Ormond Yard Press

I thought it might be interesting to pull back the curtain and go behind the scenes on the thought process behind the layout for the front and back cover for our second book, I Saw Nick Drake: Photographs by Keith Morris.

It’s also interesting to see how we could have opted to tweak it slightly, and why we chose not to….

1. The image to use on the cover of the book

The choice of an image for the front and back cover of a book is, of course, really important! Of all the hundreds of photographs of Nick Drake that Keith Morris made during the three year period they worked together, how to pick the one to use on the book cover?

Well, it has to be an important image. One that resonates and means something to Nick Drake’s many fans. Something that captures him at an important part of his career. It also needs to ‘work’ in the context of the book design - when viewed from the front, the back, and when the book is open and both front and back are visible.

We tried a number of things but kept coming back to one image that had it in spades. You know it… it’s the ‘running man’ image that appeared on the back cover of Five Leaves Left, and on the front cover of his first US release, the album titled Nick Drake. It is, in my humble view, the definitive Nick Drake portrait.

Here’s the full image, with the film reference numbers, from the original contact sheet of 35 images:

On the back of the sleeve of Five Leaves Left the image appeared cropped slightly: some of the wall on the right hand side of the image had been removed by the sleeve designer.  Keith Morris wasn’t best pleased with this. That is typical of most photographers: they hate having their images cropped.

Here’s how it appeared in the UK on Five Leaves Left:

On the US Nick Drake album, it appeared full frame, on the front cover, like this:

When you compare them, you can see how it was cropped on the UK sleeve.

2. Presenting the image on the book cover

Here’s a photograph of the book standing up, open to reveal the full extent of the image as it wraps around the front and back cover.

 We have deliberately set the dimensions of all Ormond Yard Press books at a massive 24 x 36 inches / 60 x 90cm - spread size. The proportions of 1.5 to 1 (width to height) have been specifically chosen to mirror the aspect ratio of 35mm film, where the width of a landscape orientation image is 1.5 times the height.

These dimensions enable us to select a single 35mm image to wrap around the front and back cover of one of our books, as an alternative to choosing a single image for the front cover and a different image for the back cover.

If you choose a wrap-around image, it has to make sense both when the book is closed and when it is open.  When the book is open, the whole image comes into view, as shown in the photograph above, but when it is closed, only the front and the back can be viewed at any one time. So the image has to work in two halves as well. The right had portion of the image has to work in isolation on the front cover, and the same holds for the left hand side of the image, which appears on the back of the book.

Here’s the front:

Looks great doesn’t it?

Here’s the back, with the running man, who so far as I can tell, has never been identified:

3. To Photoshop or not to Photoshop, that is the question…

While we were laying out the image onto the book template at the design stage, it became clear that the position of the running man in relation to the back cover and spine of the book was, at first sight, slightly too far to the right. As you can see from the design layout below, the right foot extends into the spine, and actually slightly onto the front cover.

It would have been possible, with a little bit of cleverness in Photoshop, to create some additional wall in the middle of the photograph, thereby moving the running man back to the left slightly. The result of this jiggery pokery would be to contain the running man completely on the back cover of the book, like this:

Tempting as that was, you know what?  We didn’t want to do that.

It would have meant altering Keith Morris’ original image. For one, Keith would not have liked that.  For two, we think it actually works best with the foot wrapping round. The foot is just visible when the book is viewed head on from the front. It provides an important visual link, a hint if you like,  that there is something going on on the back of the book, and invites you to explore. 

And we like that.

I’m delighted that Joe Boyd has agreed to write the introduction to I Saw Nick Drake: photographs by Keith Morris, the second large format book to be published by Ormond Yard Press.

Joe is the perfect person to pen the introduction as he knew both Nick Drake and Keith Morris. If you haven’t already done so, you should definitely make time to read Joe’s book, White Bicycles. He has a great writing style and there’s some brilliant stuff in there on Nick Drake, The UFO club and much much more..

It’s official…The FT love Born To Run Revisited!

