Books, Design and Culture
I posted David Pearson‘s first four Noam Chomsky covers for Pluto Press back in January. Now, the next four books in the series have been released.
The typeface is apparently Druk, designed by Berton Hasebe for Commercial Type. At the Creative Review, David talks about his design of the series.
Award-winning Australian designer and art directer W. H. Chong interviews David Pearson — who is giving a series of talks on book design in Australia this week — for his column Culture Mulcher:
I love the Gandhi quote, ‘There is more to life than increasing its speed’ (particularly reassuring words for a slow-working technophobe).
I do worry that many technological advancements are enabling us to achieve not very much, but at a much faster rate. For example, I cannot understand the very modern desire to produce work using a series of time-saving shortcuts when it is the duration of the working process itself that allows us to question, edit and fine-tune our output. To speed up or bypass this process is to give up on so much and risks the work lacking any discernible ‘human’ quality.
That said, I do work very slowly and sometimes think that a warm and welcoming hobbyist’s industry, like publishing, is the only place that would have me.
David is delivering a lecture, We Are What We Read, at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney tomorrow (Tuesday, August 25) at 6.30pm, and will be discussing contemporary book design at the Melbourne Writers Festival on August 29 and August 30, although I believe the second event is sold out.
Comments closedHere is March’s selection of new and noteworthy covers. It’s a little bit of the Merto and Mendelsund show I’ll admit, but I assure you there really are some brilliant covers by other designers this month too!
The A-Z of You and Me by James Hannah; design by Leo Nickolls (Doubleday / March 2015)
The Bookseller by Cynthia Swanson; design by Kimberly Glyder (Harper / March 2013 killed)
Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / February 2015)
Field Notes from a Catastrophe by Elizabeth Kolbert; design by Patti Ratchford; illustration by Eric Nyquist (Bloomsbury / February 2015)
I also loved Eric’s ‘H is for Hawk’ illustration in the February 22nd edition of The New York Times Book Review.
The Four Books by Yan Lianke; design by Matt Broughton (Chatto & Windus / March 2015)
Get in Trouble by Kelly Link; design by Alex Merto (Random House / February 2015)
The Highway of Despair by Robyn Marasco; design by Jennifer Heuer (Columbia University Press / March 2015)
Holy Cow by David Duchovny; design by Rodrigo Corral; illustration and lettering by Natalya Balnova (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2015)
I Am Sorry to Think I Raised a Timid Son by Kent Russell; design by Peter Mendelsund; hand lettering by Janet Hansen; photography by George Baier IV (Knopf / March 2015)
The Knife by Ross Ritchell; design by Alex Merto (Blue Rider Press / February 2015)
(Camouflage book covers are the New Thing!)
The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi; design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner / March 2015)
A Letter to a Future Lover by Ander Monson; design by Marian Bantjes (Graywolf / February 2015)
The Librarian by Mikhail Elizarov; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press / March 2015)
Making Nice by Matt Sumell; design by Gray318 (Henry Holt & Co. / February 2015)
One Day in the Life of the English Language by Frank L. Cioffi; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / March 2015)
The Poser by Jacob Rubin; design by Will Staehle (Viking / March 2015)
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / February 2015)
So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson; design by Matt Dorfman (Riverhead / March 2015)
The Swan Book by Alexis Wright; design by Ceara Elliot (Corsair / March 2015)
The Unloved by Deborah Levy; design by Katya Mezhibovskaya; photograph by Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison (Bloomsbury / March 2015)
The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma; design by Connie Gabbert (Algonquin Books / March 2015)
We All Looked Up by Tommy Wallach; Lucy Ruth Cummins; photographer Meredith Jenks (Simon & Schuster / March 2015)
The version of this cover which caught my eye was actually wordless — and I believe that was the designer’s original intention — so I’m a wee bit disappointed that the publisher didn’t quite have the courage to follow through on that.
