Book Design

Levon Helm’s Midnight Ramble
(Backbeat Books, 2009)

P H O T O G R A P H E R   P A U L   L A R A I A  spent many nights as the proverbial fly on the wall in a converted barn in Woodstock, NY—the home and studio of Levon Helm, legendary drummer of The Band.
    What had started out as Levon’s private jam sessions with friends became the hottest ticket in town when small audiences were invited to attend. For nearly a decade, a stream of luminaries from the worlds of rock, blues, and jazz found their way to the studio to perform with Levon and his Midnight Ramble band.
      Paul’s photos of these sessions eventually found their way to a New York publisher who asked me to design a hardcover book that paired the images with testimonials from many of the musicians who had performed at the Ramble.
      In the absence of a manuscript, the photos were sequenced to create a narrative flow of their own.

Rockin' the City of Angels
(Diego Spade Publishing, 2016)

A U T H O R   D O U G   H A R R   W I T N E S S E D  the heyday of the rock era in Los Angeles during the 1970s and chronicled his concert experiences in a 440-page coffee table book featuring images shot by some of the era’s preeminent rock photographers.
      Having been a teenage concert hound in New York in the late 1970s, I was enthusiastic about taking on this project. Having an affinity for a subject is not necessarily required to produce good design, but it definitely makes the work more engaging.
      It was a thrill to work with some stunning photos that had never before appeared in print, all of which had been hand-picked by Doug from the individual photographer’s own archives.
      This project presented me with a daunting technical challenge: the book’s pages were to be printed in all black—with white text. This was a nod to the aesthetic of concert programs and tour books of the era.
     Owing to its multiple layers of ink—“rich” black in print is composed of black ink along with percentages of cyan, magenta, and yellow—and its protective satin varnish, this massive volume weighs more than any other title I've worked on.
      And if you appreciate the smell of printer ink—a secret thrill for many of us book designers—this heavy-weight tome continues to deliver the goods for years to come!

.The Story of America
(DK Publishing, 2002)

A S  A  S T U D E N T  O F  H I S T O R Y ,  I enjoyed the multiple hats I got to wear during the production of this book. I contributed art direction, layout design, and illustrated the maps. Most memorably, however, I photographed a number of the artifacts that appear in the book. This involved numerous road trips with author David Rubel to archives and museums in Washington, D.C., New England, and West Point, New York.
     Photographing John Adams' spectacles in the second president's former residence—now a museum in Quincy, Massachusetts—almost resulted in my setting the place aflame when my tungsten photo lamp got a bit too close to the ceiling!
      I proceeded with added care in the basement archive of the museum of the United States Military Academy at West Point. There, the staff asked me to wear white cotton gloves in order to handle the artifacts they brought out, one by one, for me to photograph.
      It was a heady mix of emotions I felt while snapping pictures of these items—the victor’s spoils of war—and trying to reconcile the convergence of mythology and tactile reality taking place in my mind.
       One item I shuddered to handle myself, despite its historical significance, was a small object resembling an old-fashioned car cigarette lighter. Topped with a green, wooden handle that gave it an almost dainty vibe, it was the safety plug pulled from “Fat Man”—the plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki.
      By contrast, I felt nothing but reverence while holding in my hands a ceremonial tomahawk that had once belonged to Chief Sitting Bull—a heart-shaped hole decorates its blade.
       I felt awe and sadness as I gingerly lifted a studded rifle that was once that of Apache leader, Geronimo.
       My inner nine-year-old was overcome with instant sadness in having to hand these items back to the staff!

I   W A S   R E M I N D E D  throughout my work on this project, that history is not for the faint of heart. It has a way of humbling us.
       As the book’s production was nearing completion in late summer of 2001 history caught up with all of us.
       The stunning events of September 11 forced the late addition of the chapter that concludes the book.
       While the scale and impact of 9/11 are par for the course of two-hundred-plus years of tumultuous American history, as covered in this book, the event nonetheless stripped the comfort from us armchair historians like no other chapter could. The photo of the crumbling WTC tower that appears in the book was taken by a friend of mine.   
       Like no other American history book, this one has my own story woven throughout it. I continue to feel a personal connection and sense of accomplishment when I revisit it.