Monday, August 3, 2009

Book Covers: A more humorous take on them

If you have children and you get the Disney channel, there's a good chance you've seen their cartoon, Phineas and Ferb. If you don't, well, you're going to have to use your imagination on this one.

This is a picture of the family:


The teenage girl is Candace. The 1950's stylin' gal is the mom. The photo is unimportant, really, but I always like a visual image. And it brightens up the blog.

So anyway, there was a new episode last week I happened to catch with my kids that had me rolling on the floor laughing, and screaming: I have to find that to blog!! Sadly, these things aren't all YouTubed yet, so you're going to have to deal with just the written dialog.

The scene was Candace sitting in the living room perusing a stack of books her mom had just bought for her. She shuffles through them one by one and the conversation goes something like this:

Candace: "boring, lame, predictable, overdone, cliche..."

(Enter Mom): "you haven't read any of those! how can you judge them by the covers?"

Candace: "gee mom, I don't know. What made you pick these out in the bookstore to buy?"

Mom: "Touche."

The moral of the dialog? Well... I think I'll let you figure that one out on your own.

7 comments:

  1. That was awesome. Good play by play.

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  2. As a part-time graphic designer, I can attest to how vital good cover work is. The idea that you can't read a book by its cover is wrong about 80% of the time, because if a the designer has done his job, the cover should portray the story spot-on.

    Great illustration!

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  3. First of all, you earned the comment of the day on my blog :)

    Second of all, that's funny. We haven't seen Phineas and Pherb yet, though we see the commercials constantly. My daughter is still a bit young. Looks funny though.

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  4. Patti - thanks! probably much funnier to watch than read!

    KM - I agree! I think it should portray the story and the tone of the book, which takes a great reader as well as a great designer. I love graphic design and I do a lot with photography and media, but I think I'd be a terrible book cover designer. It's a talent, for sure!

    Paul - so funny! was it the blue eyes or the young comment? or just that I've sung the Old McDonald song for five hours to keep my one year old from screaming on a car trip? :)

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  5. LOL!!! I guess I need to get more into this, huh?

    Hope you have a brilliant holiday!

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  6. It was the blue eyes. Flattery goes far on my blog. :)

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