world, hand-made and letterpress-printed. This approach is intended to accommo- date the widest variety of background drawings, rather than interfering with them. The conceptual labels on the cover harken back to old stationery and allow for repositioning according to the features of each drawing. They are thus modular in two ways: the labels can move to accom- modate the background, but also grow or shrink to conform to the text lengths of different titles and blurbs, as with the longer title on the dynamic cover of Rick Dolphijn and Iris van der Tuin’s New Materialism (Figure 2). The design process for each book is different, and involves varying degrees of interaction with Lu. For some volumes, I was provided with the artwork and have designed around it. For others, we collab- orated more closely, as with Ontological Catastrophe by Joseph Carew (Figure 3), for which I did some manipulation of the artwork including mirroring and colour correction. For the cover drawings, Lu’s creative process is an organic one that begins with a consideration of the raw manuscript, book title and blurbs: Rather than “illustrating” specific con- cepts or passages, I begin working from an initial feeling /impression inspired by the text, gradually visualising and folding it into the general flow of ideas and projects Iam working on at that given time. The overall composition for a cover could be derived from a sense of energy/ direction intuited during that initial reading, or be developed in contrast to a previous book cover, or be a formal experiment. Visual details then develop naturally in response to relevant thoughts, questions, mark-making and images that occur to me and are laid down on the page as a drawing progresses [4]. Her approach for the covers is also sensitive to design elements such as the back cover blurb and spine width, without sacrificing the concept of a wrap-around image. She has, for example, developed images that make use of separated, digi- tally layered pictorial units. Of her process, she says: Technically-speaking, I use found and custom-made stencils to create densely layered coloured pencil drawings on paper. These are scanned and handed over to [the typographer] for further cropping and lay- out adjustments. I do not think of a finished cover image as secondary to the text, but as an integral part of an assemblage that also includes philosophical writing, typographical design and a globally dispersed range of actors and influences [4]. In general, the working and production process has been effective, though not without hiccups. For the first volume, The Democracy of Objects by Levi Bryant (Figure 1), Lu created a stunning compo- sition with drawn objects strung across an even salmon-coloured surface, which comprised the background of the entire cover. Because of the laser-printing tech- nology used in PoD publishing, however, flat areas of colour can appear uneven, which is only really obvious when han- dling a copy of the printed book. In response, for subsequent covers Lu has aimed to create backgrounds that are variegated or white, which disguises the qualities of POD printing and elevates the quality of the printed book. Lu’s work on the covers speaks of a deep and critical engagement with the content: For me, negotiating between my own artistic intentions and the parameters of POD technology to further philosophical dia- logue constitutes practice-based research on a number of levels. Not only does this project allow me to examine my own practice, but we are continually refining a process of col- laborative publication while contributing to current philosophical debate. TYPOGRAPHY For the cover and text face of the books, the series employs the typeface Plantin by Monotype, a heavy transitional serif face based on the work of the French Humanist typesetter Robert Granjon in the mid-16th century. It is a sturdy and traditional serif face with great character and good legibility on screen and on paper. Despite Plantin’s features, Timothy Morton’s book, Realist Magic (Figure 4), presented particular typographic chal- lenges; Morton’s philosophy text uses an expanded character set with full Eastern European diacritics and Greek alphabet. It also required mathematical characters for displaying equations. David Ottina sum- marised the problem in an email: (...) generally you can expect to see a lot of foreign words, Greek, French, German and Latin being the most common. Logic and Math symbols are frequently used. There are likely to be references to people with northern and eastern European names; Zizek causes a lot of trouble, perhaps not unsurprisingly [7]. Though Monotype Plantin is an exten- sive face, it did not include the extra multilingual and mathematical charac- ters required for Morton’s book. After 44 (p A ap, a dialetheia). some searching I discovered that the text face Minion (designed by Robert Slimbach in the early 1990s) possesses the expanded character range of Greek, Latin and Cyrillic characters we needed, and that in addition to this, a face called Minion Math [5] could supply the math- ematical symbols. It thus seemed rea- sonably appropriate as a substitute, with its late-Renaissance letterforms. Rather than redesign the typesetting for the entire series, I opted to substitute Minion for Plantin in the required symbols rather than reset the entire layout (Figure 5), which would have created lighter and more delicate texture overall. This seems like a suitable compromise that maintains the consistency and style of the series. A NEW MODEL FOR PUBLISHING Overall, my experience working on the design of the New Metaphysics titles has been a highly instructive experience, and one that has also contributed to my perspective as a designer and to my approach as a teacher (for publication design in particular). The New Metaphysics book series, a multichannel, open-access and PoD publication design, embodies a model that I believe we will see increas- ingly in the future of academic and other forms of publishing. ¢ REFERENCES fh] “About.” Open Humanities Press. Open Humanities Press, n.d. Web. 17 December 2013. [2] Evans, David. Critical Dictionary. London: Black Dog, 2011. [3] Lu, Tammy. Email to the author. 11 June 2009. [4] Lu, Tammy. Email to the author. January 2014. [5] “Minion Math.” Typoma. Typoma, n.d. 15 January 2014. [6] “New Metaphysics.” Open Humanities Press. Open Humanities Press, n.d. Web. 14 January 2014. [7] Ottina, David. Email to the author. 10 February 2013.