Skip to content

Tag: michael salu

Notable Book Covers of 2022

2022. Twenty twenty-two. Two thousand and twenty-two… “Where did it go?” Or, sobbing, “ are we done yet?” It feels like both. It’s been a year that’s simultaneously dragged on interminably and disappeared in a cognitive blur.

I’m glad other people have already written about it.

At Creative Review, writer and editor Mark Sinclair picked his favourite covers of 2022 and reflected on industry trends in the UK, including the Design Publishing & Inclusivity mentorship program for under-represented creatives launched this year by Ebyan Egal, Donna Payne, and Steve Panton.

Literary Hub posted the best covers of the year as chosen by 31 designers. With a comprehensive 103 covers on the list, it tacitly poses the annual question “what do I have left to add to this conversation?” LitHub have been posting these lists for seven years apparently. I am an ancient desiccated husk.

Fast Company and the Washington Post asked slightly smaller groups of designers to write about their favourites covers.

Jason Kottke, back from sabbatical, posted his selections for 2022. I gather that Spine’s list is imminent.

Designer and art director Matt Dorfman chose the best book covers of 2022 for the New York Times, and empathized with the plight of the designers:

Most often, any personal stylistic expressions in their work are swallowed up in service to the multiple masters — editors, marketing directors, sales teams — who sign off on a book’s cover. There is also the matter of adhering to any one publisher’s dos and don’ts, which can inform mandates about typography, color palettes and production flourishes like embossing or metallic inks. For people employed in a theoretically creative pursuit, designers’ talents are often defined by how effortlessly they can make themselves disappear to serve the book.

Matt Dorfman, New York Times

No one captured the prevailing mood better than this Tom Gauld cartoon. A reminder, if one were needed, that nobody knows anything.

Earlier in the year, Australian reporter Rafqa Touma called out the trend of ‘well dressed and distressed’ young women on covers. As designer Mietta Yans notes, the covers often reflect their books’ stylish and sad protagonists, so I’m not sure this one is on the art departments.

Last year we had book blobs; this year we got more “ominous blobs” just to add to everyone’s existential dread.

Some of the trends I’ve talked about before spilled over into 2022. Collage, painting (contemporary, and historical — often tightly cropped), big skies, landscapes and seascapes, black and white photography (not just for LGBTQ+ trauma!), retro-ness, idiosyncratic display typefaces. Orange. Pink was in vogue too. The Instagram-ish combination of both pink and orange (sometimes with deep purple-ish blues too) seemed to be very much a thing this year. I suspect this is what happens when you ask designers to make things “pop” one too many times.

It is hard to know if these are genuine trends, or if it is just the stuff I notice. I’m sure there are things going on with commercial covers that I don’t pay enough attention to (although I will not be sad to see the popularity of that flat illustration style — the one that Slate pointed out in TWO THOUSAND AND FIFTEEN! — eventually fade away). I certainly don’t get the sense that everything looks the same, which is often the criticism. There is still room for a little weirdness and that can only be a good thing…

Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / September 2022)

Also designed by Lauren Peters-Collaer:


Boy Friends by Michael Pedersen; design by Gray 318; illustration by Nathaniel Russell (Faber & Faber / July 2022)

Brother Alive by Zain Khalid; design by Jo Walker (Grove Press UK / August 2022)

A Calm & Normal Heart by Chelsea T. Hicks; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / June 2022)

Carnality by Lina Wolff; design by Tyler Comrie (Other Press / July 2022)

The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / September 2022)

Also designed by Oliver Munday:


The Ghetto Within by Santiago H. Amigorena; design by Mike McQuade (HarperVia / August 2022)

A Girlhood by Carolyn Hays; design by Mel Four (Blair / September 2022)

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak by Jamil Jan Kochai; design by Zak Tebbal (Viking / July 2022)

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; design by Will Staehle (William Morrow & Co. / January 2022)

I Want to Keep Smashing Myself Until I Am Whole by Elias Canetti, edited by Joshua Cohen; design by Alex Merto; illustration Ian Woods (Picador USA / September 2022)

Also designed by Alex Merto:


Joan by Katherine J. Chen; design by Holly Ovenden (Hodder & Stoughton / July 2022)

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid; design by Ahlawat Gunjan (India Hamish Hamilton / August 2022)

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid; design by Chris Bentham (Hamish Hamilton / August 2022).

