John Holbo

It's that time of year again ...

For updating the blog!

Surely it should be an annual affair, at the least. In this case, the occasion is remaking last year's Christmas book. The layout wasn't right. Now it is perfect!

Well, the cover looks the same, but the inside is nicer.

That is to say, 'tis the season for making books. If you'd like to buy Squid and Owl and/or Mama In Her Kerchief and I In My Madness - A Truly Awful Christmas Volume as nice PDF's, specially optimized for iPad reading - why, you simply go here. (Yes, I know that page doesn't look so good on the blog. It looks great on the iPad!)

Mama In Her Kerchief and I in My Madness - a Visitation of Sog-Nug-Hotep: A Truly Awful Christmas Volume

Hey! I made another book! Based on all that old stuff. But now with extra images and scholarly text.

UPDATE: I've taken down the Blurb book because I'm not happy with how the paper product looked. At any rate, I've done it better now. You can buy it, more cheaply, as a nifty PDF, optimized for iPad reading. Looks great!

Mama in her 'kerchief and I in my madness: Christmas Squeampunk

Read about it here. Full picture set here. I threw a few new items in the store for the occasion.

Squid and Owl - the Bookl!

Buy Squid and Owl for the person on your list who would like a copy of Squid and Owl!

Squid & Owl by John Holbo | Make Your Own Book

Squeampunk!

A couple years back I sort of went through a Haeckel phase, the upshot of which was a set of X-Mas card designs. You can see them in this Flickr set. If you wanted to buy them, I've got a section of my CafePress store, Rhinobird, devoted to that arcane purpose. At the moment all my Haeckeldesigns are all X-Masy ("so it was the littlest shoggoth who guided Santa's sleigh that night") in orientation, but I'm planning to branch out beyond all that: Squeampunk!

Reason and Persuasion: Three Diaogues By Plato

I just published Reason & Persuasion: Three Dialogues by Plato [amazon] , through Pearson. I include it on this site, even though this site is for my design stuff, even its an academic textbook, because I did all the illustrations and designed the book from soup to nuts, bleed to slug. It was the biggest book design project I've taken on to date (whew!) You can read the whole book for free online here. And download it, too. (Here's the official booksite.) 

In a few days - maybe a week (but I'll try to get around to it) - I'll make a Flickr set containing all the book illustrations. There are a couple hundred.

It's kinda funny. I may be the only person in the history of the world who learned to draw because of PowerPoint. That's right. I teach the large intro philosophy lecture and I had to have some color in my lecture slides. And clipart just doesn't cut it. So one thing led to another ...

Squid and Owl

My most ambitious graphic design project to date, Squid and Owl is being serialized weekdays as a Flickr set. I'm planning to have the book out by X-Mas. Check back for a buy link by November. I'm still sorta hoping some conventional publisher will swoop in and make a reasonable offer. Could that be you, dear reader? Otherwise: vanity, vanity, all is vanity. Ergo, there's nothing really wrong with self-publishing.

In the meantime, I've set up a nice Squid and Owl section in my CafePress store, Rhinobird. You can buy a Change mug. Or t-shirt.