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Tag: stuart bache

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…

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

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

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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)

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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)

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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)

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Books Covered by Stuart Bache

reunion of ghosts design by jo walker

Designer Stuart Bache, art director of Oneworld Publications, has started a new vlog about book cover design. In his latest video, Stuart looks at the cover for A Reunion of Ghosts by Judith Claire Mitchell, designed by Jo Walker:

 

And if that wasn’t enough, Stuart is also writing a column on book design for UK trade magazine The Bookseller. The most recent post is on new covers for classic crime novels.

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Triangles Are My Favourite Shape

Let’s tessellate…

I’ve been thinking a lot about triangle patterns recently (that’s just how my mind works — don’t ask) and collecting together a few book covers (and related matter) that use them in their designs. I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve come across here…

MythOfSis
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus; design by Helen Yentus (Vintage Books 2007) harvard-review-35-full

Harvard Review #35 (Fall 2008), #39 (Fall 2010) and #41 (Winter 2011); design by Alex Camlin

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cutting-edges-jelle-martens
Cutting Edges: Contemporary Collage edited by Robert Klanten, Hendrik Hellige and J. Gallagher (Gestalten February 2011) — collages by Jelle Martens

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Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman; design by Clare Skeats (Pushkin Press, January 2013)

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la-troisieme-balle

La Boîte aux lettres du cimetière by Serge Pey (Éditions Zulma February 2014)

Notre quelque part by Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Éditions Zulma February 2014)

Dictionnaire du parfait cynique by Roland Jaccard (Éditions Zulma March 2007)

La Troisième Balle by Leo Parutz (Éditions Zulma October 2014)

Design by David Pearson

(I also rather like the cover for Le Goût âpre des kakis by Zoyâ Pirzâd as well)

sounds good
Sounds Good 101 Poems to be Heard edited by Christopher Reid; design by Eleanor Crow (Faber & Faber, March 2012)

Herbert Scarf’s Contributions to Economics, Game Theory and Operations Research Volumes 1-3 by Edited by Zaifu Yang (Palgrave Macmillan, September 2013)

The Here And Now
The Here and Now by Ann Brashares; design by Natalie Sousa (Delacorte Press, April 2014)

cataract-city
Cataract City by Craig Davidson; design by Kapo Ng (Graywolf, July 2014)


The Last Days by Laurent Seksik; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press, Nov 2013)

 

juxtapoz-psychedelic
Juxtapoz Psychedelic by Hannah Stouffer (Gingko Press February 2014)

( Unfortunately I’m not sure the image quite does justice to this cover…

Update:

A excellent addition to the list from UK designer Stuart Bache:

astonish-me

Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead; design by Stuart Bache (Blue Door May 2014)

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Monday Miscellany

It is all hands to the pump at The Optimist HQ right now (meetings, deadlines, house maintenance, and vomit-propelled kids), but apologies for the missing links on Friday. Here’s a very quick Monday round-up to make up for it:

Designer Stuart Bache talks to Faceout Books about his John Le Carré covers.

I also talked to Stuart about his designs here.

Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows, chooses five books on the impact of the information age at The Browser.

The Writer’s Job — Tim Parks on writing as a career choice:

Creative writing schools are frequently blamed for a growing standardization and flattening in contemporary narrative. This is unfair. It is the anxiety of the writers about being excluded from their chosen career, together with a shared belief that we know what literature is and can learn how to produce it that encourages people to write similar books. Nobody is actually expecting anything very new. Just new versions of the old. Again and again when reading for review, or doing jury service perhaps for a prize, I come across carefully written novels that “do literature” as it is known. Literary fiction has become a genre like any other, with a certain trajectory, a predictable pay off, and a fairly limited and well-charted body of liberal Western wisdom to purvey. Much rarer is the sort of book… where the writer appears, amazingly, to be working directly from experience and imagination, drawing on his knowledge of past literature only in so far as it offers tools for having life happen on the page.

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Le Carré | Matt Taylor

Not long ago, I posted Stuart Bache’s wonderfully cinematic John le Carré covers for Sceptre in the UK. Now (as mentioned earlier today) John le Carré’s American publisher Penguin have reissued new editions of his books with amazing illustrations by Brighton-based illustrator Matt Taylor and design by Gregg Kulick and Paul Buckley. Mr Buckley art directed series.

Special thanks to Paul Buckley and Andrew Lau at Penguin US for providing the cover images, and to James at Caustic Cover Critic for bringing them to my attention.