Lessons by Ian McEwan; design by Suzanne Dean; illustration by Tina Berning (Jonathan Cape / September 2022)

Also designed by Suzanne Dean:

The Julian Barnes cover also came in blue, and under the die-cut jacket is a beautiful photo from René Groebli’s photoessay The Eye of Love.


A Little Piece of Mind by Giles Paley-Phillips; design by Tree Abraham (Unbound / June 2022)

Tree had her own book, Cyclettes, published this year. You can read about the process of designing her own cover over at Spine.

No Land in Sight by Charles Simic; design by John Gall; photograph by Michael Kenna (Knopf / August 2022)

Also designed by John Gall:


O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / September 2022)

Also designed by Tristan Offit:


Offended Sensibilities by Alisa Ganieva; design by Emily Mahon (Deep Vellum / November 2022)

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield; design by Ami Smithson (Picador / March 2022)

I also really liked Ami’s cover for the UK edition of New Animal by Ella Baxter.

The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs; design by June Park; (MCD / July 2022)

Also designed by June Park:


Pure Colour by Sheila Heti; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2022)

Also designed by Na Kim:


The Raptures by Jan Carson; design by Irene Martinez Costa (Doubleday UK / January 2022)

The Red Zone by Chloe Caldwell; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull Press / April 2022)

Sacrificio by Ernesto Mestre-Reed; design by Dana Li (SoHo Press / September 2022)

Also designed by Dana Li:


Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby; design and illustration by Lydia Ortiz (Penguin Books / January 2022)

This is like hallucinatory nightmare vision of the Francis Cugat illustration on the cover of The Great Gatsby first edition.

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu; design by Anna Jordan (Deep Vellum / October 2022)

The Status Game by Will Storr; design by Steve Leard (William Collins / July 2022)

True Biz by Sara Novic; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / April 2022)

Jack did a lot of great covers this year. I could easily have posted a couple more with no dip in quality:


Trust by Hernan Diaz; design by Katie Tooke (Picador / August 2022)

The New York skyline was printed onto the edges of the books and then photographed for this one.

Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Viking / May 2022)

The Waste Land by Matthew Hollis; design by Jamie Keenan (Faber & Faber / October 2022)

Watergate by Garrett M. Graff; design by Alison Forner (Avid Reader Press / February 2022)

Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Luke Bird (Granta / November 2022)

Also designed by Luke Bird:


White Bull by Elizabeth Hughey; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / January 2022)

Also designed by Alban Fischer:

You can read about Alban’s design process for Till the Wheels Come Off at Spine.


Worn by Sofi Thanhauser; design by Janet Hansen (Pantheon / January 2022)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:


Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2022)

Also designed by Rodrigo Corral:


You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead; design by Kelly Blair; illustration by Toby Leigh (Knopf / May 2022)

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi; design by Anna Morrison (Faber and Faber / May 2022)

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart; design by Christopher Moisan; photograph by Kyle Thompson (Grove Press / April 2022)

Comments closed

Book Covers of Note, April 2022

We’ve almost made it to the end of April, so that’s something. Thanks to Daniel Benneworth-Gray for the mention earlier this month. It surely means I’m about to disappoint a large number of people — if I have not, in fact, already done so — but I hope you find something you like here…

The Candy House by Jennifer Egan; design by Jamie Keenan (Scribner / April 2022)

Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / April 2022)

I believe the Elizabeth Finch cover also comes in yellow, but I wasn’t able to find a hi-res image. If anyone wants to send it over, I’ll be happy to add it.

The jacket also comes in yellow, which feels very on trend to me and the blue and yellow look lovely side by side. Thank you to Suzanne for taking the time to send over the image of the yellow version.

Suzanne also sent over an image of the boards for those of you curious to see what is under the jacket, peeking through the die-cuts. The gorgeous photograph is from René Groebli’s photoessay The Eye of Love.

This is the problem with seeing covers/jackets primarily online. You rarely get to appreciate these finer details. This must be a beautiful book to hold and unwrap.

But going back to cut-out circles/semi-circles for a moment. They reminded of Olga Kominek‘s cover design for The Penguin Book of Feminist Writing edited by Hannah Dawson published last year.

