A Logo Is Born

We're taking a couple of days away from the store to let the painters and woodworkers get things done. So in the interim: some backstory.

One of the most difficult -- and rewarding -- aspects of creating Greenlight Bookstore for Rebecca and I has been defining our aesthetic. We know we want Greenlight to embody both the traditional and the progressive, our urban setting and our literary focus. But how does that actually play out in wood stain colors, images, shapes, and typefaces? We've discovered that we have overlapping (but definitely not identical) tastes, and it's in that overlap that the look of Greenlight is evolving.

One aspect of that we've been working on for a very long time is our logo. Early on, we talked to a couple of talented friends about logo ideas. Michael Kindness, a fab sales rep from Random House (and noted blogger at Books on the Nightstand) with a sideline in graphic design, graciously took a stab at a logo design:
It was a step in the right direction, but somehow felt... not quite right -- too smooth and modern, perhaps? Michael's hectic schedule didn't give him time to develop more ideas, but he'd started us thinking.

Another friend, Megan Barron -- bookstore afficionado and talented artist (check out her gorgeous art blogs wrack line and auk wrecks and ark larks) agreed to work on another idea: a logo with a central concrete image. Megan was incredibly patient with creating sketches as we hemmed and hawed about what the image of the store should be: a traffic light? the Fort Greene Park martyr's memorial? a tree or a plant? a dock light, like Gatsby? a Brooklyn subway light?


Heartbreakingly though, none of the versions Megan came up with seemed quite right either. Ultimately, we had to admit that "Greenlight" conjures up numerous kinds and varieties of images and associations for us, and we wanted customers to have that same imaginative privilege -- no single image in particular could capture what Greenlight means. So, while I still have some of Megan's drawings (and we're hoping to get some of her art into the store somehow), we had to start over again, looking for a logo that was text-only, but somehow more textured, to fit our idea of the store.

Luckily, Rebecca and had met Esther Smith when her book How to Make Books was published, and I'd met Esther and her husband Dikko Faust at McNally Jackson for book events. Esther and Dikko run Purgatory Pie Press, a wonderful printing studio in Tribeca.

Esther and Dikko are totally excited about Greenlight (they're actually part of our Community Lender program), and Esther offered their services should we find ourselves in need of a type-set logo. PPP's aesthetic fit ours perfectly. They use old-school wood and metal handset type (some of the sets are a century old or more) on manual printing presses -- but they use them to make funky, very contemporary designs (definitely check out their website for some samples). They offered to let Rebecca and I come to the studio and play around with some type in hopes of finding something that suited us. So, one stormy day this summer we showed up, and the fun began.


Esther and Dikko laid out an array of versions of our name, in different type faces, sizes and capitalizations. We chose some that looked promising, in various combinations, and Dikko set the type into one of their incredible old printing presses. He also mixed a thick ink for us, in a very dark green we liked -- you can see it smeared on the edge of the press, ready to be rolled onto the type.

Unlike designing on a computer, there was no click-highlight size change, or layout change, or color change -- every variation meant a new layout! Esther and Dikko's patience throughout this project was amazing -- it's a testament to their craftsmanship that they were willing to indulge (and contribute to) our ideas about which fonts and layouts really said Greenlight Bookstore. Ultimately it took a couple of visits and a lot of emails, but at last we got what we wanted:


The two typefaces we chose are from the turn of the century -- we don't know their exact names. We liked the way that these very old, traditional typefaces could be combined in a non-traditional, funky way. We liked the way the letters fit together. We like that the two words are instantly readable, but the more you look the more you notice the unique shapes of the letters and combinations (the e's, the k, the g over the t). We especially like the large lower-case g at the beginning of Greenlight -- it's a striking visual element in itself, and one we'll likely be using a lot.

Once we were happy with the logo, Esther and Dikko's frequent collaborator Lissi Erwin of the independent graphic design company Splendid Corp developed an electronic version, so we could use it on the web. Today is the first day we've added it to our blog masthead! Eventually Lissi will be helping to design our actual, e-commerce enabled website. Like Esther and Dikko, she shares our aesthetic sensibility of taking the best of tradition and thinking of it in new, funky ways.

You can see lots more pictures of the logo design process, including lots of views of Purgatory Pie Press's studio, here and here, and see lots more Greenlight photos in our Flickr set. Hope you enjoyed our aesthetic journey -- we're so happy with the way things worked out!

Bookstore Design Dreams

While most of my time these days is spent in imagining financial scenarios, confabbing with lawyers and other experts, and fiddling with Excel spreadsheets, I was reminded last night (at an impromptu bar gathering that included a high percentage of bookselling types) that the fun part is imagining the store itself.

Those of us who have chosen to indulge our literary inclinations in the physical environment of the bookstore take our joy in the physical books, the shelves, the displays, and the other elements of the space, sometimes as much as in the words and ideas themselves.

My bookselling buddies and I discussed with relish some section division issues that are perhaps too wonky for even readers of this blog. But the other aspect I've been thinking about greedily lately is bookstore design. My dream is to find some experimental, idealistic, local (and affordable) designer to help me shape the vision for the bookstore's design. But here's some of what's already out there that I've been salivating over.

Boing Boing has a picture of a chair made of paperbacks, resident of the lucky Myopic Books in Providence, Rhode Island. More pictures at the Rag & Bone Blog.
I spent half a day at my job ogling photos of the Vintage Shelf (the image at the top here), which is such a witty design expression of my favorite paradox, traditional meets progressive, that it brings tears to my eyes. (You knew I was a nerd, right?) This would be so awesome for displaying special rare books or featured signed first editions; too bad it's not for sale in the U.S.

If you must deal with a two level store, why not do it with a book/stair-case? This seems like it would be awesome for a children's section. Or for my house someday, when everything is perfect.

As it turns out, lots of people are into this designer bookshelf thing. It's a simple functionality that lends itself to lots of expressions of creativity -- some more practical than others. The blog Bookshelf has tons of juicy pictures of creative bookshelf designs. Some make me roll my eyes as a bookseller -- designs that look like they would damage the books, or that books would fall off of, or that it's impossible to remove books from. But there are so many that I would be proud to display. The ones by Vincent Thomas Leman, which look like they popped out of Alice in Wonderland or maybe Naked Lunch, are laugh-out-loud delightful.


This is one of the ways that I think brick-and-mortar bookstores will continue to be viable in the future: by becoming retail spaces as showcases for design. On a panel last week for the NYU publishing program, I sat next to the brilliant Richard Nash, who quoted a study that had discovered that the less something feels like a selling space, the more selling gets done. Creating a space that evokes both comfort and desire -- which I know is what I feel when looking at these brilliant shelves -- makes folks want to be a part of it. And they become part of it by buying a book.

Who knows what the design of my store will look like? A lot depends on the space, the budget, and the intended demographic (which I have ideas about, but nothings certain until it's certain.) Whatever it is, I'm grateful for the designers who are inspiring me, and letting me think about the fun stuff.


What cool book-related designs have YOU come across lately? Comment or email me -- I'd love to share!