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Category: Design

Published December 10, 2008

FaceOut Books

FaceOut Books, updated every Monday, is a fascinating website about the practice of book cover design:

“This is not a blog to rip apart what we dislike—everyone has a different aesthetic. This is a blog about the challenges and outcomes of a project. We are here to teach and be taught by one another.”

The post from December 8th is by Charlotte Strick who designed the cover for Roberto Bolaño’s much lauded 2666 (pictured):

It’s a designer’s dream to have a mysterious, numerical title to work with. I was a big fan of Rodrigo Corral’s jacket design solution for “The Savage Detectives” (FSG, 2007), so that made it an even greater challenge to take on what is considered by many to be the late author’s “magnum opus”.

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Published December 7, 2008

Interview with Carin Goldberg

Success Secrets of the Graphic Design Superstars interviews design doyenne Carin Goldberg. Goldberg has designed book covers for just about all the major US publishers, including Simon & Schuster, Random House, Farrar Straus & Giroux, and Harper Collins:

Book jacket design was not as “sexy” or as visible then as it has become. Art directors at that time had more control. There were fewer, if any, marketing meetings or other sorts of group decision making that often dilute the creative process. It was an easier, more rewarding time to be designing covers.

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Published December 7, 2008

100 Design Book Covers

100 Design Book Covers at Visual Evasion. Amazing (via A Whole Lot of BS):

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Published December 7, 2008

Tschichold: Titan of Typography

The Brillance of Jan Tschichold — Richard Hollis at The Guardian looks at the career of the man who perfected Penguin’s classic paperback:

Tschichold tidied up the horizontally banded covers of the standard Penguins and refined the Penguin emblem. Each of these adjustments hardly changed what we now think of as the “classic” Penguin designs, but the effect was to set new standards for book production in England.

The Guardian also has a slide show of Tschichold’s poster and paperback designs

If you’d like to know more about Tschichold, Thames and Hudson have just  published Jan Tschichold Master Typographer by Cees W. de Jong,  and Raincoast are distributing Hyphen’s Active Literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography by Christopher Burke — published in March 2008 — here in Canada.

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Published December 1, 2008

Book Design Links, Dec. 1st, 2008

It is very cold, wet and wintry in Toronto today, so here’s some book design related eye-candy to cheer you (me!) up…

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland

Favourite Book Covers of 2008: Joseph Sullivan has published his annual list at the excellent The Book Design Review (BDR). If your new to the BDR make sure you also check out his archived favourites for 2007, 2006, and 2005!

Funnily enough, Fwis’ Covers website has just posted The Microscope and the Eye (pictured) designed by Isaac Tobin who also did the amazing cover for Obsession which is in the BDR list for 2008.

Jacket Mechanical: A nice design blog featuring great book cover designs. Lots of super-cool modernism if you like that sort of thing (which I do).

Speaking of modernism, take a look at Mid-Century Children’s Books a gorgeous retro Flickr set by The Ward-O-Matic (AKA Ward Jenkins).

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Published November 19, 2008

Waterstone’s Hardback Classics

More lovely book designs by the very talented Coralie Bickford-Smith at Penguin UK (mentioned here previously for her work on the Gothic Reds series) for a collection of classics available at British book retailer,  Waterstone’s:

“All the books in this series have patterns that adhere to a strict grid… I have a real enthusiasm for pattern design so I was obsessed with this project. I wanted to create sumptuous books for people to enjoy, cherish and pass on.”


Penguin have very kindly put all of the covers for the Waterstone’s Hardback Classics on their Flickr photostream. It really is a beautiful set.

Coralie recently won an award for best ‘Brand or Series Identity’ at the British Book Design and Production Awards, for her work on the Classic Boys’ Adventures series, which is brilliant too.

Link

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Published November 18, 2008

Penguin on Design

Refreshing classic creative texts: Creative Review talks to Penguin’s art director Jim Stoddart about the redesigned and reissued books in the ‘Penguin on Design’ series. The books include Bruno Munari’s 1965 book, Design As Art; Marshall McLuhan’s 1967 The Medium is the Massage; John Berger’s Ways Of Seeing from 1972; and Susan Sontag’s 1977 essay, On Photography.

I do like these covers — Susan Sontag’s On Photography (pictured) is particularly striking — but, again, what is with all the white? Surely someone at Penguin has  worked in a bookshop. I mean these are clearly meant to be looked at and not touched.

Link

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Published November 14, 2008

Something for the Weekend

After a week of feeling gloomy about publishing, here are a few links to some less apocalyptic book-related stories that I’ve been reading:

“Your…fucking…book” : Author Michael Lewis, who just happened to chronicle Wall Street’s excess in the 80’s in his book Liar’s Poker, tries to figure out what the hell just happened for Portfolio magazine (via kottke):

“This was what they had been waiting for: total collapse… Lehman Brothers had vanished, Merrill had surrendered, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley were just a week away from ceasing to be investment banks. The investment banks were not just fucked; they were extinct.”

