In a video for Design Within Reach, Steve Kroeter, the president of Archetype Associates and founder and editor in chief of Designers and Books, talks about the books that inspired him:
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Published November 19, 2013
Tag: design
Published November 11, 2013
Jonathan Meades: ‘I find everything fascinating and that is a gift’
English author, broadcaster and architecture critic Jonathan Meades, who apparently (and somewhat enviably!) lives in Le Corbusier’s Cité Radieuse in Marseille, interviewed by Rachel Cooke for The Observer:
“I love looking at buildings. I’ve never been able to get from A to B without diverting because I am extremely interested in architecture. But that came first of all from the need to alleviate boredom when I was out with my father as a boy [Meades’s father was a travelling biscuit salesman who used to leave his son to occupy himself in the towns in his “area”, while he went off to meet his grocer customers]. So much that I do is to alleviate boredom… Buildings are part of a much greater thing, that’s what fascinates me: the totality of things. I find everything fascinating and that is a gift. It’s that Flaubertian thing: everything looks fantastic if you look at it long enough. That chimes with me entirely.”
And if you haven’t read it previously, Owen Hatherley’s review in the London Review of Books of Museum Without Walls, Jonathan Meades most recent book, is well worth a visit:
Comments closedAbove all, Meades is a scourge of all forms of belief, faith and ideology, of everything that he regards as childish and credulous – yet the architecture that shakes him most is created by people crazed with dogmatism and righteous fervour. Whether or not he is aware of the contradiction, it charges his prose as he grapples with his own horror and fascination: at Victoriana, at the Arts and Crafts movement, at modernism, at Stalinist architecture – most of which he loves, and most of which are based on values, theories and opinions he finds either silly or repugnant.
Published September 6, 2013
Close Not Touching: Penguin Designer Gerald Cinamon
Close Not Touching is a beautiful short film by DILLONROSE.COM about the work of designer and typographer Gerald Cinamon.
Born in Boston in 1930, Cinamon moved to England in 1960, eventually becoming chief designer at Penguin Books. Strongly influenced by Swiss design, Cinamon utilized a combination of bold colour, clean lines and sans serif typography that was unique in British book design at the time. Now an influence on a new generation of type-inspired designers, the film includes a conversation between Cinamon and David Pearson:
An exhibition of Cinamon’s work, Gerald Cinamon: Collected Work Since 1958, opened at the ICA in London this week, and new book Graphic Design Gerald Cinamon, designed by Danny McNeil at SEA design, is available here.
Although a live appearance by Cinamon has had to be cancelled, Pearson will be discussing text design at Penguin at the institute on September 13.
A full-length feature documentary about Cinamon by DILLONROSE.COM will be available to download from iTunes in February 2014.
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Published August 27, 2013
Stories from the Fold
If you are going to be in London on September 25th, Stories from the Fold, a mini-conference about book design at the St. Bride Library looks terribly interesting. Curated by designer Becky Chilcott, speakers include Jon Gray (AKA Gray318), Clare Skeats, and host of others.
Sounds like a great way to spend an evening to me.
Tickets are £25.00 (£20.00 for students).
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Published August 10, 2013
Toytown: Architecture on the Carpet
The Financial Times architecture correspondent Edwin Heath reviews Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings by Brenda and Robert Vale, which argues that construction toys such as Lego and Meccano not only reflect the architecture of the real world, but influence the way individual architects design:
Construction toys have always been about what adults would like to play with themselves. Or what they feel their children should be playing with. They are worthy. But somehow Lego has managed the difficult feat of appearing playful, of being versatile and not being overly didactic. If English construction toys reflect a residual, Pooterish suburbanism, Lego, whose first plastic bricks appeared in 1947, is liberated Danish pop art modernism, of the same world as Verner Panton’s fiercely colourful plastic chairs and Claes Oldenburg’s confusion of scales. It is the most urban of the toys, encouraging the building of whole cities.
The company recently brought out a series of kits to make modernist icons by Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe and, of course, Frank Lloyd Wright. They are clearly aimed at adults, the kind of gift which confers on the giver culture and playfulness. In their specificity (designed for only one possible outcome), they are exactly what Fröbel and Rudolf Steiner were set against, the latter, one of the most influential of play theorists, being convinced that only the vaguest sense of reality should be designed into a toy so that as much room is left for the imagination as possible. These are toys emulating an already built reality.
It’s a fascinating idea, but I wonder if the younger generation of architects are more influenced by video games than toys?
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Published July 22, 2013
50 Canadian Book Cover Designs
Lists are always problematic, but CBC Books longlist of Canada’s Most Iconic Book Covers seems strangely underwhelming somehow. Setting aside what counts as ‘Canadian’ (some of the books on the list were not designed by Canadians for example), ‘iconic’ covers are inevitably those that have stuck around and we are most familiar with, not necessarily those that are well designed or particularly interesting to look at. Needless to say, the list says more about our fondness for certain books and authors than about the current state of Canadian book cover design. Perhaps it isn’t really fair to judge the CBC’s contest this way, but it makes the list less interesting than it might otherwise have been (to me, at least).
