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Cross It Out

I’ve been thinking about covers that feature one form of redacted text or another for a while, but this post has been sitting in my drafts folder gestating for far too long so I’m publishing now, as-is, because otherwise it is unlikely to ever see the light of day! 

The covers of Censoring an Iranian Love Story, designed by Peter Mendelsund, and Nineteen Eighty-Four, designed by David Pearson, are classics of the genre:

I thought that this kind of bar redaction (is there a technical term for it?) might be a relatively new — post-The 9-11 Commission Report — phenomena, but (friend of the blog) Richard Weston, AKA Acejet170, recently posted this 1974 Penguin cover for Academic Freedom by Anthony Arblaster, designed by Omnific, on Instagram:

In a lovely design touch, the redacted words appear on the back cover:

Related to bar redaction is the strike-through. One of my favourite examples is Barnbrook‘s cover design for How to Run a Government by Michael Barber, published by Allen Lane. 

How to Run a Government by Michael Barber; design by Barnbrook (Allen Lane / March 2015)

I’ve been seeing the straight strike-through used a lot recently. It does a neat job of doing two things at once. It allows you to not say something, while also emphasizing that you are pointedly not saying it.   

I’ve seen it mostly used for nonfiction (as above), but Janet Hansen recently used the strike for the cover of Amitava Kumar’s novel Immigrant, Montana

Immigrant, Montana by Amitava Kumar; design Janet Hansen (Knopf / July 2018)

Black text on a white background with a red strike-through is its own sub-genre:

In fact, using red — be it more artistic blocks, strikeouts or scribbles — is a popular way to highlight what is being crossed out:

And generally the hand-drawn strike-through or scribble seems to be the most popular way to cross something out … 

Hope A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander; design by John Gall (Riverhead Books / January 2012)
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu; design by Isabel Urbina Peña (Knopf / March 2014)

If you have (constructive) thoughts on the matter, and/or other examples, please leave them in the comments. 

The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi; design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner / March 2015)