I’m not sure anyone is paying too much attention to book design this week, but if you’re looking for a few minutes diversion from the awfulness of almost everything, here’s this month’s selection of quirky, beautiful, and otherwise interesting book covers…
Black Water by Louise Doughty; design by Oliver Munday (Sarah Crichton Books / September 2016)
A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived by Adam Rutherford; design by Andy Allen (Orion / September 2016)
British Rail Designed 1944-1997 by David Lawrence; design by Theo Inglis (Ian Allan Publishing / November 2016)
Clearing the Air by Gregory Wood; design by Phil Pascuzzo (Cornell University Press / November 2016)
Cold Skin Albert Sánchez Piñol; design by Christopher Gale (Canongate / October 2016)
The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble; design Rafi Romaya; cover illustration by Timorous Beasties (Canongate / November 2016)
Defender by G X Todd; design by Mark Swan (Headline / December 20161)
Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien; design Jaya Miceli (W.W. Norton / October 2016)
Dying by Cory Taylor; design by Pete Adlington (Canongate / November 2016)
Faithful by Alice Hoffman; design by Zoe Norvell (Simon & Schuster / November 2016)
Is this a new (old) thing…?
Guy by Jowita Bydlowska; design by Michel Vrana (Wolsak & Wynn / November 2016)
I like that this was a split run of coral and blue:
Knives & Ink by Isaac Fitzgerald and Wendy MacNaughton; design Katya Mezhibovskaya; cover art Wendy MacNaughton (Bloomsbury / October 2016)
This is a nice partner to 2014’s Pen & Ink which also featured cover art by MacNaughton:
London Lies Beneath by Stella Duffy; Art direction by Nico Taylor; illustration by Joe McLaren (Little, Brown / October 2016)
Midwinter by Fiona Melrose; Art Direction by Bekki Guyatt; illustration by Raquel Leis Allion (Little, Brown / November 2016)
Moonglow by Michael Chabon; design by Adalis Martinez (Harper / November 2016)
Music For Life by Fiona Maddocks; design by Alex Kirby (Faber & Faber / October 2016)
One with the Tiger by Steven Church; design by Faceout Studio (Soft Skull / November 2016)
Pull Me Under by Kelly Luce; design Rodrigo Corral; cover art by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / November 2016)
The Revenge of Analog by David Sax; design Pete Garceau (Public Affairs / November 2016)
Sick Bag Song by Nick Cave; illustration by Nick Cave; art direction by Brian Moore (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / November 2016)
The Start of Something by Stuart Dybek; design Suzanne Dean; cover art by Marion de Man (Jonathan Cape / November 2016)
(You can read more about the process of making this cover at the Creative Review blog)
The Story of Reason in Islam by Sari Nusseibeh; design by Anne Jordan and Mitch Goldstein (Stanford University Press / November 2016)
Swing Time by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / November 2016)
This goes rather nicely with Gray318’s earlier design for The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith:
Thus Bad Begins by Javier Marías; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / November 2016)
Unmistakable by Srinivas Rao; design by Catherine Casalino (Portfolio / August 2016)
Violence as Generative Force by Max Bergholz; design by Scott Levine (Cornell University Press / November 2016)
Whatever Happened to Interracial Love by Kathleen Collins; design by Allison Saltzman; cover art by Lorna Simpson (Ecco / November 2016)
Writing to Save a Life by John Edgar Wideman; design by Eric White (Scribner / November 2016)
You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Leiris; design by Suzanne Dean (Harvill Secker / October 2016)
The US cover for You Will Not Have My Hate, designed by Darren Haggar (Penguin Press, October 2016), provides an interesting contrast in styles: