Books, Design and Culture
Here are your August book covers of note. Another good month, I think?
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / July2019)
This is apparently available now (according to Faber’s Instagram at least!), but I haven’t been able to find it online. If anyone cares to share the ISBN, I will try to add a link.
The new design is inspired by the 1966 cover designed by Shirley Tucker.
Berta Isla by Javier Marías; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / August 2019)
This is an interesting change in direction from the cover of The Infatuations by Javier Marías designed by Isabel Urbina Peña and published by Knopf in 2013.
(The UK covers for Javier Marías’ novels published by Hamish Hamilton are photographic. If anyone can supply me with the design/photo credits, I’d be happy to add them in here for reference!).
The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / August 2019)
The Catholic School by Edoardo Albinati; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2019)
Thank you to the good folks on Twitter who helped me identify the designer and then the typeface. It turns out the type is “Lydia” from Colophon Foundry — a revival of the Bold Condensed styles of (you guessed it!) Lydian.
Chances Are… by Richard Russo; dsign by Kelly Blair (Knopf / July 2019)
Doxology by Nell Zink; design Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / August 2019)
And you can read a recent interview with Jack about his work at It’s Nice That.
Ether by Evgenia Citkowitz design by Henry Sene Yee (Picador / July 2019)
You can listen to Henry discussing his work with Holly Dunn on the latest Spine podcast.
Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford; design and illustration Beci Kelly (Transworld / August 2019)
The cover of the US edition, which will be published by Scribner in January 2020(!) was designed by Jaya Miceli featuring a collage by Toon Joosen.
Lithium by Walter A. Brown; design by Keith Hayes (W. W. Norton / August 2019)
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / August 2019)
More Noble Than War by Nicholas Blincoe; design by Steve Leard (Constable / August 2019)
This reminded me of Henry’s cover for A Wall in Palestine by René Backman published by Picador in 2010…
The Need by Helen Phillips; design Rachel Willey (Simon & Schuster / July 2019)
I stopped keeping track of ‘flora-intertwined-with-type’ covers a while ago, but this would be a nice addition to that list.
One Giant Leap by Charles Fishman; design by Richard Ljoenes (Simon & Schuster / June 2019)
Our Women on the Ground edited by Zahra Hankir; design by Rosie Palmer; hand lettering by Lily Jones (Harvill Secker / August 2019)
The cover of the US edition published by Penguin was designed by Na Kim.
The Perfect Plan by Bryan Reardon; design by Jason Booher (Dutton / June 2019)
I like this cover a lot, but it is surprisingly un-bonkers for Jason. I would not have guessed he was the designer!
The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán; design by Tree Abraham (Coffee House Press / August 2019)
Tree also designed the cover of the UK edition published by And Other Stories last year. She wrote about the process of designing both covers for Spine not so long ago (they really are doing a better a job of this than me, aren’t they?).
The Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)
I think it’s kind of interesting to see these two designs side by side….
Speaking of Summer by Kalisha Buckhanon; design Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / July 2019)
Sadly this image doesn’t quite do justice to just how brilliantly orange this cover is in IRL. And apparently flowery collages are the new thing…
The Western Alienation Merit Badge by Nancy Jo Cullen; design by Michel Vrana (Buckrider Books / May 2019)
Michel has also dusted off his comics publishing endeavour Black Eye Books if you’d like to support him. There is a new book by Jay Stephens planned for next month.
White Flights by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Graywolf / August 2019)
This is one of my favourite covers of the year so far, I think.
1 CommentOof, I am very late with this month’s covers post. I think it’s quite a good one though as these things go…?
Categorically Famous by Guy Davidson; design by Michel Vrana (Stanford University Press / June 2019)
Swishy retro fonts are definitely a ‘thing’ now. In this instance I believe the font is Cabernet JF — an unofficial revival of Benguiat Caslon — which has been mentioned here before. The sans is Futura of course. I rather rashly went on record not so long ago saying Futura is a little overused on university press covers (much to the chagrin of Robert Bringhurst!), but I think it works here.
Come Closer and Listen by Charles Simic; design by Allison Saltzman; art by Jessica Brilli (Ecco / July 2019)
Cruising by Alex Espinoza; design by Robert Bieselen (Unnamed Press / June 2019)
More swishy-swishiness. The positioning of the first “i” in “Cruising” does some work here.
Cults by Herb Lester Associates; design and illustration Brian Rau (Herb Lester Associates / July 2019)
The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / July 2019)
Pablo also designed the cover of Ginzburg’s Happiness, as Such, also out this month from New Directions.
