The Nick Posters--First Peter Heller/Ethan Rutherford, and Now Chuck Klosterman.

So here's my theory on his. Our signs are great. Clean. Informational. Sometimes it makes sense for another venue to put them up. For example, Denise Kiernan's The Girls of Atomic City is an obvious choice to post in the information area of senior housing. Not only does Kiernan interview women of The Greatest Generation, but it's a much asked for daytime event, at 2 pm Saturday (this Saturday, June 8). It's perfect.

And Stacie and I are thrilled that Mel has picked up event sign making, as we're able to get them out further out. Hooray!

But for the most part I think signage in secondary spaces is visual clutter. All the bulletin boards around town are packed with stuff, and I just don't think anything stands out. We experimented with multi-event signage, but it didn't really say enough about each event. I'm still doing these with the kids events, but I'm still convinced that I could do a better job and I'd like to work on a new design for fall.

Every so often, a new local author will decide that the key to his or her event success is blanketing the market with signs. We do tell everyone that with few exceptions, their time would be much better spent making personal contacts to their friends, family and colleagues. We also ask that if they do blanket, they go around and take the signs down afterwards. Let's just say that authors who put most of their time into this have some of the weakest turnouts, alas. 

For the most part, though, it just doesn't seem effective, and I feel a bit guilty for adding to the information overload. But what if we had signs so nice that folks actually wanted to put them up? I still love our sign for Justin Cronin/Dan Chaon that was done by Stackmatic, for example. That was s beautiful that we framed it afterwards, where it is displayed in our break room.

Well it does turn out we have an artist on staff, Nick Berg. And when we were brainstorming about what extra we could do to promote our upcoming event with Peter Heller for The Dog Stars on Wednesday, June 19, 7 pm, we came up with the idea of a poster. I've posted it before, but I'm including it again, as I asked Clark to give me a better scan, and that is much better than the photo I used before.

It's gone over very well, and Nick is up to the challenge of doing more. We're hoping for perhaps one a month--but don't count on it. As soon as I set myself up with a tight schedule, everything falls apart. That said, we all love Chuck Klosterman and thought this would be a good match for posters, so we're now got something to promote his new book, I Wear the Black Hat: Grappling with Villains (Real and Imagined). His free event is Thursday, July 18, 7 pm, at Boswell. Mark your calendar as I know you are very busy!

I love it. Despite Nick's signature style, it's a very different look. Whereas Heller's poster is lush, Klosterman's is clean and poppy. I think it's perfect for the book, and I'm so excited about posting it around town. And while we're on the subject, here's a great piece from Shelf Awareness of Chuck Klosterman interviewing Jonathan Lethem at Book Expo.

You can also buy either poster for $5 in store. Right now we're not shipping but if we get requests, we certainly will. Shipping's going to be a little higher than normal, because of the cost of the shipping tubes.