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Book Covers of Note November 2014

This is the last of the monthly cover round-ups for 2014, and I have a lot to cram in before I start on my big end of year list, so it’s a bit of corker (if I do say so myself) with lots of gold foil and other fancy finishes:

Amnesia
Amnesia by Peter Carey; design by Alex Kirby (Faber & Faber / October 2014)

(The dust jacket is actually acetate)

betrayers
The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis; illustration by Matt Taylor; type design and art direction by Richard Bravery (Viking / August 2014)

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The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya; design by Devin Washburn (FSG / December 2014)

convulsing-bodies-anne-jordan
Convulsing Bodies by Mark D. Jordan; design by Anne Jordan (Stanford University Press / October 2014)

Critical_Journeys
Critical Journeys by Robert Schroeder; design Jana Vukovic (Library Juice Press / September 2014)

dear-reader
Dear Reader by Paul Fournel; illustration by Jean Jullien (Pushkin Press / November 2014)

9780871409287
The Enormous Room by E. E. Cummings; design by Devin Washburn (Liveright / October 2014)

Fiddler-on-the-Roof-Cover
Fiddler on the Roof by Joseph Stein; design Christopher Silas Neal (Crown / September 2014)

forgive me leonard peacock
Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick; design by Gray318 (Little Brown & Co / July 2014)

girl-defective
Girl Defective by Simmone Howell; design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover; illustration Jeffrey Everett (Atheneum / September 2014)

(I also really like Sandy Cull’s design for the Australian edition published by Pan Macmillan in 2013)

9780226171715
The Hoarders by Scott Herring; design by David Drummond (University of Chicago Press / November 2014)

9781940450261
In Case of Emergency by Courtney Moreno; design by Sunra Thompson (McSweeney’s / September 2014)

Wint_9780385677851_jkt_all_r6.indd
Into the Blizzard by Michael Winter; design by Scott Richardson (Doubleday Canada / November 2014)

its-not-me
It’s Not Me It’s You by Mhairi McFarlane; design by Heike Schüssler; illustration by Gianmarco Magnani / Silence Television (HarperCollins / November 2014)

little-failure-pb
Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart; design by Rodrigo Corral Design (Random House / October 2014)

9781554471416_a
Smoke Proofs by Andrew Steeves; design by Andrew Steeves (Gaspereau Press / September 2014)

9780141394664
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin / November 2014)

rabbit
The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen; design by Nathan Burton (Pushkin Press / September 2014)

(The hardcover edition, designed by David Pearson, is also amazing)

sailing-the-forest-9781447274049
Sailing the Forest by Robin Robertson; design by Neil Lang (Picador / September 2014)

(The skull is gold foil on the finished book)

sense-of-style
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker; design by Louise Fili; illustration by R. O. Blechman (Viking / September 2014)

9781846145506
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker; design by Jim Stoddart & Isabelle de Cat; photograph by Kayla Varley (Penguin / September 2014)

9780141395036
Tales of the Marvellous and the Strange translated by Malcolm C. Lyons; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith Isabelle de Cat; illustration by Nina Chakrabarti (Penguin / November 2014)

(Just look at all that gold!)

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Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter; design by Charlotte Strick; photograph by Natalie Dirks (FSG / November 2014)

0889713065
What I Want to Tell You Goes Like This by Matt Rader; design by Ben Didier / Pretty/Ugly Design (Nightwood Editions / October 2014 )

you
You by Caroline Kepnes; design by Natalie Sousa (Atria / September 2014)

3 Comments

Bugs

 

bugs2

This, the latest post in my Beasts! series, was unexpectedly difficult to compile. While it seems there isn’t a book cover in existence that couldn’t be improved by putting on a bird on it, bugs are, at least by comparison, somewhat rare. While I assumed that bees, beetles, butterflies, centipedes, flies, spiders, termites et al would naturally lend themselves to evocative book designs, we are apparently still quite squeamish about creatures with six legs or more. That said, today’s post includes far more rejected (and short-lived covers) than previous instalments in the series, which that it isn’t necessarily the designers who are afraid of creepy crawlies, but rather other decision-makers in the process are worried about their negative influence on sales. Hopefully some of these covers will change their minds about that…

acid-house
The Acid House by Irvine Welsh; design by Matt Broughton (Vintage Books)

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Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer; design by Charlotte Strick; Illustration by Eric Nyquist (FSG / February 2014)