Expectation by Anna Hope; design by Jo Thomson (Doubleday / July 2019)
Feel Free by Nick Laird; design by Yang Kim (W.W. Norton / July 2019)
The Fell by Robert Jenkins; design by Jason Anscomb (RedDoor Press / July 2019)
The Great American Cheese War by Paul Flower; design by Dan Mogford (Farrago / June 2019)
(There is probably a post to be had of covers that feature ‘guns’ made of other things. Although I’m struggling to think of any other examples off the top of my head, so maybe I’m thinking of artworks and/or magazine covers? Or just imagining it?)
A Half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts; design by Helen Crawford-White (Fig Tree / July 2019)
Harbart by Nabarun Bhattacharya; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / June 2019)
Maggie Brown & Others by Peter Orner; design by Lucy Kim (Little, Brown & Co. / July 2019)
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead; design by Oliver Munday (Doubleday / July 2019)
Novacene by James Lovelock; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / July 2019)
Radical Ritual by Neil Shister; design by Sarah Brody (Counterpoint / July 2019)
Say Say Say by Lila Savage; design by Jennifer Carrow (Knopf / July 2019)
The Travelers by Regina Porter; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / July 2019)
The cover of the US edition published by Hogarth last month was designed by Michael Morris.
I would have have a hard time telling you which country these covers came from if I didn’t already know. Using the US spelling “Travelers” on the UK cover confuses the issue, but I don’t think either cover looks particularly American, which is kind of interesting. Michael Morris recently discussed his version with Spine.
Turbulence by David Szalay; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / July 2019)
The cover of the UK edition of Turbulence, published at the end of last year by Jonathan Cape, reminded me of Anne Twomey’s 2015 cover for Munich Airport by Greg Baxter…
Interestingly, the barcode on the front of the UK edition actually works. You can read an interview from earlier this year with designer Rosie Palmer about the UK cover over at Spine.
Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky; design by Janet Hansen; ice rendered by Justin Metz (Knopf / July 2019)
The Weil Conjectures by Karen Olsson; design by Emma Ewbank (Bloomsbury / July 2019)
The cover of the US edition published by FSG this month was designed by Alison Forner and Thomas Colligan, with art by Jessica Halonen.
We Went to the Woods by Caite Dolan-Leach; design by Jaya Miceli (Random House / July 2019)
Apparently it is June already. I’m pretty sure it’s a terrible mistake.
Here are your book covers of note.
Aug 9 — Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)
Cogito by Victor Dixen; design by Jim Tierney (Collection R / May 2019)
This reminded me of something. I’m not sure exactly what. The best I could up with was Nicole Caputo‘s stripey op-art cover for Liveblog by Megan Boyle, but that’s not it at all…
The Girl at the Door by Veronica Raimo; design by Julian Humphries (Fourth Estate / June 2019)
The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey; design by Will Staehle (Harper Voyager / June 2019)
Lie With Me by Philippe Besson; design by Na Kim (Scribner / April 2019)
The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write by Gregory Orr; design by Jared Oriel (W.W. Norton / June 2019)
Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)
Norco ’80 by Peter Houlahan; design by Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / June 2019)
November by Jorge Galán; design by Steve Leard (Little, Brown / June 2019)
I’m starting to detect a colour scheme at work here, Steve… ;-)
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong; design by Darren Haggar; photograph by Sam Contis (Penguin Press / June 2019)
Are we seeing a trend for close cropped photographs of… arms? (Don’t get me wrong, these are both beautiful photographs / covers.)
Also of note in a compare-and-contrast sort of way, the cover of the UK edition of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous published by Jonathan Cape was designed by Suzanne Dean:
Open Me by Lisa Locascio; design by Kelly Winton; collage by Katrien de Blauwer (Grove / June 2019)
Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn; design by Steve Attardo; handlettering by Sarahmay Wilkinson (Liveright / June 2019)
Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh; design by David Curtis (Tor / June 2019)
The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson; design by Pablo Delcan (Verso / May 2019)
The Sun On My Head by Geovani Martins; design by Clare Skeats (Faber & Faber / June 2019)
The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri; design by Christopher Gale (Canongate / May 2019)
The White Death by Gabriel Urza; design by Joan Wong (Nouvella / June 2019)
This reminds me (a little bit) of the Penguin English Library covers art directed by Coralie Bickford-Smith a few years ago:
William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Casey Rae; design by Matt Avery (University of Texas Press / June 2019)
Here are this month’s book covers of note.
Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane; design by David Litman (Scribner / may 2019)
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess; design by Kelly Winton (W.W. Norton / May 2019)
Has anyone done a post on A Clockwork Orange covers over the years? I feel like someone must have.
