Tag: oliver munday

Published December 12, 2022

Notable Book Covers of 2022

2022. Twenty twenty-two. Two thousand and twenty-two… “Where did it go?” Or, sobbing, “ are we done yet?” It feels like both. It’s been a year that’s simultaneously dragged on interminably and disappeared in a cognitive blur.

I’m glad other people have already written about it.

At Creative Review, writer and editor Mark Sinclair picked his favourite covers of 2022 and reflected on industry trends in the UK, including the Design Publishing & Inclusivity mentorship program for under-represented creatives launched this year by Ebyan Egal, Donna Payne, and Steve Panton.

Literary Hub posted the best covers of the year as chosen by 31 designers. With a comprehensive 103 covers on the list, it tacitly poses the annual question “what do I have left to add to this conversation?” LitHub have been posting these lists for seven years apparently. I am an ancient desiccated husk.

Fast Company and the Washington Post asked slightly smaller groups of designers to write about their favourites covers.

Jason Kottke, back from sabbatical, posted his selections for 2022. I gather that Spine’s list is imminent.

Designer and art director Matt Dorfman chose the best book covers of 2022 for the New York Times, and empathized with the plight of the designers:

Most often, any personal stylistic expressions in their work are swallowed up in service to the multiple masters — editors, marketing directors, sales teams — who sign off on a book’s cover. There is also the matter of adhering to any one publisher’s dos and don’ts, which can inform mandates about typography, color palettes and production flourishes like embossing or metallic inks. For people employed in a theoretically creative pursuit, designers’ talents are often defined by how effortlessly they can make themselves disappear to serve the book.
Matt Dorfman, New York Times

No one captured the prevailing mood better than this Tom Gauld cartoon. A reminder, if one were needed, that nobody knows anything.

Earlier in the year, Australian reporter Rafqa Touma called out the trend of ‘well dressed and distressed’ young women on covers. As designer Mietta Yans notes, the covers often reflect their books’ stylish and sad protagonists, so I’m not sure this one is on the art departments.

*Love and Other Puzzles* by Kimberley Allsopp; design by Mark Campbell (HarperCollins Australia / February 2022)

Last year we had book blobs; this year we got more “ominous blobs” just to add to everyone’s existential dread.

*The Singularities* by John Banville; design by John Gall (Knopf / October 2022)

Some of the trends I’ve talked about before spilled over into 2022. Collage, painting (contemporary, and historical — often tightly cropped), big skies, landscapes and seascapes, black and white photography (not just for LGBTQ+ trauma!), retro-ness, idiosyncratic display typefaces. Orange. Pink was in vogue too. The Instagram-ish combination of both pink and orange (sometimes with deep purple-ish blues too) seemed to be very much a thing this year. I suspect this is what happens when you ask designers to make things “pop” one too many times.

*You Have a Friend in 10A* by Maggie Shipstead; design by Irene Martinez (Doubleday / May 2022)

It is hard to know if these are genuine trends, or if it is just the stuff I notice. I’m sure there are things going on with commercial covers that I don’t pay enough attention to (although I will not be sad to see the popularity of that flat illustration style — the one that Slate pointed out in TWO THOUSAND AND FIFTEEN! — eventually fade away). I certainly don’t get the sense that everything looks the same, which is often the criticism. There is still room for a little weirdness and that can only be a good thing…

Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / September 2022)

Also designed by Lauren Peters-Collaer:

*Thrust* by Lidia Yuknavitch; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / June 2022)

Boy Friends by Michael Pedersen; design by Gray 318; illustration by Nathaniel Russell (Faber & Faber / July 2022)

Brother Alive by Zain Khalid; design by Jo Walker (Grove Press UK / August 2022)

A Calm & Normal Heart by Chelsea T. Hicks; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / June 2022)

Carnality by Lina Wolff; design by Tyler Comrie (Other Press / July 2022)

The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / September 2022)

Also designed by Oliver Munday:

*Fear of Black Consciousness* by Lewis R. Gordon; design by Oliver Munday (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2022)

The Ghetto Within by Santiago H. Amigorena; design by Mike McQuade (HarperVia / August 2022)

A Girlhood by Carolyn Hays; design by Mel Four (Blair / September 2022)

The Haunting of Hajji Hotak by Jamil Jan Kochai; design by Zak Tebbal (Viking / July 2022)

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; design by Will Staehle (William Morrow & Co. / January 2022)

I Want to Keep Smashing Myself Until I Am Whole by Elias Canetti, edited by Joshua Cohen; design by Alex Merto; illustration Ian Woods (Picador USA / September 2022)

Also designed by Alex Merto:

*After the Lights Go Out* by John Vercher; design by Alex Merto (Soho Press / June 2022)

Joan by Katherine J. Chen; design by Holly Ovenden (Hodder & Stoughton / July 2022)

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid; design by Ahlawat Gunjan (India Hamish Hamilton / August 2022)

The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid; design by Chris Bentham (Hamish Hamilton / August 2022).

Lessons by Ian McEwan; design by Suzanne Dean; illustration by Tina Berning (Jonathan Cape / September 2022)

Also designed by Suzanne Dean:

*Ghost Music* by An Yu; design Suzanne Dean (Harvill Secker / November 2022)

The Julian Barnes cover also came in blue, and under the die-cut jacket is a beautiful photo from René Groebli’s photoessay The Eye of Love.

A Little Piece of Mind by Giles Paley-Phillips; design by Tree Abraham (Unbound / June 2022)

Tree had her own book, Cyclettes, published this year. You can read about the process of designing her own cover over at Spine.

