10/26 - Reading Comments

I certainly see why e-books are becoming more popular, and I myself prefer them as well, especially for textbooks since it helps making looking things up much simpler. However, I do have to agree with the reading that if a cover is beautiful, it would make me want to buy it. I remember in high school, I won an Edgar Allan Poe collection book that had a beautiful binding and cover. Even though I had only read one of the stories, I love it because of how great it looks. And I think that is really indeed is the advantage of books, because people love to see beautiful and/or fascinating things.

I really enjoyed the TED Talk, it was both entertaining and informative. I liked that Kidd used translation and interpreting to describe the creation process of a book cover. It reminds me most of when we were translating poems. We had to understand the meaning behind the poem in order to be able to recreate a version of it into English. The artist must really understand the book in order to appropriately transfer that into something visual.I enjoyed the various techniques he used, such as the juxtaposition of Dry and the moist effect for lying effect, and the aging of Buddha across the binding to make the series visually appear much more connected. There is a lot of information that the artist must convey to the audience in order for them to pique their curiosity and want to read the book upon seeing it. Although the expression “Don’t judge a book by its cover” is often used to deter this fact, it cannot be helped that people judge things by sight since it is one of our 5 major senses. When people browse they won’t take the time to read the summary of every book, just the ones that catch their attention.