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Tag: jim tierney

Book Covers of Note, June 2020

After Australia edited by Michael Mohammed Ahmad; design by Design by Committee (Affirm Press / May 2020)

A Burning by Megha Majumdar; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / June 2020)

The cover of the UK edition, which will not be published until 2021(!), was designed by Craig Fraser. It has a very vintage Faber feel… maybe it’s just the type?

The Dragons, the Giant, and the Women by Wayétu Moore; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / June 2020)

Inner Coast by Donovan Hohn; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W.W. Norton / June 2020)

The Margot Affair by Sanaë Lemoine; design by Elena Giavaldi (Hogarth / June 2020)

The Myth of the American Dream by D. L. Mayfield; design by David Fassett (IVP / May 2020)

News Parade by Jospeh Clark; design by Matt Avery (University of Minnesota Press / May 2020)

Night, Sleep, Death, the Stars by Joyce Carol Oates; design by Jamie Keenan (Fourth Estate / June 2020)

The cover of the US edition, published by Ecco, was designed by Sara Wood:

Nothing is Wrong and Here is Why by Alexandra Petri; design by Jim Tierney (W.W. Norton / June 2020)

(I really don’t know how I feel about this cover)

The Prettiest Star by Carter Sickels; design by Luke Bird (Hub City Press / May 2020)

Luke wrote about the design process behind the cover at Literary Hub.

Real Queer America by Samantha Allen; design by Lucy Kim (Back Bay Books / June 2020)

The Second Home by Christina Clancy; design Olga Grlic; art by Elizabeth Lennie (St. Martin’s Press / June 2020)

Set the Night on Fire by Mike Davis & Jon Wiener; design by Matt Dorfman (Verso / April 2020)

Soot by Dan Vyleta; design by Mark Swan (Weidenfeld & Nicolson / February 2020)

Soot is the sequel to Dan’s novel Smoke (which I liked a lot). The cover of the UK edition was also designed by Mark:

Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen; design by Jason Booher (Riverhead Books / June 2020)

This reminded me of the cover of the similarly themed American Manifesto by Bob Garfield, designed by Richard Ljoenes and published earlier this year by Counterpoint….

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / June 2020)

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Book Covers of Note, June 2019

Apparently it is June already. I’m pretty sure it’s a terrible mistake. 

Here are your book covers of note.


Aug 9 —  Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)


Cogito by Victor Dixen; design by Jim Tierney (Collection R / May 2019)

This reminded me of something. I’m not sure exactly what. The best I could up with was Nicole Caputo‘s stripey op-art cover for Liveblog by Megan Boyle, but that’s not it at all… 


The Girl at the Door by Veronica Raimo; design by Julian Humphries (Fourth Estate / June 2019)


The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey; design by Will Staehle (Harper Voyager / June 2019)


Lie With Me by Philippe Besson; design by Na Kim (Scribner / April 2019)


The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write by Gregory Orr; design by Jared Oriel (W.W. Norton / June 2019)


Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)


Norco ’80 by Peter Houlahan; design by Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / June 2019)


November by Jorge Galán; design by Steve Leard (Little, Brown / June 2019)

I’m starting to detect a colour scheme at work here, Steve… ;-) 


On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong; design by Darren Haggar; photograph by Sam Contis (Penguin Press / June 2019)

Are we seeing a trend for close cropped photographs of… arms? (Don’t get me wrong, these are both beautiful photographs / covers.)

Also of note in a compare-and-contrast sort of way, the cover of the UK edition of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous published by Jonathan Cape was designed by Suzanne Dean:

 


Open Me by Lisa Locascio; design by Kelly Winton; collage by Katrien de Blauwer (Grove / June 2019)


Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn; design by Steve Attardo; handlettering by Sarahmay Wilkinson (Liveright / June 2019)


Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh; design by David Curtis (Tor / June 2019)


The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson; design by Pablo Delcan (Verso / May 2019)


The Sun On My Head by Geovani Martins; design by Clare Skeats (Faber & Faber / June 2019)


The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri; design by Christopher Gale (Canongate / May 2019)


The White Death by Gabriel Urza; design by Joan Wong (Nouvella / June 2019)

This reminds me (a little bit) of the Penguin English Library covers art directed by Coralie Bickford-Smith a few years ago:


William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Casey Rae; design by Matt Avery (University of Texas Press / June 2019)

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Book Covers of Note February 2018

I had such good intentions to post more often this year. Ah well… Here are this month’s cover selections at least…


An American Marriage by Tayari Jones; design by Jaya Miceli (Algonquin Books / February 2018)


Building and Dwelling by Richard Sennett; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / February 2018)


Eat the Apple by Matt Young; design by Edel Rodriguez (Bloomsbury USA / February 2018)


Feel Free by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / February 2018)


Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi; design by James Paul Jones (Oneworld / February 2018)

The cover of the US edition, published by Penguin last month, was designed by Jason Ramirez


The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert; design by Jim Tierney (Flatiron / January 2018)


The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara; design by Sara Wood (Ecco / February 2018)

Sara wrote a great piece about designing this cover for Literary Hub


The Kings of Big Spring by Bryan Mealer; design by Keith Hayes (Flatiron / February 2018) 


The Line Becomes a River by Francisco Cantú; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / February 2018)


She Regrets Nothing by Andrea Dunlop; design by Rachel Willey (Washington Square Books / February 2018)


Sunburn by Laura Lippman; design by Elsie Lyons (William Morrow / February 2018)

I included the cover of Sunburn and Elsie Lyons’s cover for The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (featured last month) in a recent presentation about the differences between US and UK cover design. UK editions of both books have a much more conventional genre covers. They signal very clearly to readers that they are thrillers.