No Land in Sight by Charles Simic; design by John Gall; photograph by Michael Kenna (Knopf / August 2022)

Also designed by John Gall:

O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / September 2022)

Also designed by Tristan Offit:

*Briefly, A Delicious Life* by Nell Stevens; ; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / July 2022)

Offended Sensibilities by Alisa Ganieva; design by Emily Mahon (Deep Vellum / November 2022)

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield; design by Ami Smithson (Picador / March 2022)

I also really liked Ami’s cover for the UK edition of New Animal by Ella Baxter.

The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs; design by June Park; (MCD / July 2022)

Also designed by June Park:

*Cult Classic* by Sloane Crosley; design by June Park (MCD / June 2022)

Pure Colour by Sheila Heti; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2022)

Also designed by Na Kim:

*Present Tense Machine* by Gunnhild Øyehaug; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2022)

The Raptures by Jan Carson; design by Irene Martinez Costa (Doubleday UK / January 2022)

The Red Zone by Chloe Caldwell; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull Press / April 2022)

Sacrificio by Ernesto Mestre-Reed; design by Dana Li (SoHo Press / September 2022)

Also designed by Dana Li:

*Things We Found When the Water Went Down* by Tegan Mia Swanson; design by Dana Li (Catapult / December 2022)

Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby; design and illustration by Lydia Ortiz (Penguin Books / January 2022)

This is like hallucinatory nightmare vision of the Francis Cugat illustration on the cover of The Great Gatsby first edition.

Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu; design by Anna Jordan (Deep Vellum / October 2022)

The Status Game by Will Storr; design by Steve Leard (William Collins / July 2022)

True Biz by Sara Novic; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / April 2022)

Jack did a lot of great covers this year. I could easily have posted a couple more with no dip in quality:

*The Premonitions Bureau* by Sam Knight; design Jack Smyth (Faber & Faber / May 2022)

Trust by Hernan Diaz; design by Katie Tooke (Picador / August 2022)

The New York skyline was printed onto the edges of the books and then photographed for this one.

Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Viking / May 2022)

The Waste Land by Matthew Hollis; design by Jamie Keenan (Faber & Faber / October 2022)

Watergate by Garrett M. Graff; design by Alison Forner (Avid Reader Press / February 2022)

Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Luke Bird (Granta / November 2022)

Also designed by Luke Bird:

*Reward System* by Jem Calder; design by Luke Bird (Faber & Faber / May 2022)

White Bull by Elizabeth Hughey; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / January 2022)

Also designed by Alban Fischer:

*Brown Neon* by Raquel Gutiérrez; design by Alban Fischer (Coffee House Press / June 2022)

You can read about Alban’s design process for Till the Wheels Come Off at Spine.

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser; design by Janet Hansen (Pantheon / January 2022)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:

*A Country of Strangers* by D. Nurkse; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / April 2022)

Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2022)

Also designed by Rodrigo Corral:

*Bliss Montage* by Ling Ma; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / September 2022)

You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead; design by Kelly Blair; illustration by Toby Leigh (Knopf / May 2022)

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi; design by Anna Morrison (Faber and Faber / May 2022)

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart; design by Christopher Moisan; photograph by Kyle Thompson (Grove Press / April 2022)

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Published June 29, 2022

Book Covers of Note, June 2022

“Today is wretched and plain. And it is not the bottom, as many people may feel it is. It will get worse; we will go lower. As the Court’s dissent insists, correctly, ‘Closing our eyes to the suffering today’s decision will impose will not make that suffering disappear.‘

And so, with all this laid out, ugly and incontrovertible, the task for those who are stunned by the baldness of the horror, paralyzed by the bleakness of the view, is to figure out how to move forward anyway.

Because while it is incumbent on us to digest the scope and breadth of the badness, it is equally our responsibility not to despair.

These two tasks are not at odds. They are irrevocably twined. As Dahlia Lithwick wondered just a few weeks ago, after the massacre in Uvalde, another clear and awful day: ‘What does it mean, the opposing imperative of honoring the feeling of being shattered, while gathering up whatever is left to work harder?’

It means doing the thing that people have always done on the arduous path to greater justice: Find the way to hope, not as feel-good anesthetic but as tactical necessity.“

Rebecca Traister, ‘The Necessity of Hope’, The Cut

Here are this month’s book covers…

After the Lights Go Out by John Vercher; design by Alex Merto (Soho Press / June 2022)

I’m not quite sure this image does justice to just how pink this pink is. (I love this cover)

Asylum by Edafe Okporo; design by Ryan Raphael (Simon & Schuster / June 2022)

A Calm & Normal Heart by Chelsea T. Hicks; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / June 2022)

Chéri and the End of Chéri by Colette; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / May 2022)

Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley; design by June Park (MCD / June 2022)

The Fight to Save the Town by Michelle Wilde Anderson; design by Henry Sene Yee (Avid Reader Press / June 2022)

Horse by Geraldine Brooks; design by Lynn Buckley (Viking / June 2022)

I have stopped keeping track of Lydian covers but if anyone else is still keeping score…

Jerks by Sara Lippmann; design by Ian Anderson (Mason Jar Press / March 2022)

This cover kept catching my eye on social media. Thanks to Sara for confirming the design credit.

Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh; design by Stephanie Ross (Penguin Press / June 2022)

For my art history friends, I believe the painting is “Agnus Dei” by Spanish Baroque artist Francisco de Zurbarán.