Worst Person Ever by Douglas Coupland; design by Alex Merto (Plume / March 2015)
Here is this month’s selection of new book covers that have caught my eye…
Angry Youth Comix by Johnny Ryan; design by Keeli McCarthy (Fantagraphics / February 2015)
Dom Casmurro by Machado de Assis; design by Nathan Burton (Daunt Books / February 2015)
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper; design by Gray318 (Penguin / January 2015)
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma; design by Gray318 (Pushkin Press / February 2015)
Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / February 2015)
I Am Radar by Reif Larsen; design by Will Staehle (Penguin Press / February 2015)
Ismael and His Sisters by Louise Stern; design by Dan Mogford (Granta / February 2015)
The Italians by John Hooper; design by Nicholas Misani (Viking / January 2015)
Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press / February 2015)
Munich Airport by Greg Baxter; design by Anne Twomey (Twelve Books / January 2015)
The Room by Jonas Karlsson; design by Christopher Brand; photograph by George Baier IV (Hogarth / February 2015)
Shooting Stars by Stefan Zweig; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press / February 2015)
The Utopia of Rules by David Graeber; design by Christopher Brian King (Melville House / February 2015)
Designer David Pearson has created some rather nice typographic covers for the UK editions of Noam Chomsky available from UK publisher Pluto Press.
In addition to the talented Mr. Pearson, Pluto Press’s design manager Melanie Patrick kindly let me know that the publisher is currently working with designers such as David Drummond, David Gee, Jamie Keenan, Dan Mogford, and Jarrod Taylor. You can see some of the results on their new Tumblr Pluto Press Covers, including this slick (ba-dum ching!) cover for the forthcoming Artwash by Mel Evans, designed by Mr. Keenan:
Book designers, you do amazing work. Thank you. I am especially grateful to all the designers and art directors (not to mention publicists and other publishing folk) who have shared their wisdom, provided me with images, and helped me with design credits this year — these posts would not be possible without you. I also want thank my fellow book design bloggers, notably Book Covrs, Booketing, and Caustic Cover Critic, for their sterling work, and my local bookstores, Type, Book City on the Danforth, Ben McNally Books, and Indigo Bay & Bloor, for letting me browse their shelves.
Here are my covers of 2014:
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews; design by Sunra Thompson (McSweeney’s / November 2014)
All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu; design by Isabel Urbina Peña (Knopf / March 2014)
Bark by Lorrie Moore; design by Carol Devine Carson; photography by Josef Sudek (Knopf / February 2014)
The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace; design by Linda Huang (Pantheon / February 2014)
The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber; art direction and design Rafi Romaya; illustration Yehrin Tong (Canongate / October 2014)
The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt; design by Christopher Lin (Simon & Schuster / March 2014)
Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall by Will Chancellor; design by Richard Ljoenes (HarperCollins / July 2014)
Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes; design by Keith Hayes (Mulholland Books / September 2014)
California by Edan Lepucki; design Julianna Lee (Little Brown & Co. / July 2014)
Chop Chop by Simon Wroe; design by Ben Wiseman (Penguin / April 2014)
Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys by Viv Albertine; design by Luke Bird (Faber & Faber / May 2014)
The Corpse Exhibition by Hassan Blasim; design by Jason Ramirez (Penguin / February 2014)
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill; design by Gray318 (Granta / March 2014)
Dog Ear by Jim Johnstone; design by David Drummond (Signal Editions / May 2014)
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison; design by Tom Darracott (Granta / June 2014)
Enlightenment 2.0 by Joseph Heath; design by David A. Gee (HarperCollins / April 2014)
Forensic Songs by Mike McCormack; design by Jason Booher (SOHO / July 2014)
Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson; design by Allison Saltzman; illustration by Bryan Nash Gill (Ecco / June 2014)
Friendship by Emily Gould; design by Jennifer Carrow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / July 2014)
Fullblood Arabian by Osama Alomar; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / March 2014)
A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride; design by Donna Payne (Faber & Faber / April 2014)
Happy are the Happy by Yesmina Reza; design by Suzanne Dean (Harvill Secker / July 2014)
The Histories by Herodotus, translated by Tom Holland; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin Classics / September 2014)
The Intervals of Cinema by Jacques Rancière; design by Jessica Svendsen (Verso / October 2014)
Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors; design by Carol Hayes (Graywolf February 2014)
Leaving the Sea by Ben Marcus; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / January 2014)
And here it is side by side with 2012’s The Flame Alphabet:
The Liar’s Wife by Mary Gordon; design by Linda Huang (Pantheon / August 2014)
Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by Rizon Parein (Doubleday / September 2014)
The Man Who Couldn’t Stop; design by Katie Tooke (Picador / April 2014)
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka; design by Jamie Keenan (W. W. Norton / February 2014)
My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead; design by Elena Giavaldi (Crown / January 2014)
Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts; design by Isabelle De Cat (Penguin / October 2014)
On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee; design by Helen Yentus; lettering Jason Booher (Riverhead / January 2014)
Our Poison Horse by Derrick Brown; design by Jennifer Heuer (Write Bloody / October 2014)
Radio Benjamin edited by Lecia Rosenthal; design by Isaac Tobin (Verso / October 2014)
Russians by Gregory Feifer; design by Catherine Casalino (Twelve Books / February 2014)
The Scarborough by Michael Lista; design by David Drummond (Véhicule Press / September 2014)
The Secret World of Oil by Ken Silverstein; design by Matt Dorfman (Verso / May 2014)
Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball; design by Peter Mendelsund (Pantheon / January 2014)
The Silent History by Eli Horowitz, Kevin Moffett, Matthew Derby; design by Oliver Munday (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2014)
Song for an Approaching Storm by Peter Fröberg Idling; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press / March 2014)
Specter of Capital by Joseph Vogl; design by Anne Jordan (Stamford University Press / October 2014)
Strange Bodies by Marcel Theroux; design by Nayon Cho; illustration by Mark Stutzman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2014)
Ugly Girls by Lindsay Hunter; design by Charlotte Strick; photograph by Natalie Dirks (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / November 2014)
Vanishing by Gerard Woodward; design by Jamie Keenan (Picador UK / March 2014)
Wittgenstein Jr by Lars Iyers; design by Christopher Brian King (Melville House / September 2014)
Wolf in White Van by John Darnielle; design by Timothy Goodman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / September 2014)
Area X by Jeff VanderMeer; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / November 2014)
Young Skins: Stories by Colin Barrett; design by James Paul Jones (Jonathan Cape / March 2014)
Your Face in Mine by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Riverhead / August 2014)
Thanks all.
As well posting great cover designs for books released in July, I’ve taken this month’s round-up as an opportunity to catch up on a few I missed earlier this year. Enjoy!
Adam by Ariel Schrag; design by Christopher Moisan (Mariner June 2014)
American Blonde by Jennifer Niven; design by Sara Wood (Plume July 2014)
The Arsonist by Sue Miller; design by Gabriele Wilson (Knopf June 2014)
California by Edan Lepucki; design Julianna Lee (Little Brown & Co. July 2014)
Cartwheel by Jennifer Dubois; design Eileen Carey / photograph by Kniel Synnatzschke (Random House May 2014)
Cubed by Nikil Saval; design by Oliver Munday (Doubleday April 2014)
Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson; design by Allison Saltzman, cover art Bryan Nash Gill (Ecco June 2014)
Friendship by Emily Gould; design by Jennifer Carrow (FSG July 2014)
Gottland: Mostly True Stories from Half of Czechoslovakia by Mariusz Szczygiel; design by Christopher King (Melville House May 2014)
How To Be Danish by Patrick Kingsley; design by Andrew Smith (Atria February 2014)
A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain by Adrianne Harun; design by Kristen Haff (Penguin February 2014)
The Martian by Andy Weir; design by Eric White (Crown February 2014)
Nobody is Ever Missing by Catherine Lacey; design by Charlotte Strick; illustration by Patrick Leger (FSG Originals, July 2014)
No Country by Kalyan Ray; design by Christopher Lin (Simon & Schuster June 2014)
My Fellow Skin / Shutterspeed / Marcel by Erwin Mortier; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press July 2014)
Night Film by Marisha Pessl; design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant (Random House July 2014)
Out of Time by Lynne Segal; design by David A. Gee (Verso July 2014)
Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya; design by Helen Yentus / Photograph by Emine Ziyatdinova (Riverhead July 2014)
The String Diaries by Stephen Lloyd Jones; design by Keith Hayes (Mulholland Books July 2014)
The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons by Sam Kean; design by Will Staehle (Little, Brown & Co. May 2014)
The threat of death… A warning… A memento mori…
A comprehensive visual history of the human skull is surely an entire Steven Heller book in the making (I guess we’ll just have to make do with a Wikipedia page for now). But as Faye Dowling’s contemporary compendium The Book of Skulls1 makes plain, what was once taboo — terrifying even — has become a pop culture phenomenon. Images of skulls now appear in art, design, fashion, and illustration. Apparently we like to be reminded we are all going to die. Even book covers are not immune. Here are a few recent examples that caught my eye:
Actors Anonymous by James Franco; design by Lynn Buckley (New Harvest October 2013)