Arcadia RD 1 cleanb
Arcadia by Lauren Groff; design by Will Staehle (Voice / March 2012)

babayaga
Babayaga by Toby Barlow; design by Gray318 (Corvus / February 2014)


The Bees by Laline Paull; design by Steve Attardo (Ecco / May 2014)

bees
The Bees by Laline Paull; design by Jo Walker (Fourth Estate / May 2014)

beautiful-you
Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk; design by Rodrigo Corral Design (Doubleday / October 2014)

BoneGap_Jkt_des4
Bone Gap by Laura Ruby; design by Michelle Taormina (Balzer + Bray / March 2015)

Lorenzo_Petrantoni
Boxer Beetle by Ned Beauman; illustration by Lorenzo Petrantoni (Sceptre / August 2010)

Brodeck-s_Report_Anna-Heath
Brodeck’s Report by Phillipe Claudel; design by Anna Heath (Quercus)

9781250045058
Bug Music by David Rothenberg; design by Ervin Serrano (St. Martin’s Press / May 2013)

Carnival-brian-morgan
Carnival by Rawi Hage; design by Brian Morgan, illustration by Lorenzo Petrantoni (House of Anansi Press / August 2012)


Chop Chop by Simon Wroe; design by Ben Wiseman (Penguin / April 2014)

cockroach-albert-tang
Cockroach by Rawi Hage; design by Albert Tang (W. W. Norton / October 2009)

cockroach-bill-douglas-unused
Cockroach by Rawi Hage; design by Bill Douglas (House of Anansi / unused)

constant-gardener
Constant Gardener by John Le Carre; design by Stuart Bache (Sceptre)

crowd c
Crowd of Sounds by Adam Sol; design by Bill Douglas (House of Anansi / April 2003)

electricity
Electricity by Victoria Glendinning; design by David Mann (Pocket Books / April 2006)

escaping-into-the-open-bookdesigners
Escaping into the Open by Elizabeth Berg; design by The Book Designers (Harper / August 2012)

Fever
Fever by Sonia Shah; design by LeeAnn Falciani (Picador / June 2011)

The First Principles of Dreaming
The First Principles of Dreaming by Beth Goobie; design by Natalie Olsen / Kisscut Design (Second Story Press / September 2014)


Generation A by Douglas Coupland; design by Jennifer Heuer (Simon & Schuster / June 2010)

9783608501100
Generation A by Douglas Coupland; design by Books We Made (Tropen / August 2010)

DR_GHost_Moth_Hand
Ghost Moth by Michèle Forbes; design by Kathleen Lynch / Black Kat Design (Penguin Canada / October 2013)

Sting
A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson; design by LeeAnn Falciani (Picador / April 2014)

Hurt_Healer_CG3
Hurt Healer by Tony Nolan; design by Connie Gabbert (Baker / unused?)

simon4
In Translation edited by Sherry Simon; design by David Drummond (McGill-Queen’s University Press / unused?)

marriage-game-bookdesigners-unused
The Marriage Game by Alison Weir; design by The Book Designers (Ballantine / unused)

Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka; design by Jamie Keenan (W. W. Norton / February 2014)

missing-link
Missing Link by Jeffrey Donaldson; design by David Drummond (forthcoming)

9781846689895
The Moth introduced by Neil Gaiman; design by Dan Stiles (Serpent’s Tail / August 2014)

my-first-kafka
My First Kafka by Matthue Roth & Rohan Daniel Eason; design by Richard Rodriguez; cover illustration Rohan Daniel Eason (One Peace Books / June 2013)

never-mind
Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn; design by Stuart Wilson (Picador / April 2012)

original-sins
Original Sins by Peg Kingman; design by Darren Haggar (W. W. Norton / September 2010)

perdido-crush-creative
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville; design by Crush Creative (Pan Books / May 2011)

possession
Possession by A. S. Byatt; design Vintage Design (Vintage / December 2009)

isbn9781444776751
The Reason I Jump by Naoki Higashida; design by Kai & Sunny (Sceptre / July 2013)


Royauté by Alexie Morin design by Catherine D’Amours / Pointbarre (Le Quartanier / October 2013)

shining-girls-keith-hayes
The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes; design by Keith Hayes (Mulholland Books / June 2013)

Swallow
Swallow by Theanna Bischoff; design by Natalie Olsen / Kisscut Design (NeWest Press / February 2013)

