Apparently things have begun to move on the production front. Barbara wrote to ask if we can have the revisions done by the end of next week. Since they should have been done weeks ago, this is a more than reasonable request.
I just heard from Lisa, the designer who'll be doing the box and book cover design for the deck. She wanted to confirm the spelling of my name. Since my name was misspelled on the title card of Artists Inner Vision Tarot, I greatly appreciate her attention to detail! She also said they had their "Launch" meeting yesterday. Lots of people were there and it sounds like a brainstorming meeting for the title, cover imagery, things like that.
The results sound pretty amazingly good. First of all, they decided to stick with my title, "Victoria Regina Tarot." Whew! I didn't even realize changing the title was a possibility. Good thing I didn't, or I would have spent way too much time worrying about it. They're going to call the book "Victoria Regina Tarot Companion." Sounds good to me.
(It occured to me that maybe I should register victoriaregina.com and point it to this site. Wouldn't you know it, victoriaregina.com was taken by someone else last November. Darn! I thought about registering it way back when, but I went for thefool.com instead.)
Secondly, Lisa is going to do two packaging designs, one based on the mockup I sent them. So they might actually end up incorporating some of my ideas into the final design. Wow. Lisa said something about trying more muted colors. Which makes a lot of sense to me. The mockup I did, I almost ended up using some really soft greens and greys, which are colors I tend to gravitate towards. But I was afraid it would look, I don't know, muddy. So I went for the brighter combination -- blue and ivory with green and orange as an accent. But I'll be happy if the final design uses softer colors.
They are definitely using the full kit size. Much as I like the mini-kit size, I have to admit this is good for the deck. For one thing, it will be more prominent on the shelf. For another, it gives them room to include the bag. Besides, since they got rid of the tray, I really can't complain about the full kit size. My fondness for the mini-kit probably comes from admiring the Light and Shadow Tarot so much. To me it's the gold standard of what a black and white deck should be.
She said she'll do the design over the next 3 months. When it's done and they've decided on the cover, they'll send me a copy and I'll have an opportunity to comment. I guess that means, if I hate it I can plead with them to change it. But I've promised myself, I'm not going to be a prima donna about this. The designer of this packaging is Lisa, not me. She's been very gracious about my suggestions. I wonder how gracious I would be if a client sent me a mockup of exactly how they wanted a project to look.
They probably get all kinds of kooky ideas from their artists & authors about the packaging. It's gratifying that they've taken my ideas this seriously, regardless of how much ends up in the final product.
Anyway, it's hard to believe that I'll see the actual cover in three months. Will it really feel real then? That will be only 9 months from the release date. Barbara was right, the time is flying by.
I almost forgot to mention, I got a very nice email from someone, a writer, who explained to me how copy-editing works. She said that typically, they copy-edit the whole manuscript. Then they send galleys to the author, who can challenge any editing they disagree with, and suggest edits of their own. Of course the author has to persuade the editor to make additional changes or reverse existing ones. That seems very reasonable and I hope that's how Llewellyn does it.
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