IIRC the cover of Moshfegh’s novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation was designed by Darren Haggar. The painting is by French Neoclassical artist Jacques-Louis David.

A Little Piece of Mind by Giles Paley-Phillips; design by Tree Abraham (Unbound / June 2022)

Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / June 2022)

Is pink the new orange?

Paradais by Fernanda Melchor; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / May 2022)

Tree Thieves by Lyndsie Bourgon; design by Lucy Kim (Little, Brown Spark / June 2022)

Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Viking / May 2022)

Ways of Being by James Bridle; design by Pablo Delcan; illustration by Jon Han (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / June 2022)

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Published January 27, 2022

Book Covers of Note, January 2022

You know, I started 2022 with such good intentions and yet here we are again at the end of January on a paved road to hell. At least there are some lovely book covers to look at this month. Sigh.

All Day is a Long Time by David Sanchez; design by Kelly Winton (Harper / January 2022)

Anatomy by Dana Schwartz; design by Kerri Resnick; illustration by Zach Meyer (Wednesday Books / January 2022)

Anthem by Noah Hawley; design by Alex Merto (Grand Central Publishing / January 2022)

The Book of Malcolm by Fraser Sutherland; design by David Drummond (Rare Machines / January 2022)

I feel like squiggly lines might be David Drummond thing…

Disaster Mon Amour by David Thomson; design by Matt Avery (Yale University Press / January 2022)

This reminded me of John Gall’s cover for The Republic of False Truths by Alaa Al Aswany, and I kind of love the juxtaposition.

Fiona and Jane by Jean Chen Ho; design and illustration by Brianna Harden (Viking / January 2022)

How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; design by Will Staehle (William Morrow & Co. / January 2022)

Fear of Black Consciousness by Lewis R. Gordon; design by Oliver Munday (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2022)

This brought to mind Greg Heinimann‘s cover for Why I’m No Longer Talking To White People About Race by Reni Eddo Lodge from a couple of years ago.

Interesting Women by Andrea Lee; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / January 2022)

Tristan Offit also designed the cover for Red Island House by Andrea Lee, which featured in my post looking back at 2021. The paperback is out next month.

Last Resort by Andrew Lipstein; design Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2022)

Between this, and the covers of All Day is a Long Time, and Falling by T. J. Newman (designed by David Litman), I feel like we’re having a bit 1970’s revival…

Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2022)

The Raptures by Jan Carson; design by Irene Martinez Costa (Doubleday UK / January 2022)

Tenderness by Alison Macleod; design by Patti Ratchford (Bloomsbury / November 2021)

I’m sorry I missed this cover last year. November pubs are always tricky.

Patti recently posted a few of her covers from 2021 on Instagram. I like the cover of Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket by Hilma Wolitzer a lot too. The vintage Austin Briggs illustration is great.

White Bull by Elizabeth Hughey; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / January 2022)

Worn by Sofi Thanhauser; design by Janet Hansen (Pantheon / January 2022)

You Don’t Know Us Negroes by Zora Neale Hurston; design by Stephen Brayda; illustration by Jessica Coppet (Amistad Books / January 2022)

Print Magazine did a piece last year on Amistad Books’ repackaging of Zora Neale Hurston’s work. I’ve featured a couple of the covers here in the past too.

*Their Eyes Were Watching God* by Zara Neale Hurston; design by Stephen Brayda; art by Patrick Dougher (Amistad Books / January 2021)

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Published December 14, 2021

Notable Book Covers of 2021

Earlier this year, a Canadian magazine asked me what the latest trends in book cover design were. I don’t think I had a very satisfactory answer. 2021 felt very much like a continuation of 2020, which itself felt like a year on hold.

The trends that came to mind were not exactly new. In no particular order: big faces (big sunglasses!); cropped faces; hands; mouths; postmodern typefaces;¹ big skies; rainbows; gradients; the colour orange; psychedelia; collage; contemporary painting.

A lot was made of “blob” covers this year. I’m not sure that anything has really changed since Vulture published this article about “blocky” covers in 2019. They seemed like much the same thing.

Design is about the constraints and, as it turns out, the constraints around designing commercial literary fiction covers that have to work just as well online as in bookstores can lead to similar design solutions — large, legible type, and bright, abstract backgrounds. ² The surprising thing is not that a few covers look the same when you squint; it’s that more of them don’t.

There were a lot of good covers (that didn’t look alike) in 2021. LitHub posted 101 of them. Still, it didn’t exactly feel like a vintage year.

Do I say that every December? Possibly.

A few years ago I worried that covers were moving in a more conservative direction, particularly at the big publishers. I’m not sure this has come to pass, at least not in the US. There are plenty of covers from the big, prestigious American literary imprints in this year’s list, as there were last year, and every year before that.

There are fewer covers from the UK in this year’s list than in previous years though, and I feel less confident about the situation there. From a distance, things seem a little sedate. I may be mistaken. It’s quite possible I haven’t see enough covers — or perhaps enough of the right ones — from British publishers to get a good sense of the overall picture.³

It would not be a surprise, however, if publishers were feeling a little risk-averse at the moment. We are two years into a global pandemic, experiencing a major supply chain issues, and living through a seemingly endless series of sociopolitical crises.

Nor would it be a surprise if designers were personally feeling the effects too — I’m not sure we are talking about this enough, and I’m not sure I know how to.