Darkmans by Nicola Barker; design by Leo Nickolls (Fourth Estate March 2008)
A Dark Stranger by Julien Gracq; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press December 2013)
Everyone Loves a Good Train Wreck by Eric G. Wilson; design by Rodrigo Corrall, hand-lettering by Jennifer Carrow, photograph by Simon Lee (FSG March 2012)
Fiend by Peter Stenson; design by Christopher Brand (Crown July 2013)
The Hamlet Doctrine by Simon Critchley & Jamieson Webster; design by David A. Gee (Verso September 2013)
How the Dead Live by Derek Raymond; design by Christopher King (Melville House October 2011)
La Isla del Tesoro (Treasure Island) by Robert Louis Stevenson; design by Raúl Arias (Bolchiro February 2013)
The Intern’s Handbook by Shane Kuhn; design by Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich (Simon & Schuster April 2014)
The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders; design by Ervin Serrano (Thomas Dunne July 2013)
Junky by William Burroughs; artwork by Martha Rich (Penguin April 2012)
Mr. Peanut by Adam Ross; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf June 2010)
Piratas de lo público by Antón Losada; design by Javier Jaén (Deusto November 2013)
A Questionable Shape by Bennett Sims; design by Holly MacDonald (Oneworld June 2014)
The Return by Michael Gruber; design by Chris Sergio (Henry Holt & Co. September 2013)
Royauté by Alexie Morin design by Catherine D’Amours (Le Quartanier October 2013)
The Scarborough by Michael Lista; design by David Drummond (Véhicule Press September 2014)
Sete by Albero Riva; design by Manuele Scalia (Mondadori May 2011)
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh; design by Will Staehle (Random House February 2014)
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick Dewitt, design by Dan Stiles (Ecco May 2011)
Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut; design by Lynn Buckley; illustrations and hand-lettering by Kurt Vonnegut (Dial Press 2009)
Tequila Sunset by Sam Hawken; design by Tony Lyons at Estuary English (Serpent’s Tail December 2013)
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh; design by Sarah-Jane Smith (Vintage March 2013)
¡Viva La Muerte! by Rafael Núñez and Elena Núñez González ; design by Manuel Estrada (Marcial Pons Historia March 2014).
When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris; design by Chip Kidd (Little Brown & Co. July 2008)
I’ve been thinking a lot about triangle patterns recently (that’s just how my mind works — don’t ask) and collecting together a few book covers (and related matter) that use them in their designs. I thought I’d share some of the things I’ve come across here…
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus; design by Helen Yentus (Vintage Books 2007) 
Harvard Review #35 (Fall 2008), #39 (Fall 2010) and #41 (Winter 2011); design by Alex Camlin
Cutting Edges: Contemporary Collage edited by Robert Klanten, Hendrik Hellige and J. Gallagher (Gestalten February 2011) — collages by Jelle Martens
Traveller of the Century by Andrés Neuman; design by Clare Skeats (Pushkin Press, January 2013)
La Boîte aux lettres du cimetière by Serge Pey (Éditions Zulma February 2014)
Notre quelque part by Nii Ayikwei Parkes (Éditions Zulma February 2014)
Dictionnaire du parfait cynique by Roland Jaccard (Éditions Zulma March 2007)
La Troisième Balle by Leo Parutz (Éditions Zulma October 2014)
Design by David Pearson
(I also rather like the cover for Le Goût âpre des kakis by Zoyâ Pirzâd as well)
Sounds Good 101 Poems to be Heard edited by Christopher Reid; design by Eleanor Crow (Faber & Faber, March 2012)
Herbert Scarf’s Contributions to Economics, Game Theory and Operations Research Volumes 1-3 by Edited by Zaifu Yang (Palgrave Macmillan, September 2013)
The Here and Now by Ann Brashares; design by Natalie Sousa (Delacorte Press, April 2014)
Cataract City by Craig Davidson; design by Kapo Ng (Graywolf, July 2014)
The Last Days by Laurent Seksik; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press, Nov 2013)
Juxtapoz Psychedelic by Hannah Stouffer (Gingko Press February 2014)
( Unfortunately I’m not sure the image quite does justice to this cover…
Update:
A excellent addition to the list from UK designer Stuart Bache:
Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead; design by Stuart Bache (Blue Door May 2014)
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The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman; design by Pablo Delcán (Pantheon January 2014)
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi; design by Jo Thomson (Picador March 2014)
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi; design by Helen Yentus (Riverhead March 2014)
Chop Chop by Simon Wroe; design by Ben Wiseman (Penguin April 2014)
Danish Dynamite: The Story of Football’s Greatest Cult Team by Rob Smyth, Lars Eriksen & Mike Gibbons; design by Steve Leard (Bloomsbury April 2014)
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill; design by Gray318 (Granta March 2014)
The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf April 2014)
L’Exception by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir; design by David Pearson (Éditions Zulma April 2014)
David’s cover design for Rosa Candida by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir (Éditions Zulma March 2011) is also stunning.
