The making of Oh My Blog by Artemy Lebedev

The editors work long and hard to choose the best posts, talking to the author and removing everything passing and superficial.

Coming up with ideas for the layout.

We’ve got a couple of ideas. The main approach: controlled trash.

Continuous scrolling.

Taking Arial and Times. Or maybe Pragmatica and Newton, to be more subtle.

Assembling endpapers from comments.

Inserting a QR code.

Looking at a post without pictures.

And a post with pictures.

Often one post takes a single page.

But there are also posts with many, many pictures.

Typesetter: I suggest we combine all regular columns and annual posts together under relevant sections.

Moving the date and time of each post to the margins. Posts written on the same day continue on the same page.

Typesetting.

Before sending the result to the proofreader, deciding to show it to the art director again.

Art director: I think, we shouldn’t have new posts start on a new page. Let everything flow, just like you did with photographs. Let it look like a giant long scrolling page.

Checking out how overflowing posts might work.

Inserting years into the stream as well. Marking each new day by a line.

Trying to connect the layout with tema.livejournal.com.

Making a small step aside.

Settling on the design with purple stripes. Finalizing the layout.

Approving the layout, retypesetting the book.

Thinking about the cover. Why not use the cinematographic effect with a striped cover made of transparent plastic?

Art director: Nope. The cover shouldn’t follow the usual style of the studio’s books. The letter Ж as pattern should cover everything, including the spine and the back. It has to be some crazy letter, like maybe a velvet one. And no serifs. The cover has to feature my LiveJournal avatar and the nickname Tema.

Searching for the best scale of the pattern.

Deciding to go with medium scale.

Creating endpaper of all the tags in the book.

Making changes submitted by the editor and the proofreader and preparing for printing.

The print shop returns a photo of the sample cover for approval. Turns out, we forgot to specify the flock color.

Now it’s ready for the press.