Thank you to everyone who has supported the blog in 2021. It means a lot. Here are this year’s book covers of note…

After the Sun by Jonas Eika; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer; art by Dorian Legret (Riverhead / August 2021)

Amoralman by Derek Delgaudio; design by John Gall (Knopf / March 2021)

Also designed by John Gall:

*Klara and the Sun* by Kazuo Ishiguro; design John Gall (Knopf / March 2021)

Animal by Lisa Taddeo; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / June 2021)

Greg Heinimann talked to Creative Review about his work in April.

Are You Enjoying? by Mira Sethi; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / April 2021)

*Antonio* by Beatriz Bracher; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / March 2021)

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint; design by Joanne O’Neill (Flatiron Books / May 2021)

Also designed by Joanne O’Neill:

*Cultish* by Amanda Montell; design by Joanne O’Neill (Harper Wave / June 2021)

he Art of Wearing a Trench Coat by Sergi Pàmies; design by Arsh Raziuddin and Oliver Munday (Other Press / March 2021)

The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy; design by Laywan Kwan (Atria / May 2021)

Black Village by Lutz Bassmann; design by Anne Jordan (Open Letter / December 2021)

A Calling for Charlie Barnes by Joshua Ferris; design by Gregg Kulick (Little Brown and Company / September 2021)

Come On Up by Jordi Nopca; design by Roman Muradov (Bellevue Literary Press / February 2021)

Consent by Vanessa Springora; design by Stephen Brayda; art by Rozenn Le Gall (Harpervia / February 2021)

Stephen Brayda talked about his design for Consent with Spine Magazine.

Also designed by Stephen Brayda:

*Their Eyes Were Watching God* by Zara Neale Hurston; design by Stephen Brayda; art by Patrick Dougher (Amistad Press / January 2021)

The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen; design by Na Kim (FSG / January 2021)

Na Kim talked to PRINT about her career and the designs for the Ditlevsen series in February. If, like me, you were wondering about typeface on the covers, it’s Prophet from Dinamo apparently.

Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner; design by Na Kim (Knopf / April 2021)

Also designed by Na Kim:

*Pure Flame* by Michelle Orange; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / June 2021)

Damnation Spring by Ash Davidson; design by Jaya Miceli; art by Jeremy Miranda (Scribner / August 2021)

Dead Souls by Sam Riviere; design by Jamie Keenan; paper engineering and photography by Gina Rudd (Weidenfeld & Nicholson / May 2021)

Also designed by Mr. Keenan:

*Night Train* by A.L. Snijders; design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions / October 2021)

The Delivery by Peter Mendelsund; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / February 2021)

Also designed by Alex Merto:

*Recent East* by Thomas Grattan; design by Alex Merto (MCD / March 2021)

Detransition Baby by Torrey Peters; design by Rachel Ake Keuch (One World / January 2021)

Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller; design by Anna Kochman; illustration by Mike McQuade (One World / January 2021)

Double Trio by Nathaniel Mackey; design by Rodrigo Corral and Boyang Xia (New Directions / April 2021)

Falling by T. J. Newman; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / July 2021)

Also designed by David Litman:

*The Final Girl Support Group* by Grady Hendrix design by David Litman (Berkley Books / July 2021)

Fight Night by Mirian Toews; design by Patti Ratchford; illustration by Christina Zimpel (Bloomsbury / October 2021)

Filthy Animals by Brandon Taylor; design by Luke Bird (Daunt Books / June 2021)

Also designed by Luke Bird:

*The Dangers of Smoking in Bed* by Mariana Enriquez; design by Luke Bird ; illustration by Pablo Gerardo Camacho (Granta / April 2021)

Foucault in Warsaw by; design Daniel Benneworth-Gray (Open Letter / June 2021)

God of Mercy by Okezie Nwọka; design Sara Wood (Astra House / November 2021)

Sara Wood talked about her design for God of Mercy with Spine Magazine.

I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / October 2021)

July by Kathleen Ossip; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / June 2021)

Like Me by Hayley Phelan; design Emma Dolan (Doubleday Canada / July 2021)

Living in Data by Jer Thorp; design by Rodrigo Corral; art by Andrew Kuo (MCD / May 2021)

The Making of Incarnation by Tom McCarthy; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / November 2021)

Matrix by Lauren Groff; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / September 2021)

Mona by Pola Oloixarac; design by Thomas Colligan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / March 2021)

Mother for Dinner by Shalom Auslander; design by Jack Smyth (Picador / February 2021)

Jack Smyth talked to Totally Dublin about his work earlier this year.

Also designed by Jack Smyth:

*Pure Gold* by John Patrick McHugh; design by Jack Smyth (New Island Books / February 2021)

Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden; design by Gill Heeley (Canongate / January 2021)

Nectarine by Chad Campbell; design by David Drummond (Signal Editions / May 2021)

Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder; design by Emily Mahon (Doubleday / July 2021)

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood; design Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead Books / February 2021)

Also designed by Lauren Peters-Collaer:

*After the Sun* by Jonas Eika; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer; art by Dorian Legret (Riverhead / August 2021)

O by Steven Carroll; design by Gray318 (HarperCollins Australia / February 2021)

Also designed by Gray318:

*Beautiful World, Where Are You?* by Sally Rooney; design by Gray318 (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / September 2021)

If you’re wondering about the Super-Seventies Sally Rooney typeface, it is Ronda designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnese (I only know because I asked).

