bethofalltrades

So the illustrious Mr. Neil Gaiman, author extraordinaire, mentioned me in his recent blog about the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book.

"Anyway, all the material was handed over to some designers, who it turned out hadn't designed books in a while and did a job so bad and so late that when they handed it back, Beth (Amanda's assistant) wound up taking the book and designing it and doing a terrific job, but having to start pretty much from scratch."

I was keeping this under wraps out of... fear I suppose. Everyone knew I was project manager for the book, but when it came down to my designing it, I was afraid of saying too much. That people would know that the man behind the curtain had no idea what he was doing.

I'd done some design work at my old job at The Food Bank For New York City, even co-designing an event journal that was 78 pages long. But to design a fine art book with text by NEIL FREAKIN' GAIMAN? I figured you needed way more skills than I possessed and way more experience than I had.

Fast forward almost three months and the book I designed is being printed.

I worked on this project for nine months. I organized the photos and assisted at shoots and shot and photoshopped and communicated with printers and I laid out all 128 pages of it. There isn't a single element in that book that I didn't plan, tweak or create.

I am so proud of it and so deeply in love with it. This book is incredible and gorgeous and I am so, so honored that when I said, "Amanda, I can do this, let me do this" she said, "Of course you can. Go for it."

The hundreds of hours I spent on this project, the all-nighters, the coffee dates I canceled and the number of times I wanted to pull my hair out and toss the computer out the window... it is all worth it.

Oh, and you can now buy it if you'd like, by clicking here. It has about a dozen stories from Neil, more than about 110 deaths from Amanda, and photos from kylecassidy, Gregory Nomoora, Lauren Goldberg, Nicholas Vargelis and yours truly, among others.

My artist photo (as seen on the back dustjacket flap), by KYLE FREAKIN' CASSIDY:


Love,
Beth