Poe GOTHIC SERIES Holly MacDonald
Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe; Holly MacDonald (Bloomsbury / October 2009)

9781429988834
Why You Should Read Kafka Before You Waste Your Life by James Hawes; Design and lettering by Steve Snider; Illustration by Douglas Smith (St. Martin’s Press / July 2008)

5 Comments

Beasts!

beasts
Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my! I’m kicking off a new series today on animal book covers. The first post is on ‘beasts’ — mostly ‘wild’ beasts, but one or two more domesticated (and dead) animals may have nosed their way in. Other posts series will look at birds, bugs, reptiles and amphibians, and quite possibly sea creatures and farm animals (unless someone pays me a large amount of money to stop before that). Thanks to all the designers, ADs, publicists and others who have been helping me with images and credits. If you notice that some information about a cover is missing, please let me know.

KENNEDY_American-gabrielle-bordwin
American Spirit by Dan Kennedy; design by Gabrielle Bordwin (New Harvest / May 2013)

animals-of-my-own-kind-drummond
Animals of My Own Kind by Harry Thurston; design by David Drummond (Vehicule Press / April 2010)

Untitled
Annabel by Kathleen Winter; design by Bill Douglas (Anansi / June 2010)

beasts-jacob-covey
Beasts! by Jacob Covey; design by Jacob Covey / Unflown (Fantagraphics / February 2007)

bedside-book-of-beasts-richardson
The Bedside Book of Beasts by Graeme Gibson; design by Scott Richardson (Doubleday Canada / October 2009)

brothers-beasts
Brothers & Beasts edited Kate Bernheimer; design by Isaac Tobin; illustration by Lauren Nassef (Wayne State University Press / January 2008)

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Caribou by Charles Wright; design by Jeff Clark / Quemadura (FSG / March 2014)


Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn; design by Sharon King-Chai (Electric Monkey / June 2013)

chronic city
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem; design by Miriam Rosenbloom (Faber & Faber / December 2009)

Company-of-Liars
Company of Liars by Karen Maitland; design by gray318 (Penguin / January 2008)

9781770893009_HR
Doppler by Erlend Loe; design by Nicolas Cheetham (Anansi / October 2012)

eeeee-kelly-blair
Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin; design by Kelly Blair (Melville House / April 2007)

ExtinctionClub
The Extinction Club by Jeffrey Moore; design by Michel Vrana (Hamish Hamilton Canada / April 2010)

feral
Feral by George Monbiot; design by Jim Stoddart (Penguin / May 2013)


The Good Suicides by Antonio Hill; design by Christopher Brand (Crown / June 2014)


Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia by Mariusz Szczygiel; design by Christopher King (Melville House / May 2014)

Penguin-Goya-Hi_res
Goya’s Dog by Damian Tarnopolsky; design by David Gee (Penguin Canada / August 2007)

Hope A Tragedy
Hope A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander; design by John Gall (Riverhead Books / January 2012)

baskervilles
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by SHOUT (Modern Library / October 2002)

9780141034324
Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith; illustration by Despotica (Penguin / March 2008)

JOYLAND-Haunt-Hi_res
How I Came to Haunt My Parents by Natalee Caple; design by David Gee (ECW / May 2011)

hunger
Hunger by Lincoln Townley; design by Matt Johnson (Simon & Schuster / May 2014)

jaguars-eels
Jaguars and Electric Eels by Alexander Von Humboldt; design by David Pearson; illustration by Victoria Sawdon (Penguin / February 2007)

Knife Throwing Through Self-Hypnosis
Knife Throwing Through Self-Hypnosis by Robin Richardson; design by Natalie Olsen / Kisscut Design (ECW / September 2013)

jamrachs-menagerie
Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch; design by gray318 (Canongate / March 2011)

jungle-book
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling; design by Alice Stevenson (Penguin India / 2014)

leopard
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa; illustration by Hans Tillman (Vintage / September 2007)

TEARSoftheGIRAFFE_B2
Tears of the Giraffe by Alexander McCall Smith; design by Mark Ecob (Abacus / August 2003)

me-and-the-devil
Me and the Devil by Nick Tosches; design by Keith Hayes (Little Brown & Co / December 2012)

9781594488078B
Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi design by Helen Yentus with Jason Booher (Riverhead / September 2011)

978-0-7710-0833-7
Morning in the Burned House by Margaret Atwood; design by Kelly Hill (McClelland & Stewart / September 2009)

natural-acts-fulbrook
Natural Acts by David Quammen; design by John Fulbrook III (W. W. Norton / May 2009)