Once More With Feeling by Sophie McCreesh; design by Jennifer Griffiths (Anchor Canada / August 2021)

On Time and Water by Andri Snær Magnason; design Zoe Norvell (Open Letter / March 2021)

Outlawed by Anna North; design by Rachel Willey (Bloomsbury / January 2021)

Paradise by Lizzie Johnson; design by Elena Giavaldi (Crown / August 2021)

La Part des Chiens by Marcus Malte; design by David Pearson (Editions Zulma / April 2021)

Also designed by David Pearson:

*Anarchism and the Black Revolution* by Lorenzo Kom’Boa Ervin; design by David Pearson (Pluto Press / October 2021)

The Plague by Albert Camus; design by Sunra Thompson (Knopf / November 2021)

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz; design by Anne Twomey (Celadon Books / May 2021)

Rabbit Island by Elvira Navarro; design by Gabriele Wilson (Two Lines Press / February 2021)

Gabriele Wilson talked about her cover design for Rabbit Island with Spine Magazine.

Gabriele Wilson is doing some lovely work for Two Lines Press:

*Nancy* by Bruno Lloret; design by Gabriele Wilson (Two Lines Press / April 2021)

Red Island House by Andrea Lee; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / March 2021)

The Removed by Brandon Hobson; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Ecco / February 2021)

The Shimmering State by Meredith Westgate; design Chelsea McGuckin (Atria / August 2021)

A Shock by Keith Ridgway; design by Nathan Burton (Picador / June 2021)

Summerwater by Sarah Moss; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2021)

Virtue by Hermione Hoby; design by Ben Denzer (Riverhead / July 2021)

This Weightless World by Adam Soto; design by Tyler Comrie (Astra House / November 2021)

Also designed by Tyler Comrie:

*The China Room* by Sunjeev Sahota; design by Tyler Comrie (Viking / July 2021)

Thank you to everyone who has supported the blog in 2021. It means a lot.

I am not convinced that the term “postmodern” quite captures what I mean here (and/or worse, implies something different in the context of typography), but it’s the best I’ve got. I’m not talking about the kind of experimental typography you might associate with the likes of Wim Crouwel or Emigre, or the aesthetic of someone like David Carson. What I am trying to get at is idiosyncratic type that purposely exaggerates or plays with letterforms, and doesn’t conform to function-first modernism. To my mind, this would include some typefaces from the 1960s and 70s, as well as some more contemporary type. In a sense what I am describing is display faces — and I think the eclectic, innovative use of type in Victorian advertising might be an inspiration to designers here — but I don’t think it is just about size. ↩
an alternative solution is what Australian designer John Durham, AKA Design by Committee, memorably referred to as the “lost dog poster school of cover design”. ↩
I don’t want to jinx it, but are Canadian covers getting more adventurous? ↩

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Published May 28, 2021

Book Covers of Note, May 2021

Here’s this month’s look at the book covers that have caught my attention recently. Lots of fiery orange for some reason. Perhaps it is a thing?

An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser; design by Mark Abrams (Vintage / May 2021)

Ariadne by Jennifer Saint; design by Joanne O’Neill (Flatiron Books / May 2021)

The don’t look that similar side by side, by I was reminded of Will Staehle‘s 2018 cover for Circe by Madeline Miller, and the UK cover of the more recent Sistersong by Lucy Holland, designed by Melissa Four (I’m fairly sure I’ve seen an orange/red version of the Sistersong cover. Perhaps it was an ARC?).

Circe by Madeline Miller; design by Will Staehle (Little Brown & Co / April 2018)

The Art of Wearing a Trench Coat by Sergi Pàmies; design by Arsh Raziuddin and Oliver Munday (Other Press / March 2021)

The Atmospherians by Alex McElroy; design by Laywan Kwan (Atria / May 2021)

Dead Souls by Sam Riviere; design by Jamie Keenan; paper engineering and photography by Gina Rudd (Weidenfeld & Nicholson / May 2021)

I thought David Drummond had maybe done a cover similar to this, but I couldn’t find one. David does like neutral backgrounds and cutting type though!

Wall Flower by Rita Kuczynski; design by David Drummond (University of Toronto Press / August 2015)

Double Trio by Nathaniel Mackey; design by Rodrigo Corral and Boyang Xia (New Directions / April 2021)

This is a 3 volume box set and all of the covers are spectacular…

Fault Lines by Emily Itami; design by Holly Ovenden (Orion Books / May 2021)

The cover of the US edition of Fault Lines, available this fall, was designed by Mumtaz Mustafa using a photograph by Tsuguaki Abe.

Featherweight by Mick Kitson; design by Helen Crawford-White (Canongate / May 2021)

Living in Data by Jer Thorp; design by Rodrigo Corral; art by Andrew Kuo (MCD / May 2021)

When I first saw this cover I immediately thought there was some kind of link to Josef Albers ‘Homage a Square’ series, but nobody else seems to have mentioned it, so perhaps it is coincidental? Is that possible? I should probably pick up the book!

The Mission House by Carys Davies; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / February 2021)

Mona by Pola Oloixarac; design by Thomas Colligan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / March 2021)

Monsters by Alison Croggon; design by Daniel New (Scribe / March 2021)

Nectarine by Chad Campbell; design by David Drummond (Signal Editions / May 2021)

The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz; design by Anne Twomey (Celadon Books / May 2021)

A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes; design by Gill Heeley (Canongate / February 2021)

Gill Heeley also designed the cover of the UK hardback edition of the book published last year…

Things We Lost to the Water by Eric Nguyen; design by Chip Kidd (Knopf / May 2021)

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Chip Kidd cover on the blog. This guy has promise!

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Published December 18, 2020

Notable Book Covers of 2020

I didn’t blog much this year. It felt strange to be posting about something as trivial as book covers during a deadly pandemic. 2020 has been a tough year. I feel lucky that my family are safe and well, and I have kept my job and my health. I know others have not been so fortunate.

