Books, Design and Culture
In his annual visit to Design Matters, Steven Heller talks to Debbie Millman about design journals, his new book 100 Classic Graphic Design Journals (co-authored with Jason Godfrey), and the future of design magazines in print:
You can also read a short interview with Heller about the book at publisher Laurence King’s website.
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You can be as happy or as miserable doing design as anything else you decide to do. It doesn’t matter what it is; it only matters that you commit to it. Do you care? Can you commit? That’s it. I don’t necessarily believe graphic design is any better or worse than other careers you can choose, but I do think the dedication has to be there. Yes, there is the dignity of work, but—and maybe this is just selfishness—whether you’re a plumber, a policeman, or an architect, if you don’t look forward to going to work in the morning, that’s really sad. That’s where a lot of people end up for various reasons.
Illustrator and designer Paul Sahre recently spoke to The Great Discontent about his work. It seemed like as good an excuse as any to post just a few of his book covers.
(NB: I really should add that cover for Satantango to this post)
Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich recently redesigned a series of classic William S. Burroughs novels for Grove Atlantic with rather splendid “acid colors and Blue Note jazz graphics”:
The books in the series include Junky, Naked Lunch, The Adding Machine, Nova Express, The Ticket That Exploded, and, published this month, The Soft Machine.
Comments closedAnother month, another selection of beautiful book covers…
The Axeman’s Jazz by Ray Celestin; design by Jo Thomson (Mantle May 2014)
The Bees by Laline Paull; design by Steve Attardo (Ecco May 2014)
Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige; design by Ray Shapell (HarperCollins April 2014)
Enlightenment 2.0 by Joseph Heath; design by David A. Gee (HarperCollins April 2014)
Goodbye To All That by Robert Graves; design by Matthew Young (Penguin May 2014)
Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors; design by Carol Hayes (Graywolf February 2014)
Lunch at the Shop: The Art and Practice of the Midday Meal by Peter Miller; design by John Gall (Abrams April 2014)
The One and Only by Emily Giffin; design by Jennifer Heuer (Ballantine May 2014)
The Other Language by Francesca Marciano; design by Ben Wiseman (Pantheon April 2014)
Raising Expectations (and Raising Hell) by Jane McAlevey; design by Gray318 (Verso Books May 2014)
Vanishing by Gerard Woodward; design by Jamie Keenan (Picador UK March 2014)
Young Skins: Stories by Colin Barrett; design by James Paul Jones (Jonathan Cape March 2014)
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This made a couple of people in my Twitter feed very, very happy today — author Nicholson Baker talking about writing, design and the influence of his parents, who both studied at Parsons School of Design in New York, at Lingua Franca: The 2014 D-Crit Conference at the School of Visual Arts last week:
As Michael Bierut noted on Twitter, Nicholson Baker’s father was a graphic designer who worked for the great Erik Nitsche! Who knew?
(via @acejet170)
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Catherine D’Amours of Pointbarre Collective recently got in touch to tell me about NOVA, a series of ten novellas she designed to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Montreal-based publisher Le Quartanier. Opting for a minimalistic grid and a sober sans-serif font, Catherine designed ten illustrations and typographical stamps for the covers and, as you can see, the results are quite beautiful.
A copy of 100 Classic Graphic Design Journals by Steven Heller and Jason Godfrey just landed on my desk. The book will be in stores in the US and Canada later this month, and it looks fantastic:
It doesn’t seem that long since I talked to Jason Godfrey about his previous book Bibliographic: 100 Classic Graphic Design Books, but apparently it was four years ago!
(100 Classic Graphic Design Journals and Bibliographic are published by Laurence King whose books are distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books)
Comments closedThis is my last post on book covers and triangles — for the time being at least. I hope you’ve enjoyed this three-sided, three-post design diversion (you can see the previous posts here and here):
The Adjacent by Christopher Priest; design by Martin Stiff, Amazing15 (Titan Books April 2014) 1
The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace; design by Linda Huang (Pantheon February 2014)
The Books of My Lives by Aleksandar Hemon; design by Jonathan Pelham (Picador February 2014)
A Box of Birds by Charles Fernyhough; design by Dan Mogford (Unbound May 2013)
Close to the Machine by Ellen Ullman; design by Clare Skeats (Pushkin Press March 2013)
Connectome by Sebastian Seung; design by Matthew Young (Penguin June 2013)
Contradance by John Peck; design by Natalie F. Smith (University of Chicago Press October 2011)
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky; design by Peter Mendelsund (Vintage August 2004)
Gun Dealers’ Daughter by Gina Apostol; design by Jaya Miceli (W. W. Norton August 2012)
November 1916 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux August 2014)
August 1914 by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux August 2014)
Stories and Prose Poems by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Farrar, Straus & Giroux November 2014)
Design by Oliver Munday
The Scandal of Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton; design by Matthew Young (Penguin
Snowdrops by A. D. Miller; design by Emily Mahon (Doubleday February 2011)
The Time Machine by H. G. Wells; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin May 2012)
We Are Animals by Justin Torres; design by Gray318 (Granta March 2012)
Your Face in Mine by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Riverhead August 2014)
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In what is possibly his last interview as Creative Director of Bloomberg Businessweek, Richard Turley talks to Gestalten.tv about his work, and the magazine he has helped shape for last 4 years:
In April, Turley announced that he was leaving the magazine to join MTV.
Comments closedTo paraphrase The Smiths circa 1987, I may have started something I can’t finish with this triangles on book covers thing. Typical me. This is my second post on the topic, and there is one more in the works, but then I think I will be done. Enjoy…
Antifragile by Nassim Nicolas Taleb (Penguin hardcover November 2012)
Antifragile by Nassim Nicolas Taleb (Penguin paperback November 2013)
Design by Jim Stoddart
The Castle by Franz Kafka; design by Peter Mendelsund (Schocken 2011)
The Dark Winter by David Mark; design by Jamie Keenan (Blue Rider Press October 2012)
Dubliners by James Joyce; artwork Apfel Zet (Penguin April 2012)
Generation A by Douglas Coupland; design by Jennifer Heuer (Simon & Schuster June 2010)
The Night Before Christmas Nikolai Gogol (New Directions Oct 2011)
Design by Rodrigo Corral
Persona Non-Grata by Tom Flanagan; design by Scott Richardson (Random House April 2014)
Tenth of December by George Saunders; design by Chelsea Cardinal (Random House August 2013)
Three War Stories by David Mamet; design by Alex Camlin (Argo-Navis November 2013)
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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Available in the UK this month, Vintage Classics has released a series of Bernard Malamud novels with beautiful new covers designed in-house by Matt Broughton, with additional title type by Ruth Rowland.
The Vintage Classics series includes Pictures of Fidelman, The Natural, The Magic Barrel, The Tenants, and Dubin’s Lives.
In the US, art director Charlotte Strick and typographer Jude Landry have also redesigned the Farrar, Straus & Giroux editions of Bernard Malamud’s novels.
At FSG’s Work in Progress blog, Charlotte and Jude talk about their work on the new covers.
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