That said, I am terrible, no good Canadian. 10 years and one Canadian passport later, I still feel like the immigrant I am. It’s not that I feel particularly British any more (if I ever did), it’s more like I haven’t finished unpacking yet (which might literally be true come to think of it)! In nearly five years of blogging I haven’t dedicated a single post to Canadian book design. To remedy to that, below are 50 (FIFTY!) recent book covers designed in Canada. Some of them are well-known, some of them are award-winners, some of them were recommended, some I’ve posted before, and some are just personal favourites. I can’t say they’re ‘iconic’ but they are all great covers. Enjoy. (Pictured above: The Bedside Book of Beasts by Graeme Gibson; design by Scott Richardson; published by Doubleday Canada).
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Published July 12, 2013
Ersnt Reichl: Wide Awake Typographer
Elizabeth Hawes, Fashion is Spinach (Random House, 1938; AIGA 50 Books 1939)
At Design Observer, design historian Martha Scotford discusses the work of German-American book designer Ernst Reichl:
Midway in his career, Reichl began to reflect on many of the books he designed in written comments; he spent more time on this during the period 1977-1978, shortly before his death in 1980. In the end, there were approximately 550 3 x 5 inch index cards on which he hand-wrote his thoughts about selected books he designed. In lively prose Reichl comments on myriad elements of book design and details of book production, several for each book. He covers typography, binding design and jackets, illustration, publishers, the publishing industry in New York, design colleagues (revered and annoying), production triumphs and problems, how well the book sold, his opinion of the book and his philosophy of book design as applied to that title. He also critiques his own work, sometimes in the moment, sometimes from the perspective of more time and experience. These comments, often sharp and humorous, are highly entertaining and informative. I know of no other book designer who has done this so extensively.
Reichl’s comments about book design have now been transcribed from the cards and accompany a selection of over 100 examples of his work in an exhibition curated by Scotford, ‘Ernst Reichl: Wide Awake Typographer,’ currently on display at Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library in New York until September 13, 2013.
On a related note, Scotford has previously written about the US publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses and the role of Ernst Reichl, who designed the typographic cover for Random House.
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Published June 25, 2013
Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet
In this short film, designer Keith Lovegrove discusses his book Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet and how the culture of air travel has developed from the 1920s:
(disclosure: Airline: Style at 30,000 Feet is published by Laurence King and distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books)
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Published June 21, 2013
More New and Recent Book Covers of Note
So is this a thing now? I don’t know. You folks seem to like these posts, so maybe… (but probably not because a lot of designers I really like just don’t updated their portfolios that often—you know who you are… cold, hard, stare)…
Here are half-a-dozen covers that have caught my eye recently:
Carnival by Rawi Hage; design by Richard Bravery
I’ll Seize the Day Tomorrow by Jonathan Goldstein; design by Michel Vrana (I think this is actually from last year, but I saw it recently and I really like it. If I’d been paying better attention, it might well have made my 2012 list—maybe next to this!).
The Towers of Trebizond by Rose Macaulay; design by Charlotte Strick (also not that recent, but charlotte talks about her design process here).
Idiopathy by Sam Byers; design by Joanna Neborksy (Jonathan Gibbs wrote about this cover in his regular book design column for The Independent a couple of months ago, and funnily enough I believe the aforementioned Charlotte Strick was the AD on this)
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon; design by Evan Gaffney (this on the other hand is not out until September!)
The Hamlet Doctrine by Simon Critchley; design by David A. Gee (also out in September)
Have a great weekend!
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Published June 18, 2013
Ryu Murakami Cover Designs by David Pearson
I’ve already posted a couple of David Pearson‘s cover designs for the new Pushkin Press editions of Ryu Murakami’s novels, so I thought I might as well put them all in one place:
Popular Hits of the Showa Era by Ryu Murakami; design by David Pearson
Sixty-Nine by Ryu Murakami; design by David Pearson
From the Fatherland, with Love by Ryu Murakami; design by David Pearson
Coin Locker Babies by Ryu Murakami; design by David Pearson
Published June 7, 2013
New Book Covers by Jacob Covey and Others
Laura Warholic by Alexander Theroux; design by Jacob Covey
In Case We Die by Danny Bland; design by Jacob Covey
The Devil’s Workshop by Jáchym Topol; translated by Alex Zucker; Design by Telegramme Studio
Scatter, Adapt, and Remember by Annalee Newitz; design by Emily Mahon, illustration by Neil Webb
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; Design by Abby Weintraub
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Published May 29, 2013
Inside Random House: “The Art of Cover Design”
Part a series of videos about the workings of Random House, The Art of Cover Design features interviews with an impressive roster of designers: Marysarah Quinn, Robbin Schiff, Chip Kidd, Peter Mendelsund and Christopher Brand…