The Dirt on Clean - Katherine Ashenburg [126]
THE LOOK OF THE BOOK
BY KELLY HILL
As soon as the concept for the jacket of The Dirt on Clean was approved, the cover model search began. Our first model was a bar of Bee & Flower soap that I’d found on a trip to Toronto’s Chinatown. Unfortunately, this soap boasted a distinctive pattern specific to the Bee & Flower brand. Not wanting to infringe trademark, I set out to find a rectangular bar of soap that would be obviously soap-like in character, but not identifiable as a particular brand.
Next stop was the drugstore. Several boxes and packages of soap were purchased, none of which turned out to have squared corners, which is necessary if you’re hoping to make a hard-edged item like a book look like a bar of soap.
Then, on an auspicious visit to my parents’ house, I came across a basket of soaps in which I found our future star. She was not blue or green or pink, but a lovely golden colour; she was a cube and had a square debossed border on one side and round debossing on the other. All the very traits I’d been looking for, yet nothing that linked her to a specific brand. Unfortunately my mother couldn’t recall where she’d bought the soap, so there was no chance of getting a back-up bar (I’d hoped to hedge my bets by having multiple models, as they do when shooting television scenes with dogs and babies).
So, with only one bar of soap I went to my photographer for the cover photoshoot. Bruce carefully took many photos from every angle and we even lathered her up for a shot. Our winning model was a natural in front of the camera.
The final step was some digital touching up (even the best models need it), creating a label, and putting all the photos together in such a way that The Dirt on Clean appears to be a refreshing, dirt-banishing, book-sized bar of soap.
* A SERVICE EXCLUSIVE TO VINTAGE CANADA READERS
VINTAGE CANADA EDITION, 2008
Copyright © 2007 Katherine Ashenburg
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Published in Canada by Vintage Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2008. Originally published in hardcover in Canada by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2007. Distributed by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Canada and colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House of Canada Limited.
www.randomhouse.ca
Pages 335 to 338 constitute a continuation of the copyright page.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Ashenburg, Katherine
The dirt on clean : an unsanitized history / Katherine Ashenburg.
1. Hygiene—History. 2. Bathing customs—History. 3. Baths—History. I. Title.
RA780.A83 2008 613′.409 C2008-900330-6
eISBN: 978-0-307-36836-2
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