04 - Audience & Personas

It’s all come to this — in this episode host Sam Aquillano chats with Blake Goodwin, Paul Reiss, and Andrea Cincotta from Proportion Design as they unveil the final cover design for Sam’s forthcoming book, Adventures in Disruption. This is the book cover reveal! After the unveiling, Sam shares the book cover for the first time, with his Design Museum co-founder, Derek Cascio. Derek shares his latest creative entrepreneurial venture, Thirst Burster which he’s launching a kickstarter campaign for; check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dotnotcom/thirst-burster   Finally, Sam and the Proportion team do a post-project review to talk about learnings and what the process meant to them. For more information, visit insidefrontcover.com, and to see the final cover, visit printmag.com — Inside Front Cover is a featured podcast on PRINT Magazine’s website.

In this episode, host Sam Aquillano dives deep into the first 12 concepts through a conversation with his wife Nicole and through conversations on social media. The community has weighed in, and Sam shares some of the comments. After Sam gives the feedback to Proportion Design, they get back to it and design 8 new cover refinements. Hear from designers Blake Goodwin, Paul Reiss, and Andrea Cincotta as they share the refinements and talk about what’s working and what’s not. For more information, visit insidefrontcover.com, and for more visuals from the design process, including the 8 refined designs, visit printmag.com — Inside Front Cover is now a featured podcast on PRINT Magazine’s website.

The first round of book cover designs is here! In this episode, Sam kicks things off by chatting with his wife Nicole about the two creative directions Proportion presented last time so that he can share his feedback on what’s working and what’s not, and so that they can start designing cover concepts. Sam and Nicole also discuss book titles, and thanks to the community on social media, they get down to the final option: Adventures in Disruption! Then the Proportion team, including Blake Goodwin, Paul Reiss, and Andrea Cincotta, share their first round of cover designs — 12 concepts that fit the Passion, Expertise, and Creativity brand attributes. For more information, visit insidefrontcover.com, and for more visuals from the design process, including the title ideas and the 12 cover concepts, visit printmag.com — Inside Front Cover is now a featured podcast on PRINT Magazine’s website.

Sam kicks off this episode with big news about his involvement with the Design Museum. And the design project continues: for the first 4 episodes, the Proportion Design team has been in listen and learn mode, taking in a lot of information. Now the team, including Blake Goodwin, Paul Reiss, and Andrea Cincotta, share their distillation of those learnings into 3 distinct brand attributes, which form a triangle — the book cover design will be positioned in the middle of that triangle. They share initial creative directions at the center of those 3 attributes — visuals meant to stimulate conversation about where they’ll go next. And the search for a title continues — the whole team discusses Sam’s title ideas and gives feedback. For more information, visit insidefrontcover.com, and for more visuals from the design process, visit printmag.com — Inside Front Cover is now a featured podcast on PRINT Magazine’s website.

Sam visits Proportion Design’s office to talk about audience profiles for the book, with Blake Goodwin and Paul Reiss. The Proportion team prepared an overall audience profile and three personas to discuss and agree on before moving forward in the design process. They also shared brand associations that these personas might have and the design elements which they could draw from when crafting the cover. Sam and the team also brainstorm titles for the book which Sam shares with his wife Nicole for her candid feedback. For more info visit insidefrontcover.com 

Sam visits Proportion Design’s office for the second session — this time focused on understating the competition. Proportion Co-Founders Blake Goodwin and Paul Reiss show, and talk through, a presentation of books they curated that display a broad range of existing cover designs — from books that occupy a similar niche as Sam’s book, to a broad range of covers consisting of elements that might inspire directions that could differentiate the look of this book. The team shares what does and does not resonate with Sam’s book theme. This content is inherently visual, visit insidefrontcover.com to see the book covers discussed in the episode.

In episode 2, host Sam Aquillano visits Proportion Design’s office for the first real session in the process, Discovery, where Proportion Co-Founders Blake Goodwin and Paul Reiss turn the tables and interview Sam about the vision behind his new book. As Paul says, as designers they’re often acting as brand therapists to ask the right questions and tease out the key information that will help them proceed through the design process. Sam, Blake, and Paul cover a range of topics, from the founding of the museum to the most pivotal moments in the book, and end on a series of continuums aimed at pinpointing the brand characteristics. Visit insidefrontcover.com for more info and to share your feedback and ideas on the project.

In this first episode, host Sam Aquillano shares an overview of the show and the design project to create the cover of his new book, with Proportion Design, and with feedback from the community (you!). Sam introduces the concept of 'creative startups,' then welcomes Derek Cascio, Co-Founder of Design Museum Boston, to talk about starting the museum and the museum's first public design project to create its brand identity 10 years ago. Then we hear from Blake Goodwin and Paul Reiss, Co-Founders of Proportion Design about the brand design process they and their team will go through to design the book cover. Visit insidefrontcover.com for more info and to share your feedback and ideas on the project.

Introducing Inside Front Cover, a limited-series podcast about designing the cover of a book from start to finish, incorporating your feedback along the way. Hosted by entrepreneur and business designer Sam Aquillano, Founder & Executive Director of Design Museum Everywhere. Each week we'll share the design process and community feedback as my partners at Proportion Design create the cover for Sam's new book about launching and growing creative startups.