...and that's another way to solve the problem!

Let me get you in on a dirty little secret. It's something I've learned after years of working in publishing and web design.

People don't read.

You might find this an ironic observation, given that I work for an academic publisher, but I tell you it's true, and it's especially true of academics — people don't read.

I have my theories. They may all be wrong, I don't know. But I have them anyway. One is, people don't read because it's too easy. Most literate people can't help but read something; you see it, it registers as a word instantly, and — this is the critical part — then you decide whether or not to pay attention. In our information-rich, give me your attention please society, we're surrounded by words . . . and we ignore most of them.

Don't believe me? Stop and take a look around for a moment. Words, words, words. If your desk looks like mine, I'm willing to bet that, without turning your head, and without counting these words here, you can see around 500–1000 words. You're ignoring all of them (including the ten sticky notes that you wrote and put in prominent places in order to remember things.)

That's just you and me. Enter the academic, stage left, with his nose in a book. He is, obviously, reading. Or is he? My answer is, probably not. Remember the last term paper you wrote? Did you read every source, cover to cover? Of course not. You skimmed it until you found what you were looking for. You noted it, cited it, wrote your paper, you kept moving. The only difference is that the academic has gotten good enough at this to do it for a living. Their term papers get published.

And so we come to the relevant question: how do you alert someone like this to something they aren't expecting?

Case in point: each year, my employer attends and displays at a major conference. We're one of the bigger players in our market (big fish, little pond) and we generally try to get about six booth spaces to display our wares. In order to keep such a space all within easy reach, we typically reserve two sides of an aisle — books to the left, books to the right, and three booths' worth of books across the aisle.

Now, this creates two problems. One is the person who finds the booth staff first, and asks, "Where are the books?" It's easy enough to point out the stacks to them. The second is the person who finds the books first, but doesn't know to look to the other side of the aisle to find the checkout desk. This is harder.

The easy answer is, of course, to put up a sign saying that the checkout is on the other side. But people aren't looking for such signs — they're looking for a cash register (does anyone use these anymore at conferences?) or a person (there are plenty of those around) or . . . what?

Our solution? Make a sign they can't help but read.

Specifically, we made them in Sumerian, Neo-Assyrian (both use cuneiform), Egyptian, and bet-you've-never-heard-of-it Hieroglyphic Luwian. Can you read it? I can't — but we have customers who can. Customers who are quite proud of that ability, actually, and who happily contributed their expertise into making the top halves of each sign.

Why does it work? Well, for the customers that can read it, there's the unexpected, proud rush of being able to use their skills in an everyday setting. For the ones that can't read it, there's what Chip and Dan Heath call a "knowledge gap" that invites them to learn more — and gets them down to the English translation near the bottom.

The added bonus is that it's also marketing: We get it. Our target market is ancient Near Eastern studies; we want people who can read this stuff. There's nothing like showing them that we literally speak their language. Outsiders, at the very least, get a memorable introduction to what we do.

My part in all of this was quite fun. I got to take the handwritten samples (or in the case of the cuneiform, PDF) and either typeset or convert each one into a format I could use.

My biggest barrier was learning to typeset Egyptian, but once I got into it, it was surprisingly easy to do. Having the transliteration below helped a lot.

Next, I wrangled the various pieces out of Photoshop, InDesign, and JSEsh, and got them into Illustrator, where I cleaned up the paths and got them ready to send out to Ponoko. (I don't get paid to promote Ponoko. I promote them anyway. Although if they're reading this. . . .) Most of the programs used for creating these languages aren't at the same level of development as other software (wonder why?) so there was a lot of cleanup involved.

A few weeks later, I got my expected package, and I got an excuse to get crafty.

It's silly, but I love this tag on the boxes. I really do feel this way when I get a package with something I've designed!.

I was a bit concerned about how I was going to get white engraving to show up on white plastic, until someone pointed out that the protective paper they apply to the acrylic forms a perfect, precision mask.

A little masking tape and a spraycan later, and that problem was solved.

All that was left was to wear my fingernails down to stubs peeling off the protective paper and revealing the final product.

Why stop at the "obvious" solution to a problem when you can have this much fun with it?

---

Several people have now asked who supplied the various texts for this project. Gary Greig (University of Chicago) supplied the Egyptian; Annick Payne (Freie Universität Berlin) contributed the Hieroglyphic Luwian; Simo Parpola (University of Helsinki) sent in the Sumerian; and repeat co-conspirator Bob Whiting (also of the University of Helsinki) gave us the Neo-Assyrian text.

Well, what would you do with it?

Several years ago, I was given a project at work: managing the artwork and printing for a huge, sprawling series of archaeological reports. This being a well-funded expedition, the reports were to be in color. This, and other factors dictated that we have it printed overseas.

I got to design the dustjacket. Now, each printer and bindery has their own way of doing things; one uses thicker cardboard here, one uses a different kind of paper there, and it's no good trying to guess at what the exact dimensions will be. So I wrote a note asking for the dimensions of the soon-to-be book. What I expected was a dozen numbers, or perhaps an Excel worksheet; what I got, express-mailed from Singapore a few days later, was... a book.

724 pages, using the exact paper they'd use for the final product. And every one of them was blank.

They included a sample stamping on the cover that I found amusing. Sure, who wouldn't want a book like this?

So what would you do with it?

