Everything comes and goes in patterns, and books are no different. When e-books were new and exciting, they were pushed to the public for the perks of convenience, cost, and portability. This can be said for many things, such as the trend to shop online for items, get groceries delivered, and listen to music and movies through online platforms. However, I feel that once these trends get "too popular", people revert to the older ways in search of nostalgia and the sense of physically owning something or being present in a place. For example, trying clothes on in the store, looking at produce yourself to judge what you want to buy, or owning vinyl records or CDs of your favorite music. Both the article and the video touch on this; the article talks about "convenience reading" compared to "book owning and reading", and the video mentions that physical books provide"the comfort of thingy-ness" that an e-book cannot. Additionally, the physical medium of a book cover allows different avenues of creativity to be explored. In the TED talk, I found it interesting that Chip Kidd noted that, "once the book designer has read the text, then he has to be an interpreter and a translator." This perspective opens up an entirely new world in which words, stories, and ideas can be translated into artwork. Similarly to how we have been translating from Japanese to English in class, book designers must make specific choices, none of which are ever technically "wrong", but can convey a very different feeling. Book designers must keep the audience's perception in mind while embodying the author's work in a visual manner. I believe that the process of creating the book cover involves many of the mental checkpoints we have been going over while translating. I find this idea very intriguing and would be interested in exploring the crossover of artistic and language translation.
Emma
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