A bit of a bumper post this month with a ton great covers, lots of old friends, a couple of designers that are new to me, and maybe an early contender (or two) for the ‘best of the year’ list.
I haven’t posted enough of David’s covers lately. They are always fun. I was struggling to think what this one reminded me of. I’m wondering if it’s maybe Raymond Hawkey’s black and white cover designs for Len Deighton? Or something from Pelican / Penguin in the 1970s?
Come On Up by Jordi Nopca; design by Roman Muradov (Bellevue Literary Press / February 2021)
The cover of the UK edition, published this month by Bloomsbury, was designed by Greg Heinimann.
Rachel Willey’s design for Patricia Lockwood’s memoir Priestdaddy is still one of my favourite covers of recent years (hard to believe it is from 2017!).
O by Steven Carroll; design by Gray318 (HarperCollins Australia / February 2021)
What would you call this background colour? Light brown? Dark beige? Anyway, it seems to be a thing. We could probably include As You Were cover here too, although it doesn’t have the red-orange accent colour.
The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec; design by Adam Auerbach (Ace Books / February 2021)
I was immediately reminded of the cover of Department of Speculation by Jenny Offill, also designed designed by Linda Huang:
The cover of the UK paperback of Weather, published by Granta this month, was designed by Jo Walker. She wrote about her design process for Spine Magazine.
Interesting that both paperback designs are so different from each other and their respective hardcovers (which were quite different to each other too)…
My first post of 2021 is a look back at some of the young adult covers that caught my eye last year. I’m sure that I have missed a lot of great work (waves hands at everything that went on in 2020), so apologies if your favourites aren’t here. Happy New Year!
I didn’t blog much this year. It felt strange to be posting about something as trivial as book covers during a deadly pandemic. 2020 has been a tough year. I feel lucky that my family are safe and well, and I have kept my job and my health. I know others have not been so fortunate.
It has been hard.
I haven’t read much and I’ve struggled to keep track of new work. Toronto has been in lockdown for most of 2020. Browsing bookstores hasn’t been possible, and I didn’t spend as much time as usual trawling for covers online. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of covers in this year’s post are featured here for the first time.
Looking back at last year’s post, I was apparently feeling gloomy about the state of things in 2019 too.1 If I remember correctly, I was — in the midst of everything — trying to get through sales conference, wrap up a big project before the holidays, and feeling more than a little stressed. Somehow I still managed to write a little bit about the trends I was seeing. A few things — painterly covers for example — seem to have continued into 2020. Lydian certainly hasn’t gone away. It felt so common, in fact, I stopped keeping track of individual examples. On the other hand, I did see less Avant Garde for which I am quietly grateful (although I’m not sure that’s a popular sentiment).
At The Literary Hub, Emily Temple declared 2020 to be “the year of enormous pink lady faces on book covers.” While at Spine Magazine, Viki Hendy collected together examples of covers with type around the edges. I don’t know that I have a lot to add that. There were a few new meta, books on book covers this year, which is always a delight. And I think perhaps collage might be having a moment too, which is fun. Although we may be overdoing the half-face compositions.
Suppose A Sentence by Brian Dillon; design by Katy Homans; art by John Stezaker (NYRB / September 2020)
The Lightness by Emily Temple; design by Ploy Siripant; art by Beth Hoeckel (William Morrow / June 2020)
There is, of course, a lag. Trends always bleed over from one year to the next. One of this year’s “big books”, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, which featured a bright and bold cover designed by Vi-An Nguyen, was published in the US on December 31, 2019. A lot of 2020 books have been delayed until 2021. But I wonder how the changes in the way we work and consume brought on by the pandemic — designing in isolation for an audience that is now browsing predominantly online — will change things in the next couple of years. Will we see more experimentation or less? Will there be demand for beautiful tactile objects, or will we more fully embrace digital reading experiences? There’s a lot to ponder…
Anyway, thanks to all the folks who have supported the Casual Op this year and encouraged me to keep it going. I’m sorry that I have not responded to all the emails I have received. I’m going to try to be a bit better with that in future. Hopefully there have been some silver linings for you in 2020, and you can still find some joy in a few good book covers…
Afterland by Lauren Beukes; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / July 2020)
Also designed by Lauren Wakefield:
The Driftwood Girls by Mark Douglas-Home; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / April 2020)
The Honey and the Sting by E. C. Freemantle; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / September 2020)
We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / August 2020)
Sadly, Adalis unexpectedly passed away in July 2020. I only knew Adalis through her work, but she is such a huge a loss to our community. There is a GoFundMe page if you wish to donate to her family.
Also designed by Adalis Martinez:
losi by Molly Ball; design by Adalis Martinez (Henry Holt & Co / May 2020)
Dominicana by Angie Cruz’ design by Adalis Martinez (Flatiron / August 2020)
Love is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar; design by Adalis Martinez (Catapult / February 2021)
You can find a short interview with John in which he discusses his cover for Red Pill at Bear Books, and you can read about his design process for Weather by Jenny Offill at Spine Magazine.
As it is almost the end of October this is going to be my last monthly round-up for 2020. I will endeavour to put together a post on the book covers of year soon, but I am sure a lot of great work skimmed under my radar, so designers please drop me a line if I have missed a cover (or two!) you really loved working on (the book has to have been published this year), especially if it was for an independent or university press. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this month’s selections.
They’re really not all that alike (it’s funny how memory constantly plays this trick on me), but the colour palette and the typographic approach of Alex’s cover reminded me Luke Bird’s 2017 cover for Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar:
Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag; design by Luke Bird (Faber & Faber / April 2017)
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.
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.
Another rather rushed update this month I’m afraid, which is especially disappointing given how many new books there out at this time of year. I’m sure I’ve missed more than a few great covers here, but hopefully I will catch them before the end of the year…
Red Pill by Hari Kunzru; design by John Gall (Knopf / September 2020)
This cover is bonkers. The cover of the UK edition of Red Pill published by Scribner (also bonkers but in a different, laser eyes, way), was designed by Craig Fraser.
Bob Staake’s new cover for The New Yorker commemorates Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died aged 87 last week.
It brought to mind Stephanie Ross’s cover for the 2018 biography of Ginsberg by Jane Sherron De Hart published by Knopf, which also focused on her lace collar.