Crossing by Pajtim Statovci; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / April 2019)
Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2019)
The Ghost Notebooks by Ben Dolnick; design by Stephanie Ross (Vintage / January 2019)
The cover of the hardback edition published last year by Pantheon was designed by Kelly Blair.
The Hypothetical Man by Paul Maliszewski & Ryan Weil; design by Alban Fischer (Trnsfr Books / March 2019)
The Ice House by Tim Clare; design by Leo Nickolls (Canongate / May 2019)
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman; design by Anna Morrison (Vintage / May 2019)
Land and Forests by Andrew Forbes; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / May 2019)
Life Support by Julia Copus; design by Helen Crawford-White (Head of Zeus / April 2019)
The Man They Wanted Me To Be by Jared Yates Sexton; design by Matt Dorfman (Counterpoint / March 2019)
Matt also designed the cover of Jared Yates Sexton’s previous book The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore.
Map of Another Town by M.F.K. Fisher; design by Anna Morrison (Daunt Books / May 2019)
Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington; design by Matt Dorfman (W.W. Norton / April 2019)
Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman; design by Oliver Munday (Simon & Schuster / May 2019)
The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / May 2019)
The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)
Joe Dator for The New Yorker.
(I feel like this is a variation on a gag that has been going around independent bookstores for a while now, but it gets more accurate by the day. I guess we have to laugh or we will cry, right?)
Comments closed
It’s Nice That talks to Jon Gray, AKA Gray318, about his design process and working on covers for high-profile authors like Zadie Smith:
Comments closedJon’s covers are not simply aesthetically pleasing; they’re also suitably thoughtful. He always asks for the most text possible from his clients, in order to kickstart his creative process. “I struggle designing without knowing the mood of the book, it’s character,” he says. “I’m not good at fishing in the dark for concepts and I think my best work comes about when it’s rooted in the text.”
But sometimes, he has to make do with very little. Which is why working with gifted authors like Zadie Smith and wonderful editors like Simon Prosser (Zadie’s editor) is such a blessing: “They will send me a great brief that outlines the plot and sets the mood. There will be visual references and often a strong sense of the area that the book should sit, but with plenty of room to experiment.”
He adds that working with high-profile clients is easier than one might think. “People often imagine that designing covers for big authors is going to be harder somehow. It’s true that marketing and sales departments have a big say in the final cover, but generally, if you can make an author and their editor happy, the rest will follow.”
Theo Inglis, whose book Mid-Century Modern Graphic is published this month, has a lovely post on the AIGA Eye on Design blog about the work of artist, teacher, activist, and designer Corita Kent:
In 1962, Kent saw work by Andy Warhol for the first time, and her aesthetic changed markedly, becoming bolder, flatter, more abstract and brighter, often with saturated, almost fluorescent, colors. Her new style was so successful that it became became known as “nun art,” and was often imitated. Her adherence to the Pop Art aesthetic was well suited to her joyous aims: Kent said she wanted her art to “give people a lift” and help them get “more fun out of life.”
Pop Art’s celebration of the urban everyday also empowered Kent to introduce more quotidian sources into her text works. During the ’60s, she began to incorporate lyrics from pop songs, advertising slogans, and snippets of text seen on signs and packaging into her work, often pairing them with religious text. It was a move that elevated the ordinary to the spiritual, and became a frequent theme in Kent’s art and teaching. She found delight in the commonplace, and believed that the divine could be seen anywhere, even amidst the chaos of the modern city. Kent often took her students on urban expeditions—even day-long trips to gas stations and car lots—armed with cameras and viewfinders.
The largest ever exhibition of Corita Kent’s work in the UK, Corita Kent: Power Up, is currently on display at House of Illustration in King’s Cross until May 12.
Theo’s book is available May 7 from Pavilion Books.
Comments closedWell, if the sun’s turned cold and the sky’s got black, it must be April!1 Here are this month’s book cover selections…
The Affairs of the Falcóns by Melissa Rivero; design Allison Saltzman; lettering Boyoun Kim (Ecco / April 2019)
All Ships Follow Me by Mieke Eerkens; design Henry Sene Yee (Picador USA / April 2019)
Another cover for the Lydian file. (I posted a link to this on Twitter, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here — Kaitlyn Tiffany recently wrote a piece on the Lydian phenomenon for Vox if you want to read a bit more about it)
Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg; design Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / April 2019)
The Flip by Jeffery J. Kripal; design by Tree Abraham (Bellevue Literary Press / March 2019)
Four Words for Friend by Marek Kohn; design by Clare Skeats (Yale University Press / April 2019)
Some lovely type there… Can anyone tell me what the title typeface is please? It seems like a good alternative for our old friend Lydian there…
The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Meara; design by Erin Craig; art by Matt Buck (Hanover Square / March 2019)
Is this the first Harlequin book cover to feature on the site? Possibly…
Never a Lovely So Real by Colin Asher; design by Jonathan Bush (W. W. Norton / April 2019)
A couple of bold design decisions here — neither the author name or the subtitle (“The Life and Work of Nelson Algren”) are on the front cover.
