EXTRACTS: Illustrators issue 10 © 2015 Book Palace Books (96 PAGES in Full edition)

96 Letters @ As we go to press, the world is still coming to terms with the attack on the offices of the French satiricalmagazine, Charlie Hebdo. This, the latest attack in the war which dare not speak its name, carries extra resonance for members of the artistic community. Here's a letter we received a few days after the event fromone of our featurewriterswhowas closer than most commentators to the only people who could, in all honesty, truly declare, 'Je Suis Charlie'… D ear Peter, Still trying to recover after what happened last week in France. Not only is it shocking to learn that cartoonists are shot for their drawings, but also that they shot almost the entire art staff working at Charlie Hebdo (the equivalent of having shot "the usual gang of idiots" at MAD ) and some of these cartoonists were the best known in France. Cabu and Wolinski have been around since the days of Goscinny and Pilote , and Cabu is probably the best known cartoonist in France today. Jeez, I just said "is". I still can't believe they're all gone. It affected me terribly because I knew many of them personally. Stéphane Charbonnier, the director, was a close friend, he'd been a schoolmate of my late wife's, and someone with whom I corresponded regularly. He was the kindest guy you could think of, and yet was gunned down for his ideals. Anyway, I spoke to one of the "survivors" last night, the girl who let the assassins in under menace of getting shot along with her daughter, that she had just brought back from the nursery, if she didn't let them in. She's a good friend of mine, as we worked together in another paper I helped produce in my neck of the woods, and she saw the whole thing along with her young daughter, pretty much as if two assassins had walked inside your home and shot all your family down before your eyes. She's trying to cope with the whole situation as best she can, and told me they were putting next week's issue together, but after that, who knows what will happen. As I told you before, they Win a book worth £125.00! Your feedback is important to us! Send us your views. We are offering a free book to the writer of the best letter published in each issue. The prize for the best letter published in the next issue is Book Palace Books Frank Bellamy’s Complete Swift Stories. The editor’s decision is final. ● Please sendyour comments to the editor, Peter Richardson, at Illustrators. The Book Palace. Jubilee House. Bedwardine Road. Crystal Palace. LONDON. SE19 3AP, or email him at p-r@dircon.co.uk shot all the main staff, of which only two survived and the others (cartoonists) are just freelancers. We'll see, though next week's issue will contain mostly cartoons by every other cartoonist living in France, so in a way, it was a rather "easy" issue to put together. Sorry, just had to get this off my chest. Diego Cordoba Good Morning. Thank you for your mail with the complete issue 7, which is very interesting. I must say, however, that there are far too many illustrations spread over two pages, practically destroying the pictures by the "spine-line" (examples on pages 2-3, 14-15, 26-27, 28-29 etc. will show what I mean). Unfortunately this is a trend very often seen in magazines, and is—in my humble opinion—very bad design and lay-out. I do not have much knowledge of the design process of such a magazine. But I suspect that the designers do their work at large computer monitors, showing a double-spread of two pages, where the "spine" is not shown. And I am sure that such a double spread looks very fine on the monitor. But not so in the finished, printed result. The above is just a thought, which You may or may not find useful! Because I am very much interested in book illustrations and early paperback book covers, I must admit, that I have been tempted to try a subscription. But my main interest is the period 1945 - 70 as regards to book covers, and as for illustrations and illustrators I must—for reasons of economy—limit myself to the artists of my own country, which is Denmark. Kind regards, —Gunnar Olsen Thanks for your email Gunnar and thanks for raising the contentious topic of illustrators approach to layout. The spreads that you cite are all from our feature on Alan Lee and are reproductions of landscape proportion paintings. We could, indeed, have opted to confine these images to one page, thereby avoiding the loss of image in the gutter. But to do that we would have had to lose much of the detail and impact that comes from seeing these images reproduced as close to the size of the original art as we can get. We would also have lost a lot of the impact that these images carry in a larger format. We do however strive to avoid losing important detail in the gutter and a secondary consideration is that as subscribers now get free digital copies of each issue, they can now enjoy all the details of these artworks without having to risk dismantling their copies. With regard to your passion for Danish illustrators, we are intending to run a feature on the art of Kay Nielson in the not too distant future.