Books, Design and Culture
I am very, very late to this, but Penguin are in the process of reissuing Len Deighton’s thrillers as Modern Classics with new covers by Jim Stoddart inspired by Raymond Hawkey’s original paperback designs.
There are a lot more titles available now (Len Deighton wrote a lot of books!), but you can read more about the first wave of reissues in this Creative Review article from last year, and I’ve posted a few of my favourite covers below.
You can tell that I am not at all on top of things because it has taken me almost a month to post about the return of the Penguin Great Ideas series. Apparently it’s been 10 years since the last set was released, and the 20 new titles include works by Audre Lorde, Sojourner Truth, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Martin Luther King among others.
Jim Stoddart continues to art direct the series, and David Pearson has once again designed many of the typographic covers with the help of Catherine Dixon, Phil Baines, and Alistair Hall. There are, needless to say, some absolute belters.
I don’t post a lot of fantasy covers here (less than I should, no doubt), but I rather like the look of these reissues of The Lord of the Rings trilogy available in the US from HMH this month. The covers were designed by Christopher Moisan with illustrations by Swedish illustrator Johan Egerkrans. There’s something about the cover of The Return of the King in particular that reminds me of classic pen and ink fairy tale illustrations by likes of Arthur Rackham and John Bauer.
The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King are available October 6, 2020.
1 CommentDavid Pearson has designed three new covers for the Penguin editions of Albert Camus’ novels The Plague, The Outsider, and The Fall. The typeface is apparently Portrait, designed by Berton Hasebe for Commercial Type, and the covers are printed on Colorplan Dapple embossed paper from G. F. Smith. The new editions were published July 30, 2020.
It’s been a while since I did a post of David Pearson series design, so I am delighted to share his brilliant new covers for the Penguin UK editions of John le Carré’s George Smiley novels, available this month. The design is a collaboration with Nick Asbury who wrote the copy for the covers (I talked to Nick to ages ago about his Corpoetics book if you’re interested).
The small type is the lovely looking Gill Sans Nova, recently designed by George Ryan for Monotype as a contemporary digital typeface derived from Eric Gill’s original work. The large type is Stephenson Blake Condensed Sans, which is not available digitally and was pieced together from different sources by David himself. I’m sure it was a total pain in the ass to do, but it’s a pleasing contrast and well worth the effort, I think you’ll agree! Jim Stoddart was the clever AD here.
To mark the 100th birthday of J.D. Salinger, Amsterdam-based design studio Moker Ontwerp were asked by Dutch publisher De Bezige Bij to design brand new covers for four of Salinger’s most famous books.
There are longstanding requirements for J.D. Salinger covers. No photographs or illustrations can be used, and the title should always be above the author’s name and set in bigger type. To break the rigidity of these rules and bring more expressiveness to the design, the studio decided to write all the titles with a brush instead of using a font, while setting the author’s name “as seriously as possible” in stately Roman Capitals.
The results, I think, speak for themselves…
Thanks to Henk van het Nederend at Moker Ontwerp for letting me know about this project.
Comments closedSome of the most interesting and innovative book covers in the last few years have been designed as part of a series — designers and art directors seem to have more leeway with backlist titles (especially so if the author is no longer in the picture!) — and 2016 was no exception. Here are some of my favourite series designs from past year…
The Angelus Trilogy by John Steele; designed by Jason Booher (Blue Rider Press / 2016)
Inspector Littlejohn Mysteries by George Bellairs; design Stuart Bache (IPSO Books / 2016)
The Birds and the Bees; cover art by Timorous Beasties (Vintage / 2016)
Read more about the series on the Creative Review blog.
Virago Modern Classics Daphne Du Maurier; designs by Jamie Keenan, Neil Gower, Gray318, and Nico Taylor (Virago / 2016)
Vintage Eliot; cover art by Zeva Oelbaum (Vintage /2016)
Read more about the series on CMYK, Vintage book design tumblr.
Found on the Shelves / The London Library; design by David Pearson; illustration by Joe McLaren (Pushkin Press / 2016)
Read more about the design of the series at The Bookseller.
Gollancz William Gibson ‘Sprawl Trilogy’ and Burning Chrome; design by Sinem Erkas; cover art by Daniel Brown (Gollancz / 2016-2017)
Read more about the books and the design on the Gollancz blog.
Patrick Hamilton reissues; design by Jack Smyth (Abacus 2016- 2017)
Sonya Harnett reissues; design by Marina Messiha; cover art by Maxim Shkret (Penguin Teen Australia / 2016)
New Directions Roger Lewinter; design by Erik Carter (New Directions / 2016)
Macmillan Classics; design by Neil Lang (Macmillan India / 2016)
This is just a fraction of the covers designed by Neil and he is working on even more to complete the series.
Beck and Mal Peet reissues; design by Jack Noel; illustration by Telegramme (Walker Books / 2016)
Pelican Shakespeare; design by Manuja Waldia (Penguin US / 2016)
Mortal Engines by Stanislaw Lem (Modern Classics); series design by Jim Stoddart; cover art by Haley Warnham (Penguin / 2016)
The Great Science Fiction by H.G. Wells (Modern Classics); series design by Jim Stoddart; cover art by Evan Hecox (Penguin / September 2016)
Penguin Essentials; designs by Kyler Martz, Gray318, David Foldavi, Julian House (Penguin / 2-16)
See more of the series at Design Week.
Penguin Galaxy series; design by Alex Trochut (Penguin /2016)
No Man’s Land Trilogy by Andy Remic; design by Christine Foltzer; illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love (Tor / 2016)
Read more about Jeffrey Alan Love’s work on the series on Tor.com.
New Directions W.G. Sebald; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / 2016)
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These Jason Booher covers for the paperback editions of Jon Steele’s The Angelus Trilogy, published by Blue Rider Press in August, bring a whole new meaning to ‘side eye’1 I love that they use Albrecht Dürer etchings as part of the design…
I mentioned Pushkin Press‘s ‘Found on the Shelves’ series earlier this year. The books celebrate 175 years of The London Library, and four more are coming out this month. The entire series has covers designed by David Pearson and, I’m happy to say, three of the new ones — The Right to Fly, Through a Glass Lightly, and Hints on Etiquette — have wonderful cover illustrations by Joe McLaren as well David’s (brilliant) trademark typography:
McLaren also provided illustrations for the covers of On Corpulence and Life in a Bustle, two earlier books in the series (also designed by David needless to say):
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Peter Mendelsund‘s covers for the new New Directions editions of W.G. Sebald’s classic novels The Emigrants, The Rings of Saturn, and Vertigo, are rather special. The books will be published November and are available individually and as a set.
A new Penguin Modern Classic edition of Mortal Engines by Polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem is available in the UK this week. Art directed by Jim Stoddart, this is the third of Lem’s books in the Penguin Modern Classics series featuring cover art by illustrator and designer by Haley Warnham.
You can read more about Warnham’s collages in an interview with illustrator on AIGA’s Eye on Design blog.
The latest additions to Penguin’s ‘Essentials’ series, released this month, have some rather splendid new covers, including Jon Gray‘s wonderful design for Embers by Sandor Márai, Julian House’s typographic design (with echoes of Robert Brownjohn) for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and David Foldvari‘s illustrated design for How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston.
You can see more of the new Penguin Essentials covers, and read about the design process, at Design Week.
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