The Frankfurt Book Fair is coming up next month and one our clients, Ellen Bryson, will have her debut novel promoted at the fair.

Ceci did the illustrations for the novel (and, yes, it’s adult literary fiction with illustrations). We’re also in the processing of building Ellen’s website. Her novel will be released by Henry Holt in the summer of 2010. I’m going to have more posts about the developing of Ellen’s author website, but for now you can look at the preview page at ellenbryson.com.

Publishers Weekly has a great list of books promoted by publishers and literary agencies at this year’s fair. Here’s the brief on Ellen Bryson’s novel:

On the adult fiction front, Foundry has the debut novel The Transformation of Bartholomew Fortuno by Ellen Bryson (Holt, 2010); set in 1865 New York, the book follows the titular character—he performs as the “living skeleton” in P.T. Barnum’s American museum—whose life is changed after being hired by Barnum to be the showman’s personal detective.

Have you ever felt some unstoppable desire to do something? I get that once in a while and I let it grow until one day I just can’t do anything but that that I’ve been craving for: it could be to paint, to draw, always something handmade.

Lately, I’ve been feeling the need for handmade stuff (stuff = letters, miscellanea, doodling, etc) to maybe start introducing it into my usual designs, I think that it could produce some interesting results.
So I started a Fileteado Porteño workshop. The maestro fileteador is Héctor Rapisarda and here a couple photos of the class & his beautiful letters on the blackboard.

& some of the letters I’ve done during the class:

If you want to see some more Fileteado Porteño, there’s a flickr group with very interesting pieces.

*The star ornament on the side of this post is from the free font Lucky Charms by Blue Vinyl

sorodesign recently completed the Web site for Argentine illustrator Alejandro Firszt. The design reflects Ale’s desire for a clean, minimalist layout.

Authors and publishers interested in contracting with an illustrator should take a moment to examine Ale’s portfolio. He is an exceptional illustrator. Here are a couple of examples of his works:

The Ephemerist has a nice posting of book cover art done by cartoonists as part of the Penguin Deluxe Series: “Not only do these covers immediately jump out as different than all the other book covers you see on the shelves, the cartoonists never even tried to shy away from their trademark style.”

That same posting also has a link to a very innovative cover of Voltaire’s Candide by cartoonist Chris Ware .