed this in their QC checks. Once we understood the problem, they were able to reprocess the file, and on a second proof, everything looked better. Disaster averted!
Which is why, whenever possible, always look at printed proofs. Just imagine if Jim’s entire order showed up too dark!
ePub Conversion
In my workflow, I start by creating the print layout. That is used for final proofreading and, once everything is approved, is sent off for printing. In parallel, I create a new version of the layout file, which is intended for ePub output. An ePub file is what is uploaded to Amazon’s Kindle, Apple’s iBook, and any of a host of other platforms that distribute eBooks.
An ePub is a self-contained website, based on a fairly old (by web standards) format. Several changes must be made to create a reflowable ePub—one that allows the reader to adjust the font, type size, and background color, among other options. First, I need to eliminate any specialized formatting that only applies to print—my typesetting controls that ensure there are no visual hiccups in the appearance of the text lines in the book.
In the case of Liar, Liar, or any other book with images integrated into the text, I also needed to ensure that the captions would align with the images and that the pair would be placed in the correct location within the text. While a print book’s layout is a finely crafted visual picture, a reflowable ePub can change—it can reflow—depending on the device’s screen size, orientation, and user settings. In other words, as a designer, I have almost zero control over how the text appears!
There were two other significant differences between the print and eBook versions. First is the images: because many of the photos were in color, I preserved the color versions in the ePub. And since the ePub is derived from the print layout, that meant I needed to keep two versions of every photo in the layout, switching the color off when generating the print-ready files, and switching the b&w off when generating the ePub output files. A delicate balancing act, and careful planning allowed me to pull this off without issues.
Second, the index. Unfortunately, there is no defined standard for handling an index in ePubs. Different platforms offer different options, but there is no one universal approach. So, we opted to keep things simple: I preserved the print version’s page numbers in the ePub, but made them all hyperlinks to the corresponding reference wherever they appeared in the ePub text. Is this a bit of a cheat? I suppose so, and purists might cringe when they see it. But I figured it was better to err on the side of making it easier for the reader.
Marketing & Sales
Publishing Logo
While I don’t manage the business side of a publisher’s work, I will help advise where I can. One of these areas in Jim’s case was deciding under which name to publish Liar, Liar. I knew he was particularly sensitive about the topic of trademarks, having worked hard to ensure he retained the legal right to use the “Castaways” band name.
He opted to publish under the name “Castaways Publications.” And that meant he needed a new logo.
We opted to stick with something that was essentially the same as “The Castaways” band logo to make the association clear. But I rebuilt the image and reworked the text to make something more book-appropriate, both for the back cover and on the spine.
Distribution decisions
How to handle book sales is something I always talk with my clients about early in the process. While it doesn’t directly affect the design, it is important to me that my clients understand the financial implications of their decisions. Invariably, the question turns to distribution (the sale of books into stores) and fulfillment (shipping books to stores and/or online consumers).
Direct sales (sales by the author/publisher) lead to the best margins. However, most authors are limited in how many potential readers they can personally reach—although with a well-designed web page and targeted online ads, it is possible to build up a substantial following.
In this case, Jim preferred to print books in advance and warehouse them with Itasca. Itasca would also handle fulfillment of direct online orders, saving him the hassle of running to the post office every time someone ordered a book online.
Sell Sheet & Promotional
To help promote the book, Jim made the sound decision to also ask me to create a sell sheet. This one-page sheet can be sent digitally or physically to media outlets and others who are (hopefully) willing to help promote the book. It contains all the pertinent details for ordering, as well as sound bite teasers about the content and any endorsements.
The challenge for me as a designer was to create something clear and understandable at a glance, yet not too “designed.” I think we struck a good balance.
I also created a Facebook image and a couple of smaller book-on-background images for Jim to support his promotional efforts.