The New Me by Halle Butler; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)
Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein; design by Stephanie Ross; photograph Matt McClain (Knopf / April 2019)
The Other Americans by Laila Lalami; design by Janet Hansen (Pantheon Books / March 2019)
The Mountain that Eats Men by Ander Izagirre; design by Steve Leard (Zed Books / April 2019)
Swift by David Baker; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W.W. Norton / April 2019)
The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)
What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young; design by Sarah Huny Young (Ecco / April 2019)
You Are What You Read by Jodie Jackson; design by Steve Leard (Unbound / April 2019)
Munich ’72. The Visual Output of Otl Aicher’s Dept. XI, a book about the design team for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, is currently on Kickstarter. The project is the result of three of years of research and it needs a little help to get it over the finish line, so maybe go take a look?
(via Under Consideration)
Comments closedIt’s almost the first day of spring, the snow and ice have just about melted in Toronto (for now!), and everything is still awful, so it must be time for March’s book covers of note!
Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / February 2019)
The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson; design by Helen Crawford-White (Grove / March 2019)
The Bold World by Jodie Patterson; design by Jaya Miceli (Ballantine / January 2019)
Boşluktakiler by Tom McCarthy; design by David Drummond (Jaguar / February 2019)
This is the Turkish edition of Men in Space by Tom McCarthy. I like how the composition and colour palette echo the cover of the US edition published by Vintage, designed by John Gall:
It also reminds of the golden leaf cover for ‘True Faith’ by New Order designed by Peter Saville.
The Cook by Maylis de Kerangal; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / March 2019)
(I feel like a Freudian could have a field day with this cover.)
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Lauren Wakefield (Hutchinson / March 2019)
The cover of the US edition published by Ballantine (I couldn’t find an image without the book club sticker… sorry), was designed by Caroline Teagle Johnson. The book is getting a lot of buzz so I’ve seen both versions of the cover a lot online. It’s a pretty striking photo. I’m curious about where it came from…
Follow This Thread by Henry Eliot; design by Elena Giavaldi (Three Rivers Press / March 2019)
Good Kids, Bad City by Kyle Swenson; design by Henry Sene Yee (Picador / February 2019)
Halibut on the Moon by David Vann; design by Erin Fitzsimmons (Grove / March 2019)
Heroine by Mindy McGinnis; design by Erin Fitzsimmons (Katherine Tegen Books / March 2019)
I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You by David Chariandy; design by Tree Abraham (Bloomsbury / March 2019)
Lanny by Max Porter; design by Jonny Pelham (Faber & Faber / March 2019)
Midnight by Victoria Shorr; design by Sarah-May Wilkinson (Norton / March 2019)
This uses some very fancy metallic stock that you can’t really appreciate from the image.
The type reminded me a little of the cover of a Faber & Faber collection called Sex & Death from a couple of years ago designed by Luke Bird.
The Municipalists by Seth Fried; design by Matt Taylor (Penguin / March 2019)
Rutting Season by Mandeliene Smith; design by Grace Han (Scribner / February 2019)
Unspeakable by Harriet Shawcross; design by Jamie Keenan (Canongate / March 2019)
And sticking with blue-green covers…
The Wall by John Lanchester; design by Utku Lomlu (Norton / March 2019)
The cover of the UK edition published by Faber & Faber (featured in January’s post) was designed by Alex Kirby:
When Brooklyn was Queer by Hugh Ryan; design by Rob Grom (St. Martin’s Press / March 2019)
I haven’t posted anything about books and technology here for a while, but I thought this recent Wired piece by Craig Mod on the “Future Book” was quite interesting:
Comments closedPhysical books today look like physical books of last century. And digital books of today look, feel, and function almost identically to digital books of 10 years ago, when the Kindle launched… Yet here’s the surprise: We were looking for the Future Book in the wrong place. It’s not the form, necessarily, that needed to evolve—I think we can agree that, in an age of infinite distraction, one of the strongest assets of a “book” as a book is its singular, sustained, distraction-free, blissfully immutable voice. Instead, technology changed everything that enables a book, fomenting a quiet revolution. Funding, printing, fulfillment, community-building—everything leading up to and supporting a book has shifted meaningfully, even if the containers haven’t. Perhaps the form and interactivity of what we consider a “standard book” will change in the future, as screens become as cheap and durable as paper. But the books made today, held in our hands, digital or print, are Future Books, unfuturistic and inert may they seem.