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Bricks | Stuart Bache

British designer Stuart Bache was art director on this lovely cover for the forthcoming novel Bricks by Leon Jenner. The epic cover illustration is by Jorn Kaspuhl, who also illustrated the book.

There is a really nice sense of something both classic and yet contemporary about this design, which seems appropriate for the book from what I can gather.  Stuart’s work has, of course, appeared on previously on The Casual Optimist, and you can read my short interview with him here.

Bricks itself is actually about a bricklayer who remembers a past life as a Druid at the time of the Roman invasion of Britain. It was — if I remember correctly — originally released by the author a few years ago as an online audio book. No doubt someone will correct if I am wrong.

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Le Carré | Stuart Bache

I’m a big fan John Le Carré’s spy stories, so I was really pleased to see these wonderfully stark redesigns for Sceptre by British designer Stuart Bache, who I interviewed last year about his cover designs for the Canongate editions of Gil Scott-Heron.

You can see all 14 covers in the series here.

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Gil Scott-Heron Redesigns by Stuart Bache

Born in Chicago, April 1, 1949, poet and musician Gil Scott-Heron is perhaps best known for the politically infused bluesy soul and proto-hip-hop he created with Brian Jackson in the early 1970’s.

Although recently troubled by drug addiction and in and out of prison for drug possession, an apparently resurgent Scott-Heron released his first studio album in 16 years, I’m New Here (XL Recordings), in February, and two of his novels — The Vulture (1970) and The Nigger Factory (1972) — were reissued (for a second time) by Canongate Books with new cover designs by talented UK designer Stuart Bache.

I recently talked to Stuart about Gil Scott-Heron and the redesign…

How did you get into book design?

I fell upon book cover design by shear luck. In late 2005, after a stint of travelling, I decided it was time to think about my career. I found, applied and was surprised (and ecstatic) to be given the job of Junior at Hodder & Stoughton and moved to London.

When did you discover the work of Gil Scott-Heron?

I first discovered Gil Scott-Heron way back in school. We had been reading and discussing To Kill a Mocking Bird in English Class and I remember taking a real interest in the subject, which my teacher at the time picked up on and loaned me both The Vulture and The Nigger Factory.

How did you come to design the covers of his books?

It was a great pleasure to be asked to design the covers for the reissues. I had already been doing some work for Canongate and so when the Art Director asked if I had time to come up with ideas for the reissues I jumped at the chance. It was a fairly short deadline, but I believe those to be the best kind, great for creativity (and a few extra grey hairs).

Could you describe your design process for the covers?

The brief asked for them to be fresh, streetwise, graphic and contemporary. I designed a few covers for each title, with different images and branding styles, which were then passed on to Canongate for their prefered direction.

The final The Vulture cover centred around John Lee (the young lad who is murdered) and the title cried out to be used in some sort of graphic function. The Nigger Factory relied heavily on an image that both showed and did justice to that moment in US history. It also needed a graphic so I added the stripes to represent the flag, but the use of red paint strokes shows the heat and anger involved too.

What is the typeface?

The typeface I used is Futura, probably light. I have a thing about Futura, Century Gothic and the like. It’s the perfect circles of the ‘O’ and ‘C’.

Are they a departure from your usual design work?

These covers stand out for me, especially compared to my usual style. I take a lot of pride in my work but I’m never usually proud of it — I always see something I could have done better. But the Gil Scott-Heron’s showed I could do something completely different…and in a short timescale too.

What are you working on currently?

At the moment I’m working on another title for Canongate called Super Cooperators and Aline Templeton’s new thriller Cradle to Grave for Hodder & Stoughton. This time of year tends to be quiet, too quiet really, but these are nice titles to be getting along with. Cradle to Grave gives me the opportunity to play with my homemade textures and brushes in Photoshop, and Super Cooperators is, once again, going to be something very different from the rest of portfolio.

Where do look for inspiration and who are some of your design heroes?

Ever since I’ve been freelance I have had a renewed enthusiasm for design, I notice everything and I’m hardly out of bookshops — I see books all the time that I think ‘I wish I’d designed that’. It really keeps you on your toes and gives you the incentive and the push to do better.

I owe a lot to Hodder & Stoughton, their Art Department has some of the best designers in the industry and I learned an awful lot during my time there — and if they had never given me the chance I wouldn’t be writing this now.

Thanks Stuart!

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