It has been hard.

I haven’t read much and I’ve struggled to keep track of new work. Toronto has been in lockdown for most of 2020. Browsing bookstores hasn’t been possible, and I didn’t spend as much time as usual trawling for covers online. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of covers in this year’s post are featured here for the first time.

Looking back at last year’s post, I was apparently feeling gloomy about the state of things in 2019 too.¹ If I remember correctly, I was — in the midst of everything — trying to get through sales conference, wrap up a big project before the holidays, and feeling more than a little stressed. Somehow I still managed to write a little bit about the trends I was seeing. A few things — painterly covers for example — seem to have continued into 2020. Lydian certainly hasn’t gone away. It felt so common, in fact, I stopped keeping track of individual examples. On the other hand, I did see less Avant Garde for which I am quietly grateful (although I’m not sure that’s a popular sentiment).

At The Literary Hub, Emily Temple declared 2020 to be “the year of enormous pink lady faces on book covers.” While at Spine Magazine, Viki Hendy collected together examples of covers with type around the edges. I don’t know that I have a lot to add that. There were a few new meta, books on book covers this year, which is always a delight. And I think perhaps collage might be having a moment too, which is fun. Although we may be overdoing the half-face compositions.

*Suppose A Sentence* by Brian Dillon; design by Katy Homans; art by John Stezaker (NYRB / September 2020)

There is, of course, a lag. Trends always bleed over from one year to the next. One of this year’s “big books”, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, which featured a bright and bold cover designed by Vi-An Nguyen, was published in the US on December 31, 2019. A lot of 2020 books have been delayed until 2021. But I wonder how the changes in the way we work and consume brought on by the pandemic — designing in isolation for an audience that is now browsing predominantly online — will change things in the next couple of years. Will we see more experimentation or less? Will there be demand for beautiful tactile objects, or will we more fully embrace digital reading experiences? There’s a lot to ponder…

Anyway, thanks to all the folks who have supported the Casual Op this year and encouraged me to keep it going. I’m sorry that I have not responded to all the emails I have received. I’m going to try to be a bit better with that in future. Hopefully there have been some silver linings for you in 2020, and you can still find some joy in a few good book covers…

Afterland by Lauren Beukes; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / July 2020)

Also designed by Lauren Wakefield:

*The Driftwood Girls* by Mark Douglas-Home; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / April 2020)

The Age of Skin by Dubravka Ugresic; design by Jack Smyth (Open Letter / November 2020)

Also designed by Jack Smyth:

*Scabby Queen* by Kirstin Innes; design by Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / July 2020)

All Men Want to Know by Nina Bouraoui; design by Holly Ovenden (Viking / August 2020)

Also designed by Holly Ovenden:

*Blue Ticket* by Sophie MacIntosh; design by Holly Ovenden (Hamish Hamilton / August 2020)

Analogia by George Dyson; design by Tom Etherington; illustration by Andy Bridge (Allen Lane / August 2020)

Also designed by Tom Etherington:

Poor by Caleb Femi; design by Tom Etherington (Penguin / December 2020)

Anger by Barbara H. Rosenwein; design by Alex Kirby (Yale University Press / July 2020)

Also designed by Alex Kirby:

*Culture in Nazi Germany* by Michael H. Kater; design by Alex Kirby (Yale / April 2020)

The Art of War by Sun Tzu; design by Jaya Miceli (W. W. Norton / January 2020)

Also designed by Jaya Miceli:

*Afterlife* by Julia Alvarez; design by Jaya Miceli (Algonquin Books / April 2020)

Black Sunday by Tola Rotimi Abraham; design Nicole Caputo (Catapult / February 2020)

Also designed by Nicole Caputo:

*Godshot* by Chelsea Bieker; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / March 2020)

Nicole talks about book covers and her design process in this video for Belletrist from earlier this year.

The Book of Eels by Patrick Svensson; design by Allison Saltzman; illustration by Grady McFerrin (Ecco / May 2020)

Also designed by Allison Saltzman:

*Days of Distraction* by Alexandra Chang; design by Allison Saltzman; illustration by gg (Ecco / March 2020)

Carry by Toni Jensen; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by Carmi Grau (Ballantine / September 2020)

Also designed by Emily Mahon:

*With or Without You* by Caroline Leavitt; design by Emily Mahon; painting by painting Clare Elsaesser (Algonguin / August 2020)

Cesare by Jerome Charyn; design by Elsa Mathern (No Exit Press / November 2020)

Companions by Katie M. Flynn; design by Laywan Kwan (Scout Press / March 2020)

The Complete Works of Alberto Caeiro by Fernando Pessoa; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / July 2020)

You can find a recent interview with Peter at InsideHook, and he has a big new book out called The Look of the Book with David J. Alworth.

The Death of Vivek Oji by Akwaeke Emezi; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / August 2020)

Also designed by Grace Han:

*The Beauty of Your Face* by Sahat Mustafah; design by Grace Han (W.W. Norton / April 2020)

Los Falcón by Melissa Rivero; design by Adalis Martinez (Vintage Espanol / April 2020)

Sadly, Adalis unexpectedly passed away in July 2020. I only knew Adalis through her work, but she is such a huge a loss to our community. There is a GoFundMe page if you wish to donate to her family.