The US covers on the other hand have a much more literary, sophisticated look. They both have a distinctive, individual appearance (although I suspect we may see covers copying the approach of The Woman in the Window very soon!) that suggest that these are not your average thrillers.

It is not that one approach is necessarily better than the other from a marketing perspective (although I can guess which designers might prefer!), but it is an interesting contrast.


Up Up, Down Down by Cheston Knapp; design Anna Laytham (Scribner / February 2018)


Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki; design by Michael Morris; illustration by Oliver Wilson (Crown / February 2018)

I will admit it was the photo-realistic painting that first drew my eye to this cover, but I also like that the blocky typography echoes the cover of the author’s previous novel California

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Book Cover Design on Tumblr

the-quick

There is a Casual Optimist Tumblr as you know, but I don’t post a lot of new book covers there. Fortunately there are other Tumblrs that do focus on book cover design if that’s your thing. Here are a few that I follow:

 

trying-not-to-try

Book Covrs (pictured above: Trying Not To Try by Edward Slingerland; design by Gray318)

one-last-thing-before-i-go-book

Booketing (pictured above: One Last Thing Before I Go by Jonathan Tropper; design by Jim Tierney)

ice-cream-star

CMYK  / Vintage Books (pictured above: The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman; design by Julia Connolly)

treachery

HarperCollins Design (pictured above: Treachery by S. J. Parris; design by Alexandra Allden, illustration by Daren Newman)

Moon-Is-Down

Penguin Design (Pictured above: The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck; design by Jim Stoddart)

in-cold-blood

Random House Art Department (pictured above: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote; design by Eric White)

oil-road

Verso Covers (pictured above: The Oil Road by James Marriott and Mike Mino-Paluello; design by Alex Merto)

the-tin-horse

There are also several book designers who are on Tumblr in their own right. Here are some that use it showcase their work: Robin Bilardello, David Gee, Kimberly Glyder, Greg Heinimann, James Paul Jones, Oliver Munday, and Stephanie Ross. (Pictured above: The Tin Horse by Janice Steinberg; design by Kimberly Glyder)

Who am I missing? Let me know what book design Tumblrs you follow!

(Pictured top: The Quick by Lauren Owen, illustration by Jim Kay, taken from Vintage UK’s CMYK Tumblr)

Update:

Two I missed…

wolf-in-white-van
Hey, Good Bookin’ (pictured above: Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle; design by Timothy Goodman)

evening-is-the-whole-day
Lovely Bookcovers (pictured above: Evening is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan; design by Leo Nickolls)

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Midweek Miscellany

Work / Life — An interview with the brilliant Louise Fili, designer and former art director of Pantheon Books, at The Great Discontent:

Everybody wanted to use standard fonts, but I just wasn’t satisfied doing that. I didn’t realize this until years later, but what I was really doing was developing type treatments for the title of the book and approaching it more like a logo. I wanted each book to have its own personality and that couldn’t be achieved with standard fonts. Again, I was lucky because it was appropriate to do that for the types of books I was working on. The other thing to note is that I was collaborating with a lot of really talented illustrators and made a concerted effort to combine the type and image together. I also tried to encourage illustrators to create their own type. I would sketch it out for them and then ask them to actually draw it so it would become part of the illustration, which makes for a stronger design, whether it’s a book cover or logo.

Colour and Intention — Claire Cameron interviews Sam Garrett about his translation of The Dinner by Herman Koch, for the LA Review of Books:

The words a writer uses not only have a dictionary definition, but also a color and an intention. To pin those down, the translator has to sniff around. From the first to the final word of a translation, you’re leading the reader along a path to a destination. The color is what keeps the reader hopping; the intention is the scent that keeps the translator on the right path.


Negotiations — Jim Tierney explains his design process for the cover of Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being:

I decided to run with the first concept that popped into my head: a very simple and tactile facsimile of the red Proust notebook, embossed with an illustration of Nao, floating spectrally above the rocky coast of British Columbia. I think this design is all about questions: How did this book get here? Was it lost intentionally, or by accident? Is Nao alive or dead? Is she even real?

Minimal designs like this is always a hard sell in cover meetings, and it was immediately rejected as too quiet and precious-looking. Loud, colorful, and commercial are popular adjectives in modern book marketing, but it’s always fun to start off negotiations with something a little more obscure.

And finally…

Welcome back from near-death Dan Mogford. Please don’t do that again.

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