9780865477735
The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane; design by Charlotte Strick; illustration by Ariana Nehmad Ross (Faber & Faber / October 2013)

Layout 1
Off Course by Michelle Huneven; design by Rodrigo Corral; photograph by Gregori Maiofis (FSG / March 2014)

orphan-master
The Orphan Masters Son by Adam Johnson; design by Lynn Buckley (Random House / January 2012)

panther
Panther by David Owen; design by gray318 (Constable and Robinson / May 2015)

pastoralia-rodrigo-corral
Pastoralia by George Saunders; design by Rodrigo Corral (Riverhead / June 2001)


The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson; design by Matt Dorfman (Riverhead / December 2011)

sharp-teeth-dean
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow; design by Susan Dean; illustration Natasha Michaels (William Heinemann / August 2007)

short-history-bill-douglas
A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright; design by Bill Douglas (Anansi / October 2004)

9781447268963
Station Eleven by Emily  St. John Mandel; design by Nathan Burton (Picador / September 2014)

stories-ii
Stories II by T. C. Boyle; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / October 2013)

tattooed-soldier
The Tattooed Soldier by Hector Tobar; design by Jim Tierney (Picador / October 2014)

tell-the-wolves
Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt; Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich (Dial Press / June 2012)

this-book
This Book Will Save Your Life by A. M. Homes; design by Paul Buckley (Penguin / April 2007)

Tiger-in-Eden
Tigers in Eden by Chris Flynn; design by W.H. Chong (Text Publishing Co. / October 2013)

The Tiger's Wife-Tea Obreht
The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht; design by James Paul Jones; illustration Wuon Gean Ho (Phoenix / March 2011)

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Tooth and Claw by T. C. Boyle; design by Paul Buckley (Penguin / September 2005)


The Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland; design by Keith Hayes (Algonquin Books / May 2014)

9780143125020
The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma; design by Alison Forner (Penguin / March 2014)

Wolves-tpb
Wolves by Simon Ings; design and Illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love (Gollancz / January 2014)

7 Comments

Book Covers of Note September 2014

It’s hard to believe it is already September, but here we are… time for another round of book covers!

If you’re new to this feature, each month I collect together new and recent covers that have caught my eye in the previous few weeks. Although the focus is on books released in the current month, the posts also include covers I’ve missed earlier in the year. You can find the previous month’s posts here.

Thanks (as always) to my local bookstores — Type Books on Queen West, Book City on the Danforth, and Indigo Bay & Bloor — for fighting the good fight (and their wonderful displays!).

9781568987262_cfl
Abbott Miller: Design and Content; design by Pentagram (Princeton Architectural Press / September 2014)

Polygraphe_Samuel Archibald
Arvida by Samuel Archibald; design by Catherine D’Amours / Pointbarre (Le Quartanier / August 2014)
Polygraphe_Samuel Archibald_mech
(this is an obvious miss from last month’s post about maps. Sorry Catherine!)

assassination-of-margaret-thatcher
The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher by Hilary Mantel; design by Rodrigo Corral Design; photograph Demurez/Glasshouse (Henry Holt / September 2014)

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The City Under the Skin by Geoff Nicholson; design by Oliver Munday; photograph by George Baier IV (FSG / June 2014)

(Another one that should have been in the maps post. And yes, that really is someone’s back apparently)

9781846147197
The Establishment by Owen Jones; design by Richard Green (Allen Lane / September 2014)

forensic-songs
Forensic Songs by Mike McCormack; design by Jason Booher (SOHO / July 2014)

god-telling-a-joke
God Telling a Joke by David Margoshes; design by David Drummond (Oolichan Books / May 2014)

Hack-Attack
Hack Attack by Nick Davies; design by David Drummond (Faber & Faber / August 2014)

herodotus
The Histories by Herodotus; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin Classics / September 2014)

9780241970560
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison; design by JP King (Penguin / August 2014)

lippy-booher
Lippy by Bush Moukarzel; design by Jason Booher (Oberon Books / August 2014)

most-dangerous-animal
The Most Dangerous Animal of All by Gary L. Stewart with Susan Mustafa; design by Jarrod Taylor (HarperCollins / June 2014)