And I have been trying to recall what both these covers remind me of. Possibly ‘Composition of Circles and Semicircles‘ by abstract artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp?

End of the World House by Adrienne Celt; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / April 2022)

A House Between Earth and the Moon by Rebecca Scherm; design by Colin Webber; image by Maciej Toporowicz (Viking / April 2022)

Like Animals by Eve Lemieux; design by Michel Vrana; illustration Saul Herrera (Rare Machines / April 2022)

Inspired by Basquiat presumably?

My Face in the Light by Martha Schabas; design by Kate Sinclair (Knopf Canada / April 2022)

Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes; design Milan Bozic; illustration by Laura Anastasio (Harper Perennial / March 2022)

(Special thanks to Caro for identifying the designer and illustrator)

Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe; design by Mark Ecob (Unbound / April 2022)

Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown and Co. / April 2022)

Feeling the international typographic style influence this month…

The Red Zone by Chloe Caldwell; design Michael Salu (Soft Skull Press / April 2022)

Their Four Hearts by Vladimir Sorokin; design by Alban Fischer (Dalkey Archive Press / April 2022)

The Void Ascendant by Premee Mohamed; design by James Paul Jones (Solaris / April 2022)

This is the third book in the ‘Beneath the Rising’ trilogy.

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart; design by Christopher Moisan; photograph by Kyle Thompson (Grove Press / April 2022)

The cover of the UK edition published by Picador features a photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans. The design is by Stuart Wilson.

Comments closed

Book Covers of Note, February 2022

Here are your February book covers of note…

Anonymous Sex edited by Hillary Jordan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan; design Holly MacDonald; illustration Malika Favre (The Borough Press / February 2022)

Malika Favre also designed and illustrated the cover of Playing with Matches by Michael Faudet, published by Andrews McMeel at the end of last year, and featured in this month’s ‘Book Covers We Love‘ post at Spine Magazine.

Catch the Sparrow by Rachel Rear; design by Mia Kwon (Bloomsbury / February 2022)

I like Mia Kwon’s cover for Breath Better Spent by Damaris B. Hill, published by Bloomsbury last month, too…

The Colony by Audrey Magee; design by Jack Smyth (Faber & Faber / February 2022)

The cover of the US edition, available from FSG in May, was design by Jaya Miceli:

The Delivery by Peter Mendelsund; design by Chloe Scheffe (Picador USA / February 2022)

Alex Merto‘s design for the hardcover was one of my notable book covers of the year in 2021:

The Go-Between by Osman Yousefzada; design by Gill Heeley (Canongate / January 2022)

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu; design by Jaya Miceli (Tin House / February 2022)

New Animal by Ella Baxter; design by Ami Smithson; photograph by Alfonso Vidal-Quadras (Picador / February 2022)

The fruity cover of the Australian edition published by Allen and Unwin last year was designed by Akiko Chan, while the hot pink US edition was designed in-house by Eric Obenauf at Two Dollar Radio I believe.

Path of Totality by Niina Pollari; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull / February 2022)

The Perfect Sound by Garrett Hongo; design by John Gall (Pantheon / February 2022)

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2022)

The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka; design by Gabriele Wilson (Knopf / February 2022)

Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso; design by Leanne Shapton (Hogarth / February 2022)

Watergate by Garrett M. Graff; design by Alison Forner (Avid Reader Press / February 2022)

For obvious reasons, this brought to mind Paul Sahre‘s cover for the novel Watergate by Thomas Mallon from a few (10?? OMG) years back.

Comments closed

Book Covers of Note, October 2021

This will be the last of the monthly cover round-ups for 2021 because I have to turn my attention to the year as a whole, but there are some really top-notch covers in this month’s post so it feels like a good place leave off…

Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin; design by David Pearson (Pluto Press / October 2021)

Bewilderment by Richard Powers; design by Jennifer Griffiths (Random House Canada / October 2021)

Burntcoat by Sarah Hall; design by Jo Walker (Faber & Faber / October 2021)

Concepcion by Albert Samaha; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / October 2021)

Cultish by Amanda Montell; design by Joanne O’Neill (Harper Wave / June 2021)

Empty Wardrobes by Maria Judite de Carvalho, translated by Margaret Jull Costa; design Gabriele Wilson (Two Lines Press / October 2021)