Also designed by Adalis Martinez:

*losi* by Molly Ball; design by Adalis Martinez (Henry Holt & Co / May 2020)

Figure It Out by Wayne Koestenbaum; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull Press / May 2020)

Also designed by Michael Salu:

*The Ice Cream Man & Other Stories* by Sam Pink; design by Michael Salu; art by Benjamin Styer (Soft Skull Press / March 2020)

The Hole by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / October 2020)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:

*Be My Guest* by Priya Basil; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / November 2020)

Hurricane Season by Fernanda Melchor; design Jamie Keenan (New Directions / March 2020)

Also designed by Jamie Keenan:

*You Will Never Be Forgotten* by Mary South; design by Jamie Keenan (Picador / August 2020)

Hysteria by Jessica Gross; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / August 2020)

Also designed by Jaya Nicely:

*A Certain Hunger* by Chelsea G. Summers; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / December 2020)

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / October 2020)

The Hype Machine by Sinan Aral; design by Steve Leard (HarperCollins / September 2020)

Indelicacy by Amina Cain; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2020)

Also designed by June Park:

*The Family Clause* by Jonas Hassen Khemiri; design by June Park (FSG / August 2020)

Insomnia by John Kinsella; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / November 2020)

Also designed by Sarahmay Wilkinson:

*Inner Coast* by Donovan Hohn; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W.W. Norton / June 2020)

Lakewood by Megan Giddings; design by Stephen Brayda; art by Yulia Bas (Amistad / March 2020)

Also designed by Stephen Brayda:

*The End of the Ocean* by Maja Lunde; design by Stephen Brayda; art by Scott Naismith (Harpervia / January 2020)

Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford; design by Lucy Kim; photograph by Pari Dukovic (Little Brown & Co / July 2020)

Also designed by Lucy Kim:

*The Mercies* by Kiran Millwood Hargrave; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown & Co / February 2020)

Ledger by Jane Hirshfield; design by John Gall (Knopf / March 2020)

Also designed by John Gall:

*Weather* by Jenny Offill; design by John Gall (Knopf / February 2020)

You can find a short interview with John in which he discusses his cover for Red Pill at Bear Books, and you can read about his design process for Weather by Jenny Offill at Spine Magazine.

The Light Ages by Seb Falk; design by Richard Green (Allen Lane / September 2020)

Is it just me, or were star charts on book covers a bit of thing this year?

Life of a Klansman; design by Rodrigo Corral; illustration by Matt Buck (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / August 2020)

Also designed by Rodrigo Corral:

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener; design by Rodrigo Corral (MCD / January 2020)

Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin; design by Na Kim (Riverhead / May 2020)

Also designed by Na Kim:

*Luster* by Raven Leilani; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / August 2020)

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / May 2020)

Moss by Klaus Modick; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / August 2020)

Alban recently talked to the folks at Faceout Books about his design for Moss, and you can read about his design process for Four By Four by Sara Mesa at Spine Magazine.

Also designed by Alban Fischer:

The Clerk by Guillermo Saccomanno; design by Alban Fischer (Open Letter Books / September 2020)

Natural History by Carlos Fonseca; design by Pablo Delcan (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / July 2020)

Notes from an Apocalypse by Mark O’Connell; design by Matthew Young; art by Joe Webb (Granta / April 2020)

Of Color by Jaswinder Bolina; design by Jude Landry (McSweeney’s / June 2020)

Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas; design by Kelly Winton (Counterpoint / January 2020)

On the Road by Jack Kerouac; design by Moker Ontwerp (De Bezige Bij / July 2020)

The Party Upstairs by Lee Conell; design by Stephanie Ross (Penguin Press / July 2020)

You can read about Stephanie’s design process for The Party Upstairs at Spine Magazine.

Pew by Catherine Lacey; design by Luke Bird (Granta / May 2020)

Also designed by Luke Bird:

*Earthlings* by Sayaka Murata; design by Luke Bird (Granta / September 2020)

Prosper’s Demon by K. J. Parker; design by Christine Foltzer; art by Sam Weber (Tor / January 2020)

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue; design by Sara Wood (Little Brown & Co / July 2020)

Also designed by Sara Wood:

*The Book of Longings* by Sue Monk Kidd; design by Sara Wood (Viking / April 2020)

Rendang by Will Harris; design by David Pearson (Granta / February 2020)

Also designed by David Pearson:

Cover design by David Pearson and original lettering by Ken Garland

Sensation Machines by Adam Wilson; design by David Litman (Soho Press / July 2020)

Also designed by David Litman:

*The New American* by Micheline Aharonian Marcom; design Dave Litman (Simon & Schuster / August 2020)

Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran; design Henry Sene Yee (Flatiron Books / April 2020)

Also designed by Henry Sene Yee

*Burning the Books* by Richard Ovenden; design by Henry Sene Yee (Belknap Press / November 2020)

Soot by Dan Vyleta; design by Mark Swan (Weidenfeld & Nicolson / February 2020)

The Sun Collective by Charles Baxter; design Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / November 2020)

Also designed by Tyler Comrie:

*Antkind* by Charlie Kaufman; design by Tyler Comrie (Random House / July 2020)

The Topeka School by Ben Lerner; design by Gray318 (Granta / September 2020)

Also designed by Gray318:

Too Much by Rachel Vorona Cote; design by Jennifer Carrow (Grand Central / February 2020)

Topics of Conversation by Miranda Popkey; design Sinem Erkas (Serpent’s Tail / February 2020)

You can read about Sinem’s design process for Topic of Conversation at Spine Magazine.

