I’m not sure anyone is paying too much attention to book design this week, but if you’re looking for a few minutes diversion from the awfulness of almost everything, here’s this month’s selection of quirky, beautiful, and otherwise interesting book covers…
The Best American Comics 2016 edited by Roz Chast; illustration by Marc Bell; design by Christopher Moisan (Mariner / October 2016)
Best American Nonrequired Reading 2016 edited by Rache Kushner; illustration and lettering by Jillian Tamaki; design by Mark Robinson (Mariner / October 2016)
The latest additions to Penguin’s ‘Essentials’ series, released this month, have some rather splendid new covers, including Jon Gray‘s wonderful design for Embers by Sandor Márai, Julian House’s typographic design (with echoes of Robert Brownjohn) for The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and David Foldvari‘s illustrated design for How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John LeCarre; design Julian House (Penguin / 2016)
How Many Miles to Babylon by Jennifer Johnston; design David Foldvari (Penguin / 2016)
You can see more of the new Penguin Essentials covers, and read about the design process, at Design Week.
It’s interesting to compare/contrast this new cover for the UK paperback with the covers of the UK hardcover, designed by Suzanne Dean, and the US hardcover, designed by Rodrigo Corral and Adalis Martinez:
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; design by Suzanne Dean (William Heinemann / September 2015)
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; design by Rodrigo Corral and Adalis Martinez (Riverhead / September 2015 )
It’s also interesting to see US hardcover next to the purely typographic cover from Australia designed by Laura Thomas, and the racier, retro Penguin UK cover designed by Richard Bravery:
Design by Laura Thomas (Scribe / 2016)
Hot Little Hands by Abigail Ulman; design by Richard Bravery (Penguin UK / June 2016)
This struck me as something as quite a bold change of direction for the covers of Jesse Ball’s novels, which have often been quite minimal and typographic. It feel quite different to the recent paperback edition of A Cure for Suicide by Jesse Ball, designed by Helen Yentus and Jason Booher (Vintage / June 2016), for example:
Undying by Michel Faber; design by Rafi Romaya; art by Yehrin Tong (Canongate / July 2016)
The paperback of Michel Faber’s Some Rain Must Fallis out this month too. The cover is another Rafi Romaya / Yehrin Tong collaboration:
Some Rain Must Fall and Other Stories by Michel Faber; design by Rafi Romaya; art by Yehrin Tong (Canongate / July 2016)
Undying by Michel Faber; design by Rafi Romaya; art by Yehrin Tong (Canongate / July 2016)
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler; design by Kris Potter (Hogarth / June 2016)
As I noted on Twitter earlier this week, this combination of type and overlapping floral image — lovely as it is — is becoming a bit of a thing…
Boy Erased by Garrard Conley; design Rachel Willey (Riverhead / May 2016)
If anyone has a good name (and/or pithy description) for this trend let me know. In the meantime, designer Dan Blackman pointed me to his beautiful poster designs for DelVal College from 2011, which are early examples of this idea…
ABCD tends to recognise and reward brave, striking and fresh approaches, rather than more “conventional” cover aesthetics. I ask the pair whether they feel designers have more freedom these days; whether, as books become imbibed with more longevity and are seen as less disposable, publishers are more amenable to the idea of cover art as art, rather than as a marketing tool. They are reticent; Keenan responds: “It’s strange, because when you do see a weirdo cover – for a reason, not just for the sake of it – quite often they are really successful. If you think of a book as an actual package and compare that to other forms of packaging, its really old-fashioned in a lot of ways.
“Imagine a poster for, say, the next iPhone, and it has a quote on it like you’d see on a book cover – ‘this is the best phone I have ever had!’ – you just think, this is so old-fashioned, that kind of endorsement idea. On a book cover it’s the norm. A lot of advertising you see, you aren’t really sure what it’s for but it draws you in, whereas a lot of book covers are really overt – they tell you exactly what the book is about. We’re supposedly becoming more and more visually literate, but book covers are still, in some ways, quite naïve.”
Gray concurs: “It feels like a real nervous habit, the quote on the front. Is that really helping a book to be sold? Can [shoppers] not just read that on the back and get the same idea…on the front, is it really making someone think: ‘aha!’?”
“The greatest and the worst thing about book cover design is that no one really knows if it’s incredibly powerful or a complete waste of time,” Keenan says. “Quite often when you get a brief, you’ll be sent other covers that the [client] likes and some of them will look absolutely terrible…but it was a bestselling book! So that automatically becomes, in their eyes, a sort of ‘good cover’.”