God of Mercy by Okezie Nwọka; design Sara Wood (Astra House / November 2021)

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / October 2021)

The cover of the UK edition, publishing next year I believe, was designed by Jack Smyth:

Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull / October 2021)

I was reminded of the cover of The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner designed by Gregg Kulick from what seems like an age ago (2013 I think?) . It’s very possible I have been doing this for too long…

Machete by Tomás Q. Morín; design by Braulio Amado (Knopf / October 2021)

The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / November 2021)

This seems like a reasonable excuse to post Peter Mendelsund’s cover designs for the two previous novels by Tom McCarthy…

The cover of the UK edition of The Making of Incarnation, published last month by Jonathan Cape, was designed by Mario de Meyer:

My Best Mistake by Terry O’Reilly; design by David Gee (HarperCollins Canada / October 2021)

North by Brad Kessler; design by David Drummond (Harry N. Abrams / October 2021)

Two Canadian designers doing the big magical sky thing to great effect!

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino; design by Joanne O’Neill; art by Paul Mann (Harper / November 2021)

Joanne O’Neill also designed the cover of the mass market paperback edition released earlier this year.

Orwell’s Roses by Rebecca Solnit; design by Gray318 (Viking / October 2021)

The Third Unconsciousness by Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi; design by Erik Carter (Verso / October 2021)

I love that the cover had to include “Bifo” in inverted commas.

Virtue by Hermione Hoby; design by Ben Denzer (Riverhead / July 2021)

This Weightless World by Adam Soto; design by Tyler Comrie (Astra House / November 2021)

Comments closed

Book Covers of Note January 2018

I was sure that 2018 would be different from 2017, and yet here we are… Happy New Year! 


The Age of Caesar by Plutarch; translation by Pamela Mensch; design by Catherine Casalino (W.W. Norton / January 2018)


The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch; design by Rafi Romaya; illustration by Florian Schommer (Canongate / January 2018)


Bloody January by Alan Parks; design by Chris Gale (Canongate / December 2017)

(I’m including this partly because I spend a lot of my professional life trying to explain the difference between the cover needs of Canada/US and the UK. This is a rare genre cover that — it seems to me at least — does a decent job for both sides of the Atlantic) 


Getting Off by Erica Garza; design by Zoe Norvell (Simon & Schuster / January 2018)


The Gist of Reading by Andrew Elfenbein; design by  Anne Jordan and Mitch Goldstein (Stanford University Press / January 2018)


Green by Sam Graham-Felsen; design by June Park (Random House / January 2018)


Heart Spring Mountain by Robin MacArthur; design by Sara Wood (Ecco / January 2018)


I Am Thunder by Muhammad Khan; design by Rachel Vale (Pan Macmillan / January 2018)


The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin; design and illustration by Sandra Chiu (G.P. Putnam’s Sons / January 2018)

This cover seems rather on trend to me. It is very nicely done all the same. 

(Something about the shape and colour of the leaves on black background also reminds me of the illustrations in Jon Klassen’s picture book This Is Not My Hat). 


The Job of the Wasp by Colin Winnette; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull Press / January 2018)


The Ministry of Nostalgia by Owen Hatherley; design by Keith Dodds (Verso / January 2017)

OK. So I’m a year late on this cover. But I saw it recently on Twitter. The cover of the hardcover edition of The Ministry of Nostalgia designed by Andy Pressman was included in my January 2016 post and my annual round-up of notable covers that year.   

Interestingly, the new cover for The Ministry of Nostalgia reminds me of Matthew Young‘s refresh of Pelican Books.

Being Ecological by Timothy Morton (Pelican / January 2018) is a recent example: 


The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce; design by Kimberly Glyder (Random House / January 2018)


Neon in Daylight by Hermione Hoby; design by Strick&Williams; photography by Marc Yankus (Catapult / January 2018)


Nice Try, Jane Sinner by Lianne Oelke; art and lettering by Colin Mercer (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / January 2018)


Peach by Emma Glass; design by David Mann (Bloomsbury / January 2018)

David’s cover was adapted for the US edition by Patti Ratchford:


A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin; design by Dan Mogford (Serpent’s Tail / 2018)


The Woman in the Window by A. J. Finn; design by Elsie Lyons (William Morrow / January 2018)

