

Story behind the animals on O'Reilly book covers - joshontheweb
http://oreilly.com/news/lejeune_0400.html#

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sriramk
When I wrote my book on Windows Azure for O'Reilly, they originally assigned
me some bird which I hated. I wanted them to pick a pug or some dog (because
Azure was originally code named 'Red Dog'). To my surprise, they hunted down a
dog that was actually called a 'red dog' and we used that instead.

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oasisbob
For the curious, _Programming Windows Azure_:
<http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596801984.do>

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sriramk
Oh yes, thanks for the link. Everyone, please go buy as many copies as you can
;).

Seriously though, all the royalties go to charity. I'm a bit sad how quickly
portions of the book went out of date. I've been asked to do a second edition
but probably don't have the time to do it given startup commitments.

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demian
The cover designs of O'Reilly books are truly awesome (and I don't use that
word often).

They are not only recognizable in a "brand" kind of way, but they are also
professional looking, simple but with a twist of the creativity that
differentiate programmers from other technical professions.

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rgc4
Amazing that the covers wouldn't have existed if infinite copyright existed
just a few centuries earlier.

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tzs
That's rather insulting to O'Reilly's artists. Do you really think that if
they could not have copied those images they used on the first few books, they
could not have mustered the skill to draw animals themselves?

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blahedo
I'm sure they _could_ have. But would they? The story would have at least
played out differently if that initial conversation had gone, "hey, let's pay
someone to painstakingly draw animals and then transfer them to scratchboard"
rather than "hey, look at these gorgeous woodcuts".

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edie
We now go to the original sources of the old engravings (we have a big library
of old books full of them), and we also have a few illustrators who are able
to work in that style. When we started out, we had no money for high-end
illustrations; luckily the animal images I chose for the series were in the
public domain. Fortuitous.

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james2vegas
It is a pity that the O'Reilly Menagerie lies abandoned:
<http://oreilly.com/animals.html>

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edie
We are working on it. We have so many more titles and animals these days that
it's hard to keep up.

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joshontheweb
I found it interesting that "Awk and Sed" was the impetus for using animal
art.

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Shank
Am I the only one who doesn't like these covers? They're unique, and I love
that, but sometimes I wish they had more character, not just a single color
animal.

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Maven911
Yes i feel the same, ive learned to accept them, but call me callous i like my
books to have interesting and attractive art, in a non sexual way of course

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whackberry
I've gotten so used to them on my shelf, I rarely pay attention. I just go for
the camel book(Perl) or the cow book(C). A classy trademark, love it - and the
Oreilly quality has never dropped. Congratulatiosn and keep the awesome titles
coming!

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joe24pack
Ever notice that the O'Reilly books for Oracle have insects ("bugs") on the
covers? Could there be a coded message in there?

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edie
Not really, although some have made that inference. Insect communities have
some parallels to databases, if you think about it a bit.

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GBond
I've noticed that my kids were always drawn to the animal art at age 3-4. A
nice project (maybe for charity) from O'Reilly would be a children's book with
collection of these covers. I think it would be a hit.

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sateesh
I have noticed many of cover pictures are selected from 'Dover's Pictorial
Archive'. ([http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-art-
pictorial-...](http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-art-pictorial-
archive.html)). A book like "Animals: 1,419 Copyright-Free Illustrations of
Mammals, Birds, Fish, Insects, etc.
(<http://store.doverpublications.com/0486237664.html>) would be an interesting
gift to children.

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option_greek
I'm saddened by the dragon part because what fascinates me most about these
covers is that, most of these amazing animals are really there some where. But
now I have to wonder if the one on the cover really exists or product of some
ones wild imagination... I hope they ditch this mythical stuff..

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derleth
Read the Colophon of every book which has an animal you're unsure of; it's in
the very back of every O'Reilly book I own.

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lispython
Some O'Reilly's Python books use big snake in the cover, but this python does
not really mean snakes, Guido also said so.

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calibwam
But it would stretch the animal term a bit to have six middle aged British men
on the cover.

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g-garron
I didn't know that. Those are great covers, as soon as you see them yo know
you are looking at O'Reilly books.

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ktizo
I do find O'Reilly to be the most consistently good technical publisher
around. They are also one of the few counterexamples to the idea that you
can't judge books by the covers.

