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Tag: illustration

Published June 17, 2015

Rise of the Robots

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Writing at the MIT Technology Review, David Rotman looks at the impact of automation and digital technology on jobs with reference to a number of recent books related to the subject including Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future by Martin Ford, The Great Divide by Joseph Stiglitz, and The Second Machine Age by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee. But if you find that all too depressing to contemplate — and who doesn’t? — you can at least enjoy the wonderful Joost Swarte illustrations that accompany article …

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Published May 3, 2015

Samplerman

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Thanks to David Gee (and others), who alerted me to the extraordinary Samplerman comics this week.

You can read an interview from earlier this year with Yvan Guillo, the French cartoonist and designer behind Samplerman, at It’s Nice That:

I’ve always downloaded tonnes of scans of American comics, from the golden age to the bronze age. I could scan the ones I have but I’ve done it only once or twice. I don’t really read the stories, but I love how they look: the cheap paper, the bright primary colours, the screen-tone, the drawings, the conventional representation of landscapes, the simplicity of the lines. I have to make a choice among this mountain of graphic elements. I pick what I like: face, hand, clothes, tree, car, text balloon etc. and start to (digitally) cut them out. At the same time I start to place the elements on one or several pages made of blank comic panels. Some elements are duplicated, rotated, arbitrarily cut in half, reduplicated and mirrored. It’s a mix of kaleidoscope and collage; I add, I move, I replace until I feel it’s done. At the end it has to remain visually surprising and dynamic.

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Bonkers.

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Published April 23, 2015

Chris Ware: Beyond the Cover

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Juxtapoz contributing editor Kristin Farr talks to Chris Ware, the magazine’s May 2015 cover artist, for their Beyond the Cover site:

Beyond setting a very specific mood, tone or feeling of a time of day or era, color in my stuff sometimes acts as a separate, countervailing story, connecting elements and images in ways that I sometimes hadn’t even predicted when I was simply drawing the page, reflecting more the way we see the world than how we define it. At the same time, the page compositions are also an attempt to get a glimpse at the way we edit, remember, and clean up our own experiences into “stories”…

…Comics best approximate how I remember and think about the world and how I also think many other people do; I believe even Nabokov at some point expressed frustration at not being able to induce a non-verbal image-based sort of page-memory (but he still did it better than anyone, except Joyce). I find myself thinking about my stories at odd times during the day, almost as if they’re an alternate reality; I can’t liken the experience to anything other than the psychosis of false or self-induced memories. Then again, any memories are always going to have some falseness, all of which add up to a fairly unreliable sense of one’s life and experience.

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Published April 20, 2015

Salman Rushdie and Adult-YA Crossovers

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The cover of the US edition of Salman Rushdie’s first adult novel in seven years. Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (Random House, September 2015), was revealed on Buzzfeed last week.1 While the cover itself is perfectly fine, the most remarkable thing about it is how much it looks like a novel for young adults.

I was immediately reminded of the cover of The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, designed by Rodrigo Corral (Penguin 2012)…

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…and the lovely hand-lettered YA covers of Australian designer and illustrator Allison Colpoys:

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For the Forest of a Bird by Sue Saliba; design by Allison Colpoys (Penguin / January 2015)
Something in the World Called Love by Sue Saliba; design by Allison Colpoys (Penguin / August 2008)

After some further thought, however, I realised that it is even more reminiscent of the cover for the novel Waiting for Doggo by Mark B. Mills, designed by Yeti Lambregts (Headline, November 2014), which made me wonder if, perhaps, we are starting to see more adult covers that look like YA?

Since the success of Harry Potter, publishers have known that adults read ‘children’s books’ for pleasure, and they will often try to appeal these to older readers with more mature covers. On Twitter last week, American YA cover designer Erin Fitzsimmons (interviewed on the blog here), identified this as ‘crossover appeal.’ But crossover appeal can go both ways, and it seems that adult covers are being designed to reach the widest possible audience too.

