After posting my long overdue picks for 2010 last week, here are my selections for my favourite book covers of 2011.
I’m currently reading Where The Stress Falls a collection of writing by Susan Sontag published in 2001. In an essay about art she quotes Paul Valéry on the painter Corot. “One must always apologize for talking about painting” he says. I know just what he means. I feel the same way about book design. Perhaps even more than a painting, what you see is what you get with a book jacket. If you have to explain why it works, it probably doesn’t. Or you’re talking to the wrong crowd. But there’s something else too. I also feel like I need to apologize for not knowing more; for producing reductive lists like this one; for being, well, so presumptuous…
The 2011 list has changed a few times in the last few days and would likely be different again if you asked me tomorrow — not for lack of quality you understand, but simply because narrowing the list down to a manageable number and deciding which should be in the final ‘top 10′ was just plain hard. This isn’t a definitive survey of book covers in 2011 by any means (sorry!) it’s simply a list of the book jackets that caught my eye this year — designs I thought that were beautiful, a bit different, audacious, a bit out of the ordinary, a bit worthwhile… I’m grateful to all the designers who created these covers, who gave me suggestions and helped me source the images. Once again, I’ve been struck by their generosity. Nevertheless I have surely I’ve missed some great covers. Tell me what they are in the comments.
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