Designing books & Osmosis

Aside from being able to print all these books from publishers and Google, we're able to access the brilliant Internet Archive for even more out of print titles. It's where we found the first book we made & designed under Third Place Press-- Arthur A. Denny's "Pioneer Days On Puget Sound". I put that book together using the no-quite-clean text on the Archive site, in Indesign & tried to keep a similar feel to the 1908 edition I used as reference. Though we did use our own cover design (See left). This'll be the format for all our Public Domain "Special" editions.
As I was working thought the text I couldn't help but absorb Denny's memories of the founding of Seattle. It's a rather dry accounting, but fascinating nonetheless. For about a week I was learning about obscure settlers and the first "Battle in Seattle" between the settlers and the Natives. It was fun. And now I'm about to go though it again.

"Leaves of Grass" by Walt Whitman is the next project on the table and I'm already learning. I've never been much into poetry, let alone Whitman, but just in the indexing of his poem titles, I've found some interesting things. For starters, the obvious 'I Sing the Body Electric' stands out because it was the title to a Ray Bradbury story collection, but others 'One Hour to Madness and Joy', 'Recorders Ages Hence','City of Orgies','As I Ebb'd With the Ocean of Life', and so on. I can't wait to get to some of these poems and see what the titles hint at.
Another unexpected pleasure to an already pleasurable job printing and making books.