This trend is more pronounced in the UK where bright and whimsical illustrated covers are common for commercial fiction. The vibrant cover of the UK edition of Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (and the accompanying backlist) — beautifully illustrated by Sroop Sunar and unveiled today — is a perfect example:

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According to CMYK, the Vintage Books design blog, Sunar was inspired by printed ephemera found in India around the time of Independence, and the brightly coloured covers would work equally well for YA as for adult fiction:

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US publishers have (I think) been slower to market adult fiction to younger readers in this way. Although hand-lettering has become very common on US covers for a while now, photographic images still dominate commercial fiction covers. Compare, for example, the UK cover of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, illustrated by Nathan Burton (left), with US edition designed by Abby Weintraub (on the right):

From my own experience, I can also think of at least one quirky illustrated cover — for an upcoming literary novel that the publisher has very high hopes for — that was killed at the last minute in favour of a more traditional photographic one. The original design could easily have been for a gothic Young Adult fantasy. The new cover, much less ambiguous, is clearly intended for adult book clubs.

Adam by Ariel Schrag; design by Christopher Moisan (Mariner / June 2014)
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan; design by Joan Wong (Anchor / May 2014)
How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer; design by Olga Grlic (St. Martin’s Press / July 2014)

Even so, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights and a few other recent covers suggest that US publishers are willing to experiment, and as audiences for YA and adult fiction become harder to differentiate, we will only see more covers that blur those lines.

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Published April 16, 2015

Françoise Mouly on Voice

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Grace Bello interviews the always interesting Françoise Mouly, art director of The New Yorker and founder of Toon Books, for Guernica:

I know what I respond to is a voice. A voice is not just a stylistic thing, but it means someone who really has something to say. I think a lot of what I get from books—whether they be books of comics or books of literature—is a window into somebody’s mind and their way of thinking. I love it when it’s so specific. It’s a new way to look at the world. It’s as if I could get in and see it through their eyes. It also reaches a level of universality because, somehow, I can recognize some of my feelings in seeing somebody who is actually expressing their own inner reality. Even though Flaubert has not been in Madame Bovary’s skin, you do get a sense of what it’s like to be that person. It’s a kind of empathic response when you’re reading it.

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Published March 10, 2015

Ladybird: Designed for Small, Tiny Hands

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As previously mentioned, Ladybird By Design is an exhibition of over 200 of original book illustrations from the late 1950s to early 1970s currently on display at the De La Warr Pavilion in Bexhill on Sea.

In this short film, Lawrence Zeegen, curator of the exhibition and author of the accompanying book, and Jenny Pearce, daughter of former Ladybird editorial director Douglas Keen, talk about the history of Ladybird and what made the books so special:

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Published February 10, 2015

All Heart

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, I thought I would share a few book covers that use hearts as part of their design…

The Gift by Lewis Hyde; design by Angus Hyland (Canongate / 2007)
Perforated Heart by Eric Bogosian; design by Jason Heuer (Simon & Schuster / May 2009)
The Virgin of the Seven Daggers by Vernon Lee; design by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin / October 2008)

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All About Love by Lisa Appignanesi; design by Jamie Keenan (W. W. Norton / July 2011)

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Alternatives to Sex by Stephen McCauley; design by David Ter-Avanesyan (Simon & Schuster / March 2006)

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American Supernatural Tales edited by S. T. Joshi ; design by Paul Buckley (Penguin / October 2013)

Amy-and-Matthew
Amy and Matthew by Cammie McGovern; design by Sharon King-Chai (Macmillan Children’s Books / March 2014)

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The Campus Trilogy by David Lodge; design by Heads of State (Penguin / October 2011)

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Cold Hands, Warm Heart by Jill Wolfson; design by Jack Noel (Walker Books / November 2011 )

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Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller; design by Lynn Buckley (New Harvest / July 2013)

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Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert; design by Helen Crawford-White; illustration by Illustration Yulia Brodskaya (Bloomsbury / January 2011)

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Don’t You Forget About Me by Jancee Dunn; design by Catherine Casalino (Villard Books / July 2008)

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Eat My Heart Out by Zoe Pilger; design by Rose Stallard (Serpents Tail / January 2014)

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The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / April 2014)