2 Comments

Series Design 2015

In my last post on the book covers of 2015, I thought I would take a look back at some of the series that caught my eye this this year…

origin

Stephen Baxter / Manifold; design by Mike Topping (Harper Voyager / 2015)

Stephen Baxter / The NASA Trilogy; design by Mike Topping (Harper Voyager / 2015)

9781784870751

Vintage Bronte; design by Suzanne Dean; lettering by Lily Jones; cover art Sarah Gillespie; picture research by Lily Richards (Vintage / 2015)

Noam Chomsky; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press / 2015)

Rachel Cohn; design by Lizzy Bromley (Simon & Schuster / 2015)

Freemans design by Michael Salu
Freemans; design by Michael  Salu (Grove / 2015)

The very first Freeman’s anthology was published in fall this year, but hopefully this design will set the tone for the rest of the series. The second volume is scheduled for next year.

Vintage Feminism; design by Matthew Broughton (Vintage / 2015)

9780241252321

Little Black Classics; design by Jim Stoddart (Penguin / 2015)

(There are an awful lot of these!)

C. S. Lewis; design by Kimberly Glyder (HarperOne / 2015)

Media and Public Life design by David Gee
New Directions in Media History; design by David A. Gee (Polity Press / 2015)

New Modernisms; design by Daniel Benneworth-Gray (Bloomsbury / 2015)

The Things They Carried

Tim O’Brien; design by Jo Walker (Fourth Estate / 2015)

The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Volumes 1 & 2; design Matthew Young (Penguin /2015)

Jesus Son_rounded

Picador Modern Classics; design by Kelly Blair (Picador USA / 2015)

Pushkin Vertigo; design by Jamie Keenan (Pushkin Press / 2015)

Month-in-the-country-mech_670

Russian Plays in Translation; design John Gall (Theater Books / 2015)

Segal

Radical Thinkers Volume 9; design by Rumors (Verso / 2015)

This isn’t a new series of course, but this set marked a colourful change of direction. You can read about the design here.

Fatale design Steve Panton

Serpent’s Tail Classics; design by Steve Panton; series design Peter Dyer (Serpent’s Tail / 2015)

Lionel Shriver; design by Stuart Bache (HarperCollins / 2015)

Mark Twain; design by Isabel Urbina Peña (Vintage / 2015)

Wildcat Series; design by Jamie Keenan (Pluto Press / 2015)

3 Comments

Cruel Britannia

An astonishing short film for what looks to be a very important book:

Ian Cobain’s exposure of Britain’s secret history of torture Cruel Britannia is published by Portobello Books. The starkly brilliant cover (on which the video is based) was designed by FUEL.

Comments closed

Basquiat, Bowie, and British Tailoring

Michael Salu, artistic director of Granta, talks to Crane TV about his work, influences and personal style:

Comments closed

Diana Athill | Michael Salu and Rankin

Designed by the brilliant Michael Salu, the cover for Diana Athill’s forthcoming collection of letters, Instead of a Book, features a stunning portrait of the author by acclaimed British photographer Rankin (co-founder of Dazed & Confused in case you were wondering).

To coincide with the release of the new book in October, Granta are also reissuing paperback editions of Athill’s books Stet, Yesterday Morning and Instead of a Letter with cover designs incorporating Rankin’s photographs.

I don’t think I have made any secret of my love of Stet, Athill’s book about her time as an editor at Andre Deutsch. But I have always been disappointed by the discouraging cover on the tatty copy on my bookshelf, and it makes me incredibly happy to finally see an edition that seems to capture something of Athill’s personality.

Athill’s writing is unflinching and it is remarkable to see that reflected in Rankin’s stark portraits. According to Michael, who art directed series and designed all the covers, “the idea was to not to shy away from age and experience, but to celebrate it and Diana’s distinct personality.” Certainly, it is hard not to be taken by the keenness of Athill’s eyes. One gets the sense she does not suffer fools gladly. There is something of a retired headmistress about her. But I love how in the photograph for Instead of a Letter, Rankin captures Athill’s thumb hooked under her necklace. The author doesn’t appear to be particularly aware that she’s doing it, but it is beautiful and poignant touch.

The type is set in Gill Sans. Of course.

Comments closed

Somthing for the Weekend

“Spot gloss on the molecules” — David Gee’s cover for 7 Good Reasons Not To Be Good by John Gould.

