There were 1,658 press releases posted in the last 24 hours and 414,139 in the last 365 days.

Oleb Books Publisher Uses Accessibility Tools to Design Cover of Latest Release

Book cover for Face Up by Suzanne Nielsen featuring a baby's fist punching up into the air with superhero motion styling around the fist.

Book cover of Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems

Blind publisher Belo Miguel Cipriani of Oleb Books used accessibility tools to successfully design the cover of Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems.

I hadn't taken on a design project since losing my sight, and I was thrilled that Suzanne gave me the chance.”
— Belo Miguel Cipriani
MINNEAPOLIS, MN, UNITED STATES, January 30, 2023 /EINPresswire.com/ -- When he lost his sight as a result of a brutal assault in 2007, Belo Miguel Cipriani of St. Louis Park, Minn., a suburb of Minneapolis, found himself pushed into a scary world he didn't know how to navigate. At the age of 26, he had to start his life all over again.

"One of the first steps I took in my recovery was to seek insight into my situation," he said. "I started looking for disability stories that were contemporary in nature."

He didn't really find anything that fit the bill, so he did the next best thing. A decade after becoming blind, he launched Oleb Books, a publishing house for writers with disabilities.

Oleb Books' latest title is "Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems" by Suzanne Nielsen. The poetry volume is the winner of the 2021 Oleb Books Poetry Prize and was selected from a pool of 409 entries.

"As one of a handful of disability presses, we receive hundreds and sometimes thousands of submissions for our contests," said Cipriani. "This makes the selection process tough for our panel of judges, all of whom identify as having a disability."

"What stood out to the judges about Nielsen's work," Cipriani continued, "is that while her depression and hearing loss are part of the story, they are not center stage. Through these poems, the reader glimpses into mental illness, alcoholism, parenting, breast cancer, and reflections on being an adoptee… all from a disability perspective."

In addition to serving as the editor for "Face Up," Cipriani also designed the book cover, a task he credits having the ability to do thanks to his past life as a techie in Silicon Valley and as the founder of Oleb Media, a digital inclusion firm.

"I kept seeing little fists in my mind after reading the poem' Fists for Hands,"' said the blind publisher. "I hadn't taken on a design project since losing my sight, and I was thrilled that Suzanne gave me the chance."

Cipriani describes the process of designing the cover for "Face Up" as "design by committee." He had an idea, put it into a PDF with his screen reading software for the blind, then collected feedback.

"While there's a darkness to the poems in 'Face Up,' they're always accompanied by a sense of wonder, and at times humor," said Cipriani. "This is why I settled on the tenderness and playfulness of a baby's clenched fist."

Cipriani shared that the toughest part of the design process for him was the selection of fonts. Many of the fonts he had visual memory for were no longer available, and there were all sorts of new fonts with campy names he didn't have context for.

"I had Ellen Morgan, the copy editor, sit with me one evening and describe a bunch of fonts to me," he said. "She didn't tell me what to choose; she just gave me the descriptions I needed to make a choice. Once I got the design approved by Suzanne, I handed it to our designer to polish and finalize with fading color techniques."

It was detailed work, but a determined Cipriani got it done. More information about "Face Up: A Collection of Outlaw Poems" by Suzanne Nielsen can be found on the publisher's website: olebbooks.com.

David-Elijah Nahmod
Oleb Books
+1 612-568-1013
email us here
Visit us on social media:
Facebook
Instagram
YouTube

Face Up Poetry Reading: "Such Colorful Stories"