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Fraught Intimacies by Nathan Rambukkana; design by David Drummond (UBC Press / May 2015)

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The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank; cover art by Lina Stigsson (Penguin / July 2011)

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Gloss by Marilyn Kaye; design by Rachel Vale (Macmillan Children’s Books / June 2013 )

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Happy are the Happy by Yesmina Reza; design by Suzanne Dean (Harvill Secker / July 2014)

The recently released US edition of Happy are the Happy published by Other Press, and designed by Kathleen DiGrado, also features a heart on the cover (if you know who the designer is, please let me know):

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Heart of the City by Ariel Sabar; design by Henry Sene Yee (Da Capo / January 2011)

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Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad; design by Paul Buckley; art by Mike Mignola (Penguin / August 2012)

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How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive by Christopher Boucher; design by Christopher Brian King (Melville House / September 2011)

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How to Love by Katie Cotugno; design by Alison Klapthor; cover art by Alison Carmichael (Balzer + Bray / October 2013)

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The Hundred Hearts by William Kowalski; design by Michel Vrana (Thomas Allen / May 2013)

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In Case of Emergency by Courtney Moreno; design by Sunra Thompson (McSweeney’s / September 2014)

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In Case We Die by Danny Bland; design by Jacob Covey (Fantagraphics / September 2013)

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Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story by Mac McClelland; design by Keith Hayes (Flatiron Books / February 2014)

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Learning to Love Form 1040 by Lawrence Zelenak; design by Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago Press / April 2013 )

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Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov; design by Michael Bierut (Lolita Book Cover Project / 2013)

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Love Poems by Bertolt Brecht; translated by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn; design by Jennifer Heuer (W. W. Norton / December 2014)

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The Lover’s Dictionary by David Levithan; design by Jennifer Carrow (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2011)

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Love’s Winning Plays by Inman Majors; design by Eric White (W. W. Norton / July 2013)

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The Man Who Touched His Own Heart by Rob Dunn; design by Ploy Siripant (Little, Brown & Co. / February 2015)

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The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides; design by Jo Walker (Fourth Estate / April 2012)

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The Messenger by Markus Zusak; design by Sandy Cull / gogoGingko (Pan Macmillan / November 2013)

On-the-Noodle-Road
On the Noodle Road by Jen Lin-Liu; design by Lynn Buckley (Riverhead / July 2013)

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P. S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern; design by Heike Schüssler (HarperCollins / January 2014)

teeth
Teeth by Hannah Moskowitz; design by Angela Goddard (Simon & Schuster / January 2013)

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Things We Know by Heart by Jessi Kirby; design by Erin Fitzsimmons (HarperCollins / May 2015)

Doern art
The Wet Engine by Brian Doyle; design by David Drummond (Oregon State University / May 2012)

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With or Without You by Domencia Ruta; design by Greg Mollica; lettering by Rebecca Siegel  (Spiegel & Grau / February 2013)

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Published January 19, 2015

50 Years Since the Great Poet’s Death

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Tom Gauld‘s weekly strip is back in The Guardian.

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Published January 8, 2015

Glenn Gould and the Gas Mask

In an interview with CBC Radio in 1958, pianist Glenn Gould recounted how he came to play Beethoven in a gas mask. Now CBC Music have turned that anecdote into a charming short film illustrated by designer Heather Collett, and animated by Philip Street and John Fraser:

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Published January 7, 2015

Criterion Designs

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Another book for the wishlist (because in a shocking development no one gave it to me for Christmas), Criterion Designs features covers, art, and sketches art commissioned for the Criterion Collection. It looks beautiful…

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Published November 30, 2014

Books of the Year by Tom Gauld

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Tom Gauld‘s cover for The Guardian Review‘s books of the year issue.

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Published November 5, 2014

A Little Film About… Jean Jullien

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Another cover featured in this month’s round-up was Jean Jullien‘s illustrated design for Dear Reader by Paul Fournel, published by Pushkin Press. In this short film by Handsome Frank, Jullien talks about his work, drawing with a brush, his relationship with technology, and laughing at yourself:

(via It’s Nice That)

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