Texas

Előszó

By Way of Introduction
As the State of Texas was making final preparations for its Sesquicentennial celebration in 1986—its great 150th birthday party—editors in Austin and Singapore were putting the final touches on Insight Guide: Texas, the latest in Apa Productions1 series of JSI-2MH31ÍS internationally acclaimed travel books.
Apa Production is a Hong Kong and Singapore-based publishing house whose innovative approach to creating travel chronicles has been honored through-out the world. Since pub- Hoefer lisher Hans Hoefer estab-lished Apa in 1970, the Insight Guide series has won worldwide recognition for its sensitive cultural portrayal of leading travel destinations. Having stu-died printing book production, design and photogra-phy in Krefeld, West Ger- Ackland many, Hoefer is a disciple of the Bauhaus tradition of graphic arts.
Coordinating production of four Apa guidebooks simultaneously, the Insight Guides to the Rockies, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska and Texas were California-based project editors Diana Ackland and Janié Freeburg. Diana Ackland's editorial background includes New York, where she was an editor of Good Housekeeping, and Los Angeles where she has been a promo-tion manager for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate. She and her husband Donald Ackland run Sequoia Communications, a Santa Barbara company. Diana Ackland studied art history and English at Pine Manor and Dickinson Colleges.
Janié Freeburg, Sequoia Communications managing editor, has planned, designed and edited a number of publications in her eight years as a public relations consultant. Freeburg followed up with a degree in comparative cultures from the University of California, Irvine, with classes in graphic design and commercial art. She "loves to produce good books."
Vivien Loo, Apa Productions editor, over-saw all four of the US titles being put together by Ackland and Freeburg. Travel copy and photographs passed from Texas to
Santa Barbara to Singapore, where Loo guided every phase of the book's develop-ment. She assisted with editorial ideas, chose photographs, edited copy, type-set and supervised the paste-up.
Possibly not since the Works Projects Adminis-tration (WPA) Writers' program guidebook, pub-lished in 1940 not long after the Texas Centennial, have so many talented Texans got together to tour people around their state. John ÜrJ Smith, a free-lance writer and editor who is especial-ly knowledgeable about "Texana," began to de-velop an interest in the Insight Guide series when photographer Joe Viesti vi-sited him in Austin in late 1984. Smith was born in Lubbock and graduated from the University of Freeburg Texas at Austin with a BFA
in art history. After which, he got a job administering telephone switching offices for Southwestern Bell in the lovely Central Texas towns he writes about ("Waxahachie to Waco," "Waco to Austin"). He has traveled in Africa, most of the Middle East and Europe. Now that his duties as field editor are discharged, he is writing a biogra-phy of his great-grandfather John Hittson, a cattle king, and plans an oral history of frontier baptism.
Photographer Joe Viesti visited Texas in the winter of 1984/85 and returned a year later just as the Sesquicentennial was about to start. Viesti, who is based in New York City, has managed to combine his profession with his love of travel, his fascination with other cultures and his "desire to focus on positive and colorful images of man." His work has been seen in a number of Insight Guides, which includes those to Florida, Southern California, The Southwest, New England, New York, Continental Europe and The Rockies. He has shot for American Express, the National Geographic Society, TWA Airlines and several travel corpora-tions. His work has alsó appeared in publications such as Geo, Stern and Pacific. He is especially appreciative of assistance from TWA and Coachmen recreation vehicles Vissza