Major Post #1: Book Cover!

 Compare the following book covers. Which one do you think I designed?

I know, it may have been hard to tell by my professional design skills that I designed the first cover of The Soul of a New Machine. I think the mixture between a real computer and a cartoon monster eating money really brings it all together. Anyway, let me break down each component of my proposed book cover one by one and express its superiority to the true book cover.

The Title

I believe that titles in book covers need to be highlighted, especially when titles hold great meaning and relevance to the story. My book cover does this, but not so much the real one. The title, The Soul of a New Machine, represents engineers essentially putting their own souls into their new machines. It seemed as if engineers' lives were consumed by the development of these machines for the entire computer industry was moving forward rapidly. Observers of this industry noted, "Things change fast in the computer business. A year is a hell of a long time. It’s like a year in a dog’s life" (25).

The Computer

Data general was a leader in the microcomputer industry. Microcomputers were still huge compared to today's standards, but way smaller than the computers that took up rooms during this time period. This industry was rapidly growing, with new companies established "at the rate of about one every three days" (116). These microcomputers helped pave Data General's way to massive success and money, leading to the green monster.

The Monster and the Money

The monster is a personification of what fueled Data General and other competing computer brands: money. They did not want to make the world a better place through their inventions. Even their press agent said his enthusiasm was because of "money. There’s so goddamn much money to be made" (30). Advertisements even explicitly said, "Because if you’re going to make a small inexpensive computer you have to sell a lot of them to make a lot of money. And we intend to make a lot of money" (20). As the company made more and more money, feeding the monster, it only grew larger and larger. In turn, it could eat more and more money, generating more and more revenue. Maintaining a consistent proportional increase in revenue is difficult as the monster becomes fatter, but Data General accomplished this. Kidder states, "It is one thing for a company with revenues of a million dollars a year to grow 30 or 40 percent in a year and quite another for a half-a-billion-dollar company to pull off the same trick" (72). This created a rather toxic work environment, with workers fighting between teams over their proposed ideas for the specifications of the next generation of machines. The greed and hostility within Data General can quickly be shown through such a monster, which is why I decided to place it in the title.

After reading this blog and looking back at the two covers, which do you think is better now?