Story behind the animals on O'Reilly book covers | Hacker News Reader

Story behind the animals on O'Reilly book covers

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132 pointsjoshontheweb27 comments

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.

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

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 I'm a bit sad how quickly portions of the book went out of date.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.

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

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?

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".

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.

What, are you implying that infinite copyright exists now? Because copyright now is lifetime plus 70 years.

There's a pretty solid pattern of late of it being extended at the same rate as the passage of time, so it might as well be infinite.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

I like them for that reason - they're very simple, yet easy-to-recognize visually, and still appealing.

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!

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

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

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.

I have noticed many of cover pictures are selected from 'Dover's Pictorial Archive'. (http://store.doverpublications.com/by-subject-art-pictorial-...). 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.

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..

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.

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

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

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

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.

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