Going Back — Artistic Director Michael Salu on the creating the cover of the new issue of Granta magazine:

For this concept to work, we needed to strive for authenticity – to create the physical object ourselves. The typefaces would need to be sourced, traditionally hand-set and photographed to give the cover the depth that the issue deserves. For this I approached St Bride Printing Library, which has long been a place of fascination and wonder for me. My first visit to the library – with its oil, wood and metal, its smell of history – made a huge impression on me.

The Connoisseurs — Peter and Charlotte Fiell, who recently ended their 15-year tenure as heads of the design branch of Taschen, talk about their new publishing venture Fiell at More Intelligent Life:

What is design? It’s the forethought that goes into the making of man-made things. It’s films, pharmaceuticals, airplanes, chairs, tape recorders … it’s the world of stuff. It’s huge, so everybody should have a big interest. It’s not some avant-garde, highly expensive niche. We want to make money by publishing books that sell, but we’re in the business of promoting ideas, culture, taste, connoisseurship. If you want to make a difference you want to get into as many people’s heads as you can and change their opinion. The secret is to strike this balance between making your books appealing to learned type readers, while at the same time, making them useful and interesting to novice readers. Our aim is to make books as appealing to teenagers in Tokyo as architects in Amsterdam.

(Above: Spreads from Tools for Living: A Sourcebook of Iconic Designs for the Home by Charlotte and Peter Fiell)

Designing In Order To  Eat — Chris Ware’s introduction to Penguin 75 excerpted at GQ magazine:

Book designers, you should know, have to be ready to create something new, exciting, and original almost every day in order to eat, and a certain degree of burnout smokes out the weaker specimens; I can’t imagine coming up with cover after cover without at some point resorting to an out-of-breath take, intentional or not, on someone else’s great idea. This urge toward ever-freshness brings the profession perilously close to that of fashion, and the worst examples of such greet us at the grocery store checkout among the tabloids, gum, and ring pops. But the best of it, those that last, have recently been appearing from Penguin (yes, Penguin, not just the bearer of boring spring break assignments anymore!), following a path led by designer Paul Buckley into beautiful new ways of graphically proffering the written word.

The excerpt is accompanied by a slideshow of covers from the book. My interview with Paul Buckley and designer Christopher Brand about Penguin 75 will be up early next week.

And Finally… The book cover design Tumblr (via Alan Trotter’s ≥ notes)

1 Comment

Midweek Miscellany

Vintage Dostoevsky, design by Michael Salu

Precisely and Concisely — The Caustic Cover Critic interviews designer and Artistic Director of Granta magazine Michael Salu:

Bizarrely, designers looking for employment are often judged by what software they’re able to use. Intellect, cultural awareness and often creativity don’t seem to be values worthy of a resume. There is no substitute for good ideas, the rest are just supportive tools. I have always been quite a craft-led designer, but I am of the generation that studied with a mac in front of them and I think its good to understand the importance of both.

The Honest Bookseller — Erin Balser of Books in 140 profiles Toronto independent bookstore Ben McNally Books for The Torontoist:

“I’d rather have a book that sells one copy that no one else will sell than to stock several best sellers you can get anywhere,” McNally says. “That’s what makes this store. That’s why people come… My first responsibility is my customer. When I think a book should be cut by a third or if there’s a subplot that goes nowhere, I have to tell you that… I’m often a very critical reader. When people come and ask me ‘Is this any good?’ I have to be honest.”

William Kentridge: Five Themes — Beautiful book design from Abbott Miller and Kristen Spilman at Pentagram.

Speaking of Pentagram… Pentagram partner Paula Scher has some blunt stuff to say about design in a interview with Pr*tty Sh*tty.

The Rules — Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, The Guardian asked authors — including Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Neil Gaiman, and PD James, Hilary Mantel, Michael Moorcock, Philip Pullman, Ian Rankin, Will Self, Sarah Waters, and Jeannette Winterson — for their personal dos and don’ts. (Part two is here).

On the subject of writing, the wonderful BBC radio series The History of the World in a 100 Objects has recently touched on the history of writing, literature, and mathematics in episodes about the Early Writing Tablet, the Flood Tablet and the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. The series is a collaboration with The British Museum. Great stuff.

Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL Kennedy
1 Comment