I have to admit to having sleepless nights for a few days this week. I found out a couple of days ago that the FT Weekend Magazine were including Born To Run Revisited in today’s ( Saturday 31 March ) issue. 

The feature, Is It Worth It? is written by Carl Wilkinson, and each week he identifies four or five luxury products and gives them the thumbs up or thumbs down depending on whether they are worth it or not. 

So I knew we were going to be in, but had no idea whether Born To Run Revisited was going to be judged ‘worth it’ or not…hence the sleepless nights. This kind of stuff matters to small bespoke operations like ours because we don’t have funds to spray around on advertising, and of course a positive mention from the FT is very helpful to spreading the word on what we do.

Deep joy as I opened the magazine this morning and saw the piece - and a firm thumbs up, sandwiched between a couple of thumbs downs.

Here’s what it said:

£395: Is it Worth It?

Yes

Born To Run Revisited

Eric Meola’s photograph of Bruce Springsteen and saxophonist Clarence Clemons for 1975’s Born To Run became a classic album sleeve. Ormond Yard Press has published a limited edition 2ft-tall book of images from the shoot, signed by Meola.

It’s the boss

Splendid stuff! The whole piece is below

We have now had three intensive all day planning sessions on our upcoming book I Saw Nick Drake: photographs by Keith Morris. We are working with with Clare Morris, her daughter Sevrin, and designer David Costa on this project, and I have to say that the current draft of the book is looking magnificent.

The chapters on Five Leaves Left and Bryter Later are looking particularly stunning right now, and they have had the most attention so far. We have some work to do still on Pink Moon, but it will be looking stellar in a couple of weeks. 

Here’s a sneaky peak of one of the draft double page spreads in the book, from the Bryter Later chapter, of four beautiful images of Nick Drake taken in Regent’s Park in 1970. The exciting thing about this spread is the sheer physical size: it measures a monster size 24 inches high x 36 inches wide (60x90cm), when the book is opened up, so each of these four images is approximately 11 x 16 inches (29 x 40 cm). That’s a great size to appreciate the exquisite detail and nuances.

Want to know more about the book? If you want to go on the mailing list for when we start the pre-order process for this amazing book, just email us your details (email and postal address ) to info@snapgalleries.com

I’m delighted to announce that the subject of Ormond Yard Press’ second book is Nick Drake. The full title of the book is I Saw Nick Drake: Photographs by Keith Morris.

We have been working closely with the estate of Keith Morris to create what will be the definitive book of photographs from the late photographer’s outstanding Nick Drake archives. Nick Drake was an enigma, and he has never been the focus of a specific photographic study before now. Couple that with the the fact that Keith Morris, a superb photographer, has the definitive Nick Drake photographic archive, and you have a pretty heady cocktail.

I Saw Nick Drake is going to be a different kind of project to our first book, Born To Run Revisited by Eric Meola. It will be on the same epic physical scale as Born To Run Revisited - with a mammoth 24 x 36 inch spread size when the book is open. However, because we need to include, at the last count, 200+ photographs within the confines of a 96 page book, the logistics prevent us from including everything over double page spreads (an important feature in Born To Run Revisited.) So parts of the book will be more traditional, if anything can be called traditional within the confines of that huge page size. It is an incredibly exciting project to be working on, and I feel a real privilege as I review hundreds of previously unpublished photographs.

We will be having a very special book launch event  at the gallery in London. Will superstar Nick Drake fan Brad Pitt be at the opening party? Who can say….. but plenty of news on this indispensable book will follow.

Here’s a draft of page 1 of the book - the first thing you see when you open those huge covers. I’ll tell you some more about the title of the book and this image in a later post.

If you would like us to contact you specifically when the pre-order process kicks off, let us know by email at info@snapgalleries.com

I just came off the phone with Charlotte Westbrook of Cancer Research UK.

Ormond Yard Press had donated a copy of Eric Meola’s Born To Run Revisited book to the Sound and Vision auction at Abbey Road studios that took place on 2 March, for Cancer Research UK.

I am delighted to say that it fetched £3,000.

What a truly great result!