It served its initial purpose quite nicely, and then sat on the corner of my desk for several years. I knew what I wanted to do with it. And so, finally, after all this time, I've gotten started: I'm going to practice my chops at drawing in pen and ink. I'm going to fill it up, and work on my skills. So what if it takes me ten years....?

The first drawing. I've had this walnut shell sitting in a little basket, just waiting to be drawn.

One page down, 723 to go.

A hundred! And then some!

Sometime this last week, I sent my one hundredth Eisenbrauns book cover to press. I suspected I was getting close to that mark, so I sat down witht he website to figure it out. It took a little bit of doing to determine, as I excluded the books that had been reprinted (and thus, sent to press again), books that a previous designer had started, and I finished (there are my book covers), covers I did for other publishers (these are Eisenbrauns book covers), and covers for books that haven't gone to press yet.

So. Wanna see?

This one was fun (well, technically, these two, since it's a two-volume set, with different colors) once I got a hang of what the editors wanted. That's the challenge: I've produced plenty of covers that I dearly loved, but that the editors, well, didn't. One learns to shrug and keep trying. It's also one of the few instances where a major typo made it onto the cover... in the title, no less. I now have someone else proofread my covers before I send them to press!

The artwork isn't mine, but the rest of the cover was.

These are, in fact, two separate books. They just look identical. Honest!

I've had this idea for cover type bouncing around my head for years. I finally got to use it on this cover, which sets the style for the rest of the series.

In academic circles, when an esteemed scholar or professor approaches the end of his/her career, you'll often see what's called a Festschrift, literally, a "party-writing," where colleagues and students will write articles in honor of said scholar. One hopes there are other, less cerebral celebrations involved, as well, but I wouldn't know. I just design the book covers. In this case, we have three volumes of articles by Nadav Na'aman, and a Festschrift for the same. Obviously, I figured all of them should have a common visual theme.

This is, if I'm not mistaken, one of the first covers I ever did.

The editor didn't appreciate my attempts to liven up the series design (left), so I had to go back to the original color scheme on the next volume (right).

The background on this one is a piece of soapstone that's been run through a bandsaw. I love the texture!

Sometime, I really ought to write up the process of bringing this cover into being. It would be... illuminating.

For many years, I was limited to two inks, for cost reasons. This series uses only two colors — orange, and blue. You wouldn't know by looking at it.

Oddly enough, this is one of my favorite covers. I'm not sure why.

One of the first instances where I created my own artwork for the cover, rather than using someone else's drawing or photograph.

A lot of people tell me this is their favorite cover. I like it too. The part I'm proudest of is that I managed to convey the idea of the Chaoskampf Theory (order-land arising from the chaos-sea) using only two colors and one repeated shape.

I found a guy on-line, Sven Geier, who does these amazing fractals, and lets anyone use them. This one fit the book amazingly well.

I had fun masking all those branches on the Tree of Life. I spent hours on that one...

Another cover people have told me they really like. Apparently, I do seascapes well.

One of my first "major" covers, in cloth and paperback. Those Persian warriors have since shown up in many. many places. One year, I suggested we make full-size cutouts of these guys, and have a place where you could put your head and poses as them. It was rejected because they thought people would actually do it...

From this river to that one...

...and these scholar to those kings.

I later asked what the provided graphic of pottery and plants had to do with the subject. I don't recall that anyone knew.

I had fun with this one, representing the "degrading social order" in the ancient near east in as close as I've ever gotten to "grunge" on an academic book cover.

An early favorite, and the first use (that I know of) of stock photography on Eisencovers.

Some things are Sacred. Some, doubly so.

Some people say this one's boring. Me? I love the type.

You can direct traffic with this cover.

The author (in good humor) complained that more people were complimenting him on the cover than on the book. Sorry, Tryggve! I'll make 'em uglier next time.

For once, it was appropriate to break out the funky typewriter fonts!

I put so much into this one. I created this beautiful epicrystallograph of a leaf I found in the yard, and then made up the word "Epicystallograph" (Greek, "writing against the glass") because "putting it on the scanner" just didn't communicate what I wanted. As people have since pointed out, making up words doesn't necessarily communicate, either. But, I still hold out some hope for my little neologism. I wished I could have used a metallic purple ink on this one — it would have given the leaf a sort of ethereal sheen — but I found out at the last minute that there's a heavy surcharge for using metallic inks. Bummer. I still love the way it came out, even if my vision was grander.

Here's another one where I really ought to write up the process of creation. I think the part that took the cake was when the editors insisted that, despite all the time I'd spent removing the text, they could definitely tell that it was from the gret Isaiah scroll from Qumran, and that they'd really prefer to have a section from the Pentateuch on there. Hence the addition of the fragment by the title...

Part of this cover involved a trip to the hardware store, and a puzzled clerk wondering what good three feet of rope was, and why I didn't want the ends dipped so that they wouldn't come apart.

Whew!

There's also a bunch where I frankly no longer remember if I did them or not:

...and a bunch I did for other publishers:

...as well as a bunch of catalog covers and such, but I'm not counting those categories here.

Looking over this list, I'm not sure what to think. This represents ten years of a small part of my life, and in retrospect, I can't honestly say if it's well-spent, mis-spent, or just... spent. While it has some lasting value (in the sense that it's been a way to keep a roof over our heads, and food on the table) there's nothing about any of this work that would outlast one good fire. In spite of that, I have to admit: I enjoyed it.

On to the next hundred!