(I’m not endorsing the content of this book at all, but the red acetate cover does need to be seen in person to be fully appreciated)

smoke-gets-in
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty; design by David High / High Design (W. W. Norton / September 2014)

transcriptionist
The Transcriptionist by Amy Rowland; design by Keith Hayes (Algonquin Books / May 2014)

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Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle; design by Timothy Goodman (FSG / September 2014)

wittgenstein-jr
Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyers; design by Christopher Brian King (Melville House / September 2014)

you
You by Zoran Drvenkar; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / August 2014)

2 Comments

Vol 459 Series Design by David Drummond

9782896494927

These stylish covers were designed by Canadian designer David Drummond for a series of new novels from Montreal-based publisher VLB éditeur. In the series, four different authors imagine the same plane journey on flight 459 from Paris. Planes on covers has spot UV:

9782896494866 9782896494880 9782896494903

1 Comment

Book Cover Design is a Fine Art

globe-book-covers

It used to be enough for a book to idly stand out in a bookstore. Nowadays, however, new books must jostle for attention with everything. Thousands of distractions are just a click away. Is it any wonder that book-cover design is more important than ever?

In today’s Globe and Mail, I talks about recent trends in book cover design and pick a few of my favourite covers from the year so far. If you live in Canada you can find a lovely-looking print version of the article in the Arts pages.

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Memento Mori

Book of Skulls cover

The threat of death… A warning… A memento mori…

A comprehensive visual history of the human skull is surely an entire Steven Heller book in the making (I guess we’ll just have to make do with a Wikipedia page for now). But as Faye Dowling’s contemporary compendium The Book of Skulls1 makes plain, what was once taboo — terrifying even — has become a pop culture phenomenon. Images of skulls now appear in art, design, fashion, and illustration. Apparently we like to be reminded we are all going to die. Even book covers are not immune. Here are a few recent examples that caught my eye:


Actors Anonymous by James Franco; design by Lynn Buckley (New Harvest October 2013)

darkmans
Darkmans by Nicola Barker; design by Leo Nickolls (Fourth Estate March 2008)

dark-stranger

A Dark Stranger by Julien Gracq; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press December 2013)

everyone-loves-a-trainwreck
Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck by Eric G. Wilson; design by  Rodrigo Corrall, hand-lettering by Jennifer Carrow, photograph by Simon Lee (FSG March 2012)

fiend-christopher-brand
Fiend by Peter Stenson; design by Christopher Brand (Crown July 2013)

Hamlet Doctrine
The Hamlet Doctrine by Simon Critchley & Jamieson Webster; design by David A. Gee (Verso September 2013)

How_the_Dead_Live
How the Dead Live by Derek Raymond; design by Christopher King (Melville House October 2011)

isla-del-tesoro-raul-arias
La Isla del Tesoro (Treasure Island) by Robert Louis Stevenson; design by Raúl Arias (Bolchiro February 2013)

interns-handbook
The Intern’s Handbook by Shane Kuhn; design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich (Simon & Schuster April 2014)

the_invention_of_murder
The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders; design by Ervin Serrano (Thomas Dunne July 2013)

junky
Junky by William Burroughs; artwork by Martha Rich (Penguin April 2012)

mr-peanut
Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf June 2010)

piratas-de-lo-publico
Piratas de lo público by Antón Losada; design by Javier Jaén (Deusto November 2013)

questionable-shape-9781780745855
A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims; design by Holly MacDonald (Oneworld June 2014)

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The Return by Michael Gruber; design by Chris Sergio (Henry Holt & Co. September 2013)


Royauté by Alexie Morin design by Catherine D’Amours (Le Quartanier October 2013)

scarborough
The Scarborough by Michael Lista; design by David Drummond (Véhicule Press September 2014)

SETE
Sete by Albero Riva; design by Manuele Scalia (Mondadori May 2011)

Shovel-Ready
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh; design by Will Staehle (Random House February 2014)


The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt, design by Dan Stiles (Ecco May 2011)

slaughterhouse
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; design by Lynn Buckley; illustrations and hand-lettering by Kurt Vonnegut (Dial Press 2009)

tequila-sunset-tony-lyons-estuary-english
Tequila Sunset by Sam Hawken; design by Tony Lyons at Estuary English (Serpent’s Tail December 2013)

Trainspotting
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh; design by Sarah-Jane Smith (Vintage March 2013)

viva-la-muerte

¡Viva La Muerte! by Rafael Núñez and Elena Núñez González ; design by Manuel Estrada (Marcial Pons Historia March 2014).

