What’s the recipe for a good book (about creativity)?

 

Ask a publisher and they’ll probably say you need a fascinating topic, an original angle and an attractive layout. Plus, it must be well written and inspiring to read. And these are the very ingredients for Volume 2 of my book 'La créativité liée au vélo – Bike-inspired creativity' (out now!).

How do you create great content? Each day, for more than 20 years, my job has been to provide an answer to this question for my clients. And I’ve applied the same formula to a pet project of mine: velosophy.

Nine years ago my love of cycling and creativity led me to launch my blog https://velosophe.be/. Week after week I publish posts about incredibly creative bikes and it’s proved to be a winning formula. To date, I’ve published over 250 posts, given talks on the subject, put together exhibitions of extraordinary bikes and just published my second book.

An adventure in creative publishing

 “I believe a title is first and foremost a promise of what’s to come”

Naturally, mention creativity and people understandably expect something quite special. To meet these expectations, every detail counts, from the writing to the choice of paper, the translation and the layout. And it’s vital they all come together as a coherent whole.

Creative translation

As in Volume 1, the articles in the second book are all bilingual (French and English), which was quite the challenge considering my reputation for wordplay and the odd touch of humour. Two amazing translators – Moira Bluer (technical) and Alison Hughes (creative) – joined forces to make it happen.

“This project was completely different from the kind of jobs I usually take on because of the freedom Pascal gave us to ‘play’ with his source texts in order to make the English version as lively and creative as the French, and even introduce wordplay where possible. You’re entering the realms of ‘transcreation’, which is a long way from a translation that stays as close as possible to the original. Here you need to convey the message while retaining the flavour (or spirit) of the original. You can give free rein to your imagination,” Moira says

“Pascal is the master of wordplay. Unlike some authors, his plays on words are not just there to show off, they’re really clever in the context. Sometimes they can’t be replicated in the English and we’re lucky that he lets us create our own if we see the opportunity to use English ones elsewhere. The titles are a great example. Sometimes they take a bit of thinking out and I need to use a thesaurus in both languages and other Google searches to find synonyms and rhyming words,” Alison adds.

There was a huge amount of communication between the two translators, resulting in some great flashes of inspiration, such as the one below (see the title):

 

“It takes time to do this kind of job well. Inspiration can strike immediately or it can take days. The highlight of this project? That sweet ‘oh, yes’ moment when you finally figure out a nice solution to a linguistic problem,” Moira concludes.

"Working on a project like this gives you the confidence to be more creative in other jobs"

(Moira Bluer)

Creative layout

For the layout I worked with a friend (a distant relative, in fact). “It’s not every day you get the opportunity to create the layout for a 180-page book from start to finish,” Brigitte Foissac tells me. “The challenge was to try to use my creativity on every double-page spread to ensure the layout echoed (and did justice to) the ingenuity of each of the bike inventors. I had to think long and hard about it and try to highlight one specific feature of each creation, without having the luxury (unfortunately) of being able to spend three hours on every page.”

Brigitte very much enjoyed the process but did mention the intricate nature of the task. “You need to pay attention to every single detail. I’d very much like to repeat the experience and continue to work with all types of media, moving away from the digital world from time to time.”

What was particularly motivating and enjoyable about this project was the creative input from all sides – the subject matter of course, but also the content and translations. It’s really stimulating to find yourself in an environment where the ideas are flowing freely and you can pick up on lots of details. For inspiration, I always begin a creative graphic project by reading and looking for ideas and concepts everywhere I can. With this one, I had (almost) everything right in front of me!

Print to impress

The final stage is printing the book. Not every paper grade is equal and the weight you choose can have a huge impact on the underlying costs, such as shipping charges.

“The paper chosen must set off the quality of the photos and illustrations while ensuring the book is easy to read,” says Fabienne Naumann-de Morteuil, sales manager at Graphius. “Nowadays, we have less and less paper in our daily lives. So, when it comes to printing books, our primary concern is that the reader must want to touch the paper and enjoy it as something special!”

As you can see, this project was very much about teamwork. In addition to the contributors mentioned above, I would also like to thank the photographers Kévin Zoso and Michel Evrard, and my friend Jacques Bodard for his invaluable help in filming the video for the crowdfunding campaign.

 

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