How to spark the curiosity of the readers

How to spark the curiosity of the readers How to "spark the curiosity of the readers" Alejandro Largo is one of our recent additions to Reedsy, and a fantastic designer. You can see some of his beautiful work for a variety of academic titles over at his Reedsy profile. Fun factoid: Alejandro has worked on several covers for texts within the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, sociology, and literature, which are of course some of the most awesome of academic disciplines, at least according to a quick straw poll of the Reedsy offices. Meet Alejandro below. Enjoy!How did you get started in design, and how did you get into book covers specifically?I was fortunate to grow up in Colombia surrounded by art and design. My father, brother and uncle all are designers. When I was young, way before I knew what graphic design was, I would use to go to my dad’s office and be amazed by the vibe of a creative agency. At that point I knew I wanted to be in a creative field. When the time came to go to college, I had the opportunity to come to New York and att end the School of Visual Arts. During the program I got really interested in editorial design, especially book design. So much that I did my internship with Simon Schuster and my first job was designing book covers and interiors for Columbia University Press.Have you done much work with independent authors? If so, is there anything different about it compared to working with a traditional publisher?I haven’t had the chance to work with many independent authors yet, but I am excited about the prospect of working more directly with the author to create the cover. With a traditional publisher there are a lot channels you have to go through to get the cover approved internally before it even reaches the author for the first time. A more direct communication could allow us to create a cover that is relevant, interesting and stands out from the standard look you see on the shelfs.Thanks for your time Alejandro.Check out Alejandro’s profile and extensive portfolio.Follow Ree dsy on Twitter  , Facebook  and Google+

Adjective Phrase Definition and Examples

Adjective Phrase Definition and Examples In English grammar, an adjective phrase is a group of words that functions as an adjective  in a sentence. An adjective headword may be accompanied by modifiers, determiners, and/or qualifiers  (all of which are called dependents). Also known as an  adjectival phrase.   Adjective phrases modify nouns. They may be attributive (appearing before the noun) or predicative (appearing after a linking verb), but not all adjectives can be used in both positions. Examples and Observations The prototypical adjective phrase consists of a single adjective, tall in Sally is tall, or an adjective headword and a qualifier, very tall. Even taller than the woman who coaches her volleyball team is more elaborate, but because it can substitute for the single adjective tall (Sally is even  taller than the woman who coaches her volleyball team), you can recognize it as an adjective phrase.(Thomas P. Klammer et al., Analyzing English Grammar, 5th ed. Pearson, 2007)Humans can be fairly ridiculous animals.(Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, 2007)The unicorn blinked and swished its tail and  looked fairly ridiculous  on the folding tabletop.(Steven R. Boyett, Elegy Beach, 2009)  Tina lost her dark brown briefcase.Mr. Sweet was a tall, thinnish man with thick kinky hair going dead white.  He  was dark brown, his eyes were very squinty and sort of bluish, and he chewed Brown Mule tobacco.(Alice Walker, To Hell With Dying, 1967)After Dons ac cident, his behavior grew stranger and stranger. You  want a second opinion? O.K.  says the doctor. Youre ugly, too.  She liked that joke. She thought  it was terribly, terribly funny.(Lorrie Moore, Youre Ugly, Too, 1990) Premodifiers, Postmodifiers, and Discontinuous Modifiers An adjective phrase consists of an adjective which may be preceded and/or followed by other words. The premodifier is always an adverb phrase, but the post-modifiers can be an adverb phrase, a prepositional phrase, or even a clause. It is also possible to have a modifier that is partly in front and partly behind the head, called a discontinuous modifier, abbreviated as disc-mod. (Marjolijn Verspoor and Kim Sauter, English Sentence Analysis: An Introductory Course. John Benjamins, 2000) Noun Phrases and Adjective Phrases There may be very little difference between a noun phrase and an adjective phrase in structures where the adjectives occur before the word it qualifies. Most noun phrases consist of a head noun plus one or more adjectives, or indeed an adjective phrase itself. Consider the examples in a, below. a. [ADJECTIVE PHRASES]It was cold, bleak, biting weather.Hes an extraordinary looking man, and yet I can really name nothing out of the way.In Beijing these days, one of the fastest-growing fortunes the world has ever seen is managed by fewer than two-dozen traders.This was a hearty, healthy, dapper, red-faced gentleman, with a shock of hair prematurely white, and a boisterous and decided manner. In each of these examples, if we include the italicized head nouns, we have noun phrases with embedded adjective phrases; without the head nouns, we have adjective phrases. The focus is always on the head word (HW). (Bernard ODwyer, Modern English Structures: Form, Function, and Position. Broadview, 2006) Phrases Within Phrases [C]onsider . . . our example: The young man picked the best bloom from the very delicate orchid. The sequence from the very delicate orchid is a prepositional phrase. The prepositional phrase consists of a noun phrase and a preposition. One can demonstrate that the sequence from the very delicate orchid is a coherent group of words by moving it as in: From the very delicate orchid the young man picked the best bloom. The word very is an intensifying adverb and it modifies delicate to form an adjective phrase within the noun phrase within the prepositional phrase. This phrase-within-a-phrase structure is shown by bracketing below: [The young man] picked the best bloom [from [the [very delicate] orchid]]. We could add very carefully to this sentence. Since carefully is an adverb and very is an intensifying adverb modifying it, very carefully would be an adverb phrase.(Barry J. Blake, All About Language. Oxford University Press, 2008)