As my 2014 post was such a hit, here is my second annual look at the past year’s young adult book covers. This isn’t my speciality, so this list is a lot more of a crowd-sourced effort than my very personal adult list. A special thank you to all the designers who have made suggestions in the past couple of weeks — you know who you are! — and if there are any burning omissions, please let me know in the comments!
Birdy by Jess Vallance; design by Jet Purdie (Hot Key Books / July 2015)
This lung-tree illustration is just incredible, but it is worth noting that this UK cover is actually an adaptation of the killed US cover (HarperCollins).
(This probably needs to be seen in person as the blue is, I believe, a metallic finish, and the back cover is the image reversed in a lovely orange-red).
Back in 2014, there were signs that book cover design was maybe, just maybe, having a moment. Suzanne Dean was on the BBC. Peter Mendelsund was on… well, everything. But if 2015 has felt a little quiet by comparison, there were still plenty of reasons to be cheerful. This year’s list includes over 120 covers by 60 designers, and there is little doubt in my mind that this really is a golden time for book design.
Thank you to all the art directors, designers, and publicists who have supported the blog this year, and who make posts like this possible. Thanks too, to my local bookstore TYPE for letting me browse their shelves.
A Bad Character by Deepti Kapoor; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / January 2015)Voices in the Night by Steven Millhauser; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / April 2015)Empire of the Senses by Alexis Landau; design by Janet Hansen (Pantheon / March 2015)
(Oliver Munday’s cover design for the US edition of the Book of Numbers published by Random House is also great.)
Also designed by Suzanne Dean:
Boo by Neil Smith; design Suzanne Dean; illustration by Stephanie von Reiswitz (William Heinemann / May 2015)Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; design by Suzanne Dean (William Heinemann / September 2015)Satin Island by Tom McCarthy; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / March 2015)
Consumed by David Cronenberg; design by David A. Gee (Penguin Canada / September 2015)Why the World Does Not Exist by Markus Gabriel; design by David Gee (Polity / June 2015)Economics After Capitalism by Derek Wall; design by David A. Gee (Pluto Press / July 2015)
Unabrow by Una Lamarche; design by Zoe Norvell (Plume / March 2015)Anything You Want by Derek Sivers; design by Zoe Norvell (Portfolio / September 2015)
Karate Chop by Dorthe Nors; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press / February 2015)Baddeley Brothers by The Gentle Author; design David Pearson (October 2015)Shooting Stars by Stefan Zweig; design by David Pearson (Pushkin Press / February 2015)
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma; design by Gray318 (Pushkin Press / February 2015)Making Nice by Matt Sumell; design by Gray318 (Henry Holt & Co. / February 2015)Laurus by Eugene Vodolazkin; design Gray318 (Oneworld / October 2015)
Terrified by Christopher A. Bail; design by Amanda Weiss (Princeton University Press / January 2015)The Little Big Number by Dirk Philipsen; design by Amanda Weiss ( Princeton University Press / June 2015)
The Fox and the Star, written, illustrated and designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Particular Books / August 2015)
Also designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith:
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Allen Lane / September 2015)Seneca: A Life by Emily Wilson; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Allen Lane / March 2015)
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / February 2015)New American Stories edited by Ben Marcus; design by Peter Mendelsund (Vintage / July 2015)Building Art: The Life and Work of Frank Gehry by Paul Goldberger; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / September 2015)
World on a Plate by Mina Holland; design by Nick Misani (Penguin / May 2015)
KL by Nikolaus Wachsmann; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / April 2015)
Also designed by Alex Merto:
Earth by Hubert Krivine; design by Alex Merto (Verso Books / April 2015)The Art of the Publisher by Roberto Calasso; design by Alex Merto (FSG / November 2015)Written in the Blood by Stephen Lloyd Jones; design by Alex Merto (Mulholland Books / May 2015)
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin; design by Justine Anweiler; photography Jonathan Simpson (Picador UK / September 2015)
Also designed by Justine Anweiler:
All This Has Nothing To Do With Me; design by Justine Anweiler; illustration Daphne van den HeuvelDon’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller; design by Justine Anweiler (Picador / January 2015)
Negroland by Margo Jefferson; design by Oliver Munday (Pantheon / September 2015)American Warlord by Johnny Dwyer; design by Oliver Munday (Knopf / April 2015)The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi; design by Oliver Munday (Knopf / May 2015)
Barbara the Slut by Lauren Holmes; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / August 2015)Discontent and its Civilizations by Mohsin Hamid; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / February 2015)Witches of America by Alex Mar; design by Rachel Willey (Sarah Crichton Books / Ocotber 2015)
Munich Airport by Greg Baxter; design by Anne Twomey (Twelve Books / January 2015)
This is actually a rather special lenticular cover that imitates the effect of flashing neon.