Engulfed-in-Flames-chip-kidd
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris; design by Chip Kidd (Little Brown & Co. July 2008)

1 Comment

Recent Covers of Note March 2014

9781408857229
The Arsonist by Sue Miller; design by Greg Heinimann

barcelona-shadows
Barcelona Shadows by Marc Pastor; design by Clare Skeats

beauty
Beauty by Frederick Dillen; design by Christopher Lin

Mabey Dreams
Dreams of the Good Life by Richard Mabey; illustration by Millie Marotta; design Samantha Johnson / Coralie Bickford-Smith

fantomes_fument_c1
Les fantômes fument en cachette by Miléna Babin; design by David Drummond

frog music
Frog Music by Emma Donoghue; design by Katie Tooke; illustration Emma Farrarons

give-me-everything-you-have
Give Me Everything You Have by James Lasdun; design by Julia Connolly

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The Improbability Principle by David J. Hand; design by Oliver Munday

metamorphosis
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka; design by Jamie Keenan

13068415704_287b75914a_b
The New New Thing by Michael Lewis; design by Darren Haggar

on-the-reproduction-of-capitalism
On the Reproduction of Capitalism by Louis Althusser; design by Neil Donnelly

9780374209148-gabriele-wilson
The Orchard of Lost Souls by Nadifa Mohamed; design by Gabriele Wilson

swan-gondola-9781780744902
The Swan Gondola by Timothy Schaffert; design by Alex Merto

9781250039569
The Trip to Echo Spring by Oliva Laing; design by Henry Sene Yee

why-we-took-the-car-design-allison-colpoys
Why We Took the Car by Wolfgang Herrndorf; design by Allison Colpoys

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50 Canadian Book Cover Designs

Lists are always problematic, but CBC Books longlist of Canada’s Most Iconic Book Covers seems strangely underwhelming somehow. Setting aside what counts as ‘Canadian’ (some of the books on the list were not designed by Canadians for example), ‘iconic’ covers are inevitably those that have stuck around and we are most familiar with, not necessarily those that are well designed or particularly interesting to look at. Needless to say, the list says more about our fondness for certain books and authors than about the current state of Canadian book cover design. Perhaps it isn’t really fair to judge the CBC’s contest this way, but it makes the list less interesting than it might otherwise have been (to me, at least).

That said, I am terrible, no good Canadian. 10 years and one Canadian passport later, I still feel like the immigrant I am. It’s not that I feel particularly British any more (if I ever did), it’s more like I haven’t finished unpacking yet (which might literally be true come to think of it)! In nearly five years of blogging I haven’t dedicated a single post to Canadian book design. To remedy to that, below are 50 (FIFTY!) recent book covers designed in Canada. Some of them are well-known, some of them are award-winners, some of them were recommended, some I’ve posted before, and some are just personal favourites. I can’t say they’re ‘iconic’ but they are all great covers. Enjoy. (Pictured above: The Bedside Book of Beasts by Graeme Gibson; design by Scott Richardson; published by Doubleday Canada).

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Something for the Weekend

The Many Lives of Donald Westlake — Michael Weinrab on the work of Donald Westlake, for Grantland:

The Outfit is 213 pages, which is actually somewhat long by the standards of the early Parker novels. There are 24 Parker titles in all, and most of the early ones are tight little symphonies of spare and rigid prose, split into four distinct movements; they somehow manage to adhere to a rough formula and still blow your hair back every time. Their tone is brutal and unsentimental, and their themes are Nietzschean to the extreme: People act, without adverbial accompaniment, and the whys and wherefores are utterly beside the point. The protagonist is a career criminal, a sociopathic utilitarian who despises small talk. When someone asks him if he had a good flight to his destination, he thinks, This wasn’t a sensible question. He is concerned entirely with the successful execution of crimes and with his own self-preservation amid this process. One memorable chapter ends with the line, “He buried him in the cellar in the hole the kid had dug himself.”

The Parker novels, written by Westlake under pseudonym Richard Stark, have been republished by the University of Chicago Press, with covers designed by David Drummond.

Simulations  — Tim Maughan on Extreme Metaphors, a new collection of interviews with J.G. Ballard, at Tor.com:

You can perhaps argue that Ballard missed the big change that was to come just years after his death—the apparent crisis of global capitalism, the shift of industrial and financial production towards the east, and the tightening pressure on the suburban middle classes that this would result in. But the kicking back against these pressures, in the form of the online rebellion and well mannered protest of Anonymous and the Occupy movement, seem to fit perfectly into this description. Both are, in many ways, more of a simulation of a protest than an actual protest themselves—one involves doing little more than clicking a mouse, the other seemingly owing more to music festivals and camping than to hard-fought political resistance.