Mistakes I Made at Work edited by Jessica Bacal; design by Jaya Miceli (Plume April 2014)
Quand j’étais l’Amérique by Elsa Pépin; design by David Drummond (Les Éditions XYZ April 2014)
Resurrection by Wolf Haas; design by Christopher Brian King (Melville House January 2014)
The cover for next book in the series, Come, Sweet Death! (Melville House July 2014), is great too.
There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll by Lisa Robinson; design by Alex Merto (Riverhead April 2014)
The Academy of British Cover Design held its inaugural awards ceremony last night. The competition was open to any cover produced for a book published between January 1 and December 31 2013 by a designers based in the UK. Here are the winning cover designs in each of the 10 categories:
Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn; design by Sharon King-Chai
Tinder by Sally Gardner; design by Laura Brett
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov; design by Clare Skeats
The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor; design by Emma Rogers
Tampa by Alissa Nutting; design by Gray318
Tequila Sunset by Sam Hawken; design by Tony Lyons at Estuary English
Football Type; design by Rick Banks at Face37
F. Scott Fitzgerald paperbacks; design by Sinem Erkas (pictured: Tender is the Night)
1984 by George Orwell; design by David Pearson
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell; design by Yeti McCaldin
I didn’t exactly know what to call this post, but ‘postscript’ seems appropriate.
Every time I post my annual list of favourite covers I immediately see (or remember) a dozen designs that would have been on the list (or would’ve been close) if I did it all over again. This is an attempt to collect a few of those covers from last year in one place. I guess you could call it a list of ‘honourable mentions,’ but that doesn’t seem quite right. Truthfully, it’s a collection of some of the covers that I saw for the the first time, or was gently reminded of, immediately after I posted my original list. It is, as much as anything else, an excuse to post more fantastic work from 2013.
I have been completely overwhelmed by the incredible response to this year’s covers post, and although I could probably do lists like this for the rest of 2014, I won’t. I will save my energy for next December. Happy New Year!
The Book of Immortality by Adam Leith Gollner; design by Tal Goretsky and Janet Hansen
The cover for Doctor Sleep by Stephen King, designed by Tal Goretsky and illustrated by Sean Freeman was also a cracker.
Constable Colgan’s Connect-O-Scope by Stevyn Colgan; illustration by Tom Gauld
The Dinner by Herman Koch; design by Christopher Brand
Christopher Brand did some great covers this year, especially for Crown. I like this one too.
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, translated by Clive James; design by Rodrigo Corral
Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell; design by David Pearson, illustration Paul Catherall
Yes, it was the year of David Pearson.
The Illicit Happiness of Other People by Manu Joseph; design by Jarrod Taylor
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht by S. S. Prawer; design by Matt Brand
I also really like Julia Soboleva‘s design for Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens and Ben Goodman‘s cover for Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari.
Roth Unbound by Claudia Roth Pierpont; design by Charlotte Strick, photograph Ken Sharp
Great photo. Great type. Charlotte produced some really lovely work for FSG in 2013.
The Shining by Roger Luckhurst; design by Mark Swan
I liked a lot of the BFI covers (obviously!), but Mark’s design for The Shining struck me as particularly clever. You can read about the design process for all the recent BFI Film Classics here.
Sunland by Don Waters; design by Kimberly Glyder
That Smell and Notes from Prison by Sonallah Ibrahim; design by Paul Sahre
Nicholas Blechman’s cover design list for the New York Times alerted me to this one.
Ulysses by James Joyce; design by Peter Mendelsund
Ok. I had seen this cover and didn’t forget about it either. It was on my list from the start and it got cut at the last minute. I’ve agonised about it since. Sorry Peter.
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