Also from Rodrigo Corral:
Home is Burning by Dan Marshall; design by Rodrigo Corral (Flatiron / October 2015)Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; design by Rodrigo Corral and Adalis Martinez (Riverhead / September 2015 )
Of Beards and Men by Christopher Oldstone-Moore; design Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago Press / December 2015)
The Only Street in Paris by Elaine Schiolino; design by Strick&Williams (W.W. Norton / November 2015)
Also from Strick&Williams:
Safekeeping by Jessamyn Hope; design by Strick&Williams (Fig Tree / June 2015)Among the Ten Thousand Things by Julia Pierpoint; design by Strick&Williams (Random House / July 2015)
Ohey! by Darby Larson; design by Alban Fischer (CCM / May 2015)American Meteor by Norman Lock; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / June 2015)Every Living One by Nathan Haukes; design by Alban Fischer (Horse Less Press / March 2015)
Paulina and Fran by Rachel B. Glaser; illustration Kaethe Butcher; typography Nina LoSchiavo (Harper Perennial / September 2015)
Unbuttoning America by Ardis Cameron; design by Kimberly Glyder; illustration by Al Moore (Cornell University Press / May 2015)Worthy by Denice Turner; design by Kimberly Glyder (University of Nevada Press / April 2015)
A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab; design by Will Staehle (Tor / February 2015)I Am Radar by Reif Larsen; design by Will Staehle (Penguin / February 2015)
Pretty Is by Maggie Mitchell; design by Lucy Kim (Henry Holt / July 2015)
Real Life Rock by Greil Marcus; design by Rich Black (Yale University Press / October 2015)
No Such Thing as a Free Gift by Linsey McGoey; design by James Paul Jones (Verso / October 2015)How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt; design by James Paul Jones (The Bodley Head / June 2015)The Rise of the Novel by Ian Watt; design by James Paul Jones (Vintage / October 2015)
The Sphinx by Anne Garréta; design by Anna Zylicz (Deep Vellum / May 2015)
Also designed by Anna Zylicz:
The Mountain and the Wall by Alisa Ganieva; design by Anna Zylicz (Deep Vellum / June 2015)The Indian by Jón Gnarr ; design by Anna Zylicz (Deep Vellum / May 2015)
Trust Me, PR is Dead by Robert Phillips; design by Jamie Keenan (Unbound / June 2015)Wake Up, Sir! by Jonathan Ames; design by Jamie Keenan (Pushkin Press / May 2015)
Trans by Juliet Jacques; Design and illustration by Joanna Walsh (Verso / September 2015)
Wall Flower by Rita Kuczynski; design by David Drummond (University of Toronto Press / August 2015)Young Babylon by Lu Nei; design by David Drummond (AmazonCrossing / September 2015)
Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / February 2015)Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann; design by Greg Heinimann; photograph by Julio Gamboa (Random House / October 2015)
Souffles-Anfas edited by Olivia C. Harrison and Teresa Villa-Ignacio; design Anne Jordan and Mitch Goldstein (Stanford University Press / November 2015)Capitalism in the Web of Life by Jason W. Moore; design by Anne Jordan and Mitch Goldstein (Verso / August 2015)
A little bit later than scheduled, here is my October selection of book covers. There are three from Verso, and two by James Paul Jones, but I think it’s still another month of interesting, diverse, and eclectic work. I hope you agree…
(I was raving about this cover on Twitter no so long ago. It really needs to be seen in person because the image doesn’t do it justice at all. The finish on the jacket is lovely and gives the design a beautiful nuance and subtlety)
In response to the refugee crisis currently unfolding in Europe, designer and illustrator Nina Tara has set up Art Works For Aid.
Nina is asking artists, illustrators, designers and photographers to donate small works of art to be sold at auction to raise funds for organizations such as Human Relief Foundation helping refugees.
If you would like to help by buying an artwork, the first AforA auction is today. If you’re a ‘creative’ and you would like to donate a work of art just send an email to Nina.
You can find more information about the initiative on the AforA blog, and see images of some of the work that has already been donated on the AforA Facebook page.
It’s finally summer, and because July is traditionally something of a quiet month in publishing, I’m taking the opportunity to catch up on a few covers that I missed earlier in the year…