Let It Bleed — An interview with cartoonist Yoshihiro Tatsumi at Hazlitt:

The parents were really up in arms about these bad books. Manga at that time was different than it is now. It was friendly manga, so little kids could read it too… On the page you have the same number of panels, the people move from left to right and they’re all the same size and it all looks the same on the page… There was no movement or anything like that. We took inspiration from movies, doing zoom shots or close-ups. Using the camera. We wanted to use these techniques in manga, really violent movement. We were trying to move the panels in a realistic kind of way, to make work without lies, true work.

Tatsumi, Eric Khoo’s 2011 film based on Tatsumi’s memoir A Drifting Life, is currently showing at the Lightbox in Toronto.

And finally…

The Names Change But… The conclusion to Mark Medley’s fascinating series on House of Anansi, ‘A Publisher’s Year’, at the National Post:

“The truth about publishing is that publishing houses change their names and identities all the time. It’s the nature of this perilous trade. When I started in the business there was a Collins, and there was a Harper & Row. I can’t even remember when it became HarperCollins. There was Doubleday Canada, and all of its imprints, and there was a Random House, and all of its imprints…”

Publishers fail and new publishers emerge to take their place.

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My Favourite Covers of 2010

At the end of last year, Joseph Sullivan, curator of the late lamented The Book Design Review, asked me to write about my favourite covers of 2010. I’d always stayed away from such posts in the past because it was Joseph’s thing (his 2009 list is here). But since it was Joe who was doing the asking and The BDR was on “indefinite hiatus,” how could I not?

For various reasons, the list I compiled didn’t get used in the end, and it has sat in my drafts folder for about year now. I now have a list of my favourite covers of 2011, but before I post it I thought I would share that original list from 2010, if only for a bit of context.

I’ve made a few minor alterations to the list I sent to Joe — mostly to better accommodate the series designs and to fully utilise 12 months of regret and hindsight — but it is more or less intact, in spirit at least.

I’ve included the short introduction I wrote for the original piece to explain my process (or lack thereof…).

(Hindsight = 20/20: Apparently I like negative space. A LOT).

The Top 10 Book Covers of 2010

Selecting an annual top 10 of anything — film, music, books — is fraught with difficulty. Not only do you have to sift through all things you have seen, heard, and read over the course of a year (assuming you can remember them all), you must somehow take into account all the things you meant to get to and didn’t (where does one even start?). Worse, you are haunted by the awful, inevitable realization that there were any number of incredible things so outside your usual cultural range that they didn’t even register on your consciousness — the “unknown unknowns,” to borrow Donald Rumsfeld’s immortal phrase. Fate usually decides that you will discover at least one previously unknown work of brilliance exactly 24-hours after you publicly declare your favourites…

Then, having grappled with (ignored) all those thorny issues (and plunged on regardless), there is further problem of what actually constitutes good (let alone “great”) book cover design. Part science, part art (part pleasing interested parties), good book cover design is slippery and alchemical. How does one judge? Using what criteria? Ask 10 designers and you will surely get 10 differently nuanced answers.

I have not read all the books on this list, so I cannot claim authority on appropriateness of every cover to its subject (surely an significant consideration, and yet who would want to limit their list only to the books they had read?), so my criteria, such as they were, included the quality of the overall design — the composition, image selection and typography — as well as originality, swagger and the indefinable  je ne sais quoi essential in my opinion to really great covers.

And with that complete abdication from any claim to comprehensiveness or authority, I introduce my picks for the top 10 book covers of the last year with apologies to all the designers — particularly outside of North America and the UK — whose amazing work I have missed, forgotten, or otherwise neglected.

The covers are presented in alphabetically by title.

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Stark’s Grofield Novels Designed by David Drummond

David Drummond designed the covers for the University of Chicago Press recent reissues of Richard Stark’s ‘Parker’ novels. Now David has designed great new covers for the reissues of Stark’s ‘Alan Grofield’ novels as well – The Dame, The Damsel, Blackbird and Lemons Never Lie.

I actually really like these earlier, slightly looser, alternatives as well:

David has written more about the design process on his blog, and you can read my interview with him here.

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