Did someone just say ‘Schadenfreude’? Well, I guess it is reassuring that there’s an industry more fucked than publishing… Anyway, Lewis is apparently writing a book about the whole financial crisis…

Contempt for the beautiful losers: Slate‘s Ron Rosenbaum goes to town on BuzzMachine’s Jeff Jarvis (author of the forthcoming book What Would Google Do?) taking in journalism, new media, publishing, the Frankfurt Book Fair, and “New Age boilerplate mysticism” of Paulo Coelho on the way:

“If Jarvis values books (and I can’t help think that despite all the digital bluster, he’s an intelligent guy who likes reading), do we just listen to the market and focus-group what we should print and give away, which is likely to result in all Coelho, all the time, with maybe a little bit of Jarvis thrown in?”

Inevitably you can already read Jarvis’ response on his blog. Despite all the overblown cattiness, it’s actually an interesting argument. (via fimoculous)

More Information Than You Require: Former literary agent turned author John Hodgman, best known for playing PC in those increasingly misfiring Apple commercials, interviewed by The Book Bench blog:

“I believe that by releasing ‘passing interest/low keepsake-value literature’ from the burden of physicality, you are actually releasing the words from their worst liability: the price and inconvenience of actual bookness.”

“Lord Death Man”: PowellsBooks.Blog previews  Chip Kidd’s latest pet project Bat-Manga! (pictured).

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Published October 31, 2008

El Anden Thrillers

Perhaps TWO posts about beautiful book jackets in one day is too much, but I just adore these gorgeous covers by Cristóbal Schmal:

El Anden Thriller

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Published October 31, 2008

Obsessive Cover Design

I normally have an aversion to white, grime-attracting covers (it’s the ex-bookseller in me), but I love, love, love this cover for Obsession: A History by Lennard J. Davis, designed by Isaac Tobin (as seen at  The Book Design Blog):

It’s another great cover that doesn’t entirely rely on photoshop wizardry – the lettering was apparently created by illustrator Lauren Nassef, using pinpricks through heavy cardstock.

There are more great covers designed by Isaac at his website. Lauren’s work is also  lovely.

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Published October 22, 2008

Midweek Miscellany, Oct 22th, 2008

Having skipped Monday (thanks Amazon grid!), here’s a bumper Midweek Miscellany for your (digested) reading pleasure…

Publishers put on a brave face on the economic downturn in Frankfurt according to the Washington Post (thanks for link Stephanie!):

“While luxuries are increasingly unaffordable, most people still have enough money to buy a book, and booksellers could even use the opportunity to stage a resurgence”

Traditional book binders John and Ardis Mankin featured in the San Diego Union Tribune (via Shelf Awareness):

“Our main machinery is our hands,” said Ardis, 74. “Technology can’t do what we do.”

The Serif Fairy (pictured) for the junior typographer in all of us (via Design Observer).

The Legendary Mr. Typewriter: Reveries on Martin K. Tytell the owner of the Tytell Typewriter Company, in Lower Manhattan who died, age 94, on September 11th, 2008. If I could  type for tuppence and wasn’t a pathological re-writer, I would definitely use a typewriter…

‘Books for Bibilophiles’   in The Observer:

“At a time when bibliophiles are an endangered species, these books about books tell us why it’s reading that makes us human”

Literary agent Pat Kavanagh, “doyenne of the London literary scene”, has died:

“She had the values of an earlier generation. People like Kingsley Amis loved Pat. She was old school but she never seemed jaded. We all thought she would always be there, that she would never retire.”

Jonathan Ross revisits Watchmen by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons for The Times (via LinkMachineGo):

“But what makes this a genre-transcending bona fide masterpiece is that… Moore and Gibbons… manage to deliver a devastating critique that cuts to the very heart of the pitiful, timid male fantasy that is the superhero genre at its purest and worst: muscular men and busty women in tight costumes solving all the world’s problems with a well-placed punch”

Over and out…

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Published October 15, 2008

Midweek Miscellany Oct 15th, 2008

Are New York publishers going through some kind of existential crisis?

A chill wind is blowing through publishing according to Leon Neyfakh in the New York Observer. He’s marginally less apocalyptic than some, but he’s still pretty gloomy:

“A frost is coming to publishing. And while the much ballyhooed death of the industry this is not, the ecosystem to which our book makers are accustomed is about to be unmistakably disrupted. At hand is the twilight of an era most did not expect to miss, but will.”

On the other hand…

Old-fashioned publishing is booming for Marvel according to Fortune Magazine:

“There’s a few interesting messages in this, not least of which is the reminder that new formats of media don’t necessarily replace old, and that some habits don’t change as quickly as people think.”

Former CEO Peter Olson  discusses his exit from Random House in Portfolio magazine:

“I think concerns about the book business dying are overdone. Storytelling—the generating of content for all kinds of media—is essential. Books play a key role.”

On a more cheery note…

Children’s Books That Designers Love: Kids books with “insanely cool typography” by  Bruni Munari and Cas. Opt. favourite Paul Rand (pictured).

Liz Thomson and Nicholas Clee, former editors of Publishing News and The Bookseller respectively, have launched BookBrunch an “information site and daily news service for the book industry.” (via Me And My Big Mouth)

Designer Stephen Bayley interviewed by his son Bruno for Vice Magazine. I rather liked this line:

“Heritage is important but you must also build the heritage of the future. The best idea ever on history was in an Italian novel The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, which was published posthumously. It had this line about the decline of a Sicilian dynasty: “If you want things to stay the same, they are going to have to change”. That is entirely my view. Without change everything is stultified.”

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