Untold Night and Day by Bae Suah, translated by Deborah Smith; design by Suzanne Dean; photograph Marta Bevacqua (Jonathan Cape / January 2020)

Also designed by Suzanne Dean:

*Sisters* by Daisy Johnson; design by Suzanne Dean; photograph Simon Kerola (Jonathan Cape / August 2020)

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / June 2020)

Verge by Lidia Yuknavitch; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / February 2020)

The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; design by Kimberly Glyder (Scribner / January 2020)

Also designed by Kimberly Glyder:

Dark Mother Earth by Kristian Novak; design by Kimberly Glyder (Amazon Crossing / January 2020)

For those of you that don’t know, the name of the blog comes from a joke about my general lack of enthusiasm for anything. ↩

3 Comments

Published May 27, 2020

Book Covers of Note, May 2020

A quick update this month. Enjoy…

The Book of Eels by Patrick Svensson; design by Grady McFerrin (Ecco / May 2020)

Broadway for Paul by Vincent Katz; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Beat Streuli (Knopf / April 2020)

Brown Album by Porochista Khakpour; design by Joan Wong (Vintage / May 2020)

This cover immediately reminded me of Helen Crawford-White’s cover A Half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts published last year…

And then I thought maybe it was a nod to the cover of The White Album by Joan Didion, published in 1979 (the reissue below uses the original cover), and which Fonts in Use informs me uses the typeface Pistilli Roman. But maybe I am over thinking it…?

I was also reminded of these two recent covers, so maybe it is just a thing…?

*All My Mother’s Lovers* by Ilana Masad; design by Lynn Buckley (Dutton / May 2020)

A Children’s Bible by Lydia Millet; design by David High (W. W. Norton / May 2020)

Lydian for Lydia…

The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio; design by Matthew Flute (McClelland & Stewart / April 2020)

I believe this is only available as an ebook, which seems a bit of shame. It would be nice to see in print. The cover does remind me of something else though. I can’t think what exactly. The best I could come up with was Tyler Comrie‘s cover for The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs. But I feel like there is cover that does something similar with a painting as a background? Possibly I’m just imagining it.

Oh and for those of you who are interested, the design team at Penguin Random House Canada have started posting their work to Instagram as one_last_tweak.

Fracture by André Neuman; design by June Park (Farrar Straus & Giroux / May 2020)

Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall; design by Lynn Buckley (Viking / February 2020)

Minor Detail by Adania Shibli; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / May 2020)

Out of the Shadows by Walt Odets; design by Tom Etherington; photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans (Penguin / May 2020)

I love this image. I believe it was used on the cover of the hardcover in the UK too.

Pelosi by Molly Ball; design by Adalis Martinez (Henry Holt & Co / May 2020)

Pew by Catherine Lacey; design by Luke Bird (Granta / May 2020)

Pew and Pelosi make lovely use of white space…

A Registry of My Passage Upon The Earth by Daniel Mason; design by Gregg Kulick (Little, Brown & Co / May 2020)

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg; design by Linda Huang (Vintage / May 2020)

The cover of the hardcover was designed by Tyler Comrie, with an illustration by Justin Metz

Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg; design by Tyler Comrie; illustration Justin Metz (Knopf / June)

Very Important People by Ashley Mears; design by Amanda Weiss (Princeton University Press / May 2020)

Walking One Step at a Time by Erling Kagge; design by Linda Huang and Oliver Munday (Vintage / April 2020)

This reminded me Gerhard Richter’s blurry landscape paintings.

The hardcover was designed by Jenny Carrow.

Wicked Enchantment by Wanda Coleman; design by Rachel Willey (Black Sparrow Press / April 2020)

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Published January 24, 2020

The Decade in Book Covers

There is a bit of story to this post. The short version is that I started it in 2018 to celebrate 10 years of the blog. When that deadline went whooshing past, I thought I would rework it for the end of 2019 as a look back at the decade. Now in 2020, with the risk of another deadline coming and going before I get it exactly right, I am just going to post this as it is — a collection of covers from the past 10 years1 that I quite like!

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean, design by Will Staehle (Little Brown & Co. / July 2010)

Ethics of Interrogation by Michael Skerker, designed by Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago Press / May 2010)

Filthy English by Peter Silverton, design by Dan Mogford (Portobello / October 2010)

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, designed by Roberto de Vicq (Random House / 2010)

No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy, design by David Pearson (Picador / December 2010)

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, designed by Rodrigo Corral Design (Random House / September 2010)

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan; design by Barbara deWilde (Knopf / June 2010)

Amerika by Franz Kafka, design by Peter Mendelsund (Schocken / August 2011)

Adventures in the Orgasmatron by Christopher Turner; design by Marina Drukman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux June 2011)

Fever by Sonia Shah; design by LeeAnn Falciani (Picador / June 2011)

The First Husband by Laura Dave, designed by Jaya Miceli (Penguin / May 2011)

The Information by James Gleick, designed by Peter Mendelsund (Pantheon March 2011)

Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi design by Helen Yentus with Jason Booher (Riverhead / September 2011)

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, design by Matt Dorfman (Riverhead Books / May 2011)

After Freud Left edited by John Burnham; designed by Isaac Tobin (University of Chicago Press / May 2012)

The Dubliners by James Joyce; design by Apfel Zet (Penguin / May 2012)

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)

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus; design by Peter Mendelsund (Knopf / January 2012)

Hope: A Tragedy: A Novel by Shalom Auslander; design by John Gall (Riverhead / January 2012)

May We Be Forgiven by A. M. Homes; designed by Alison Forner (Viking / September 2012)

NW by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / September 2012)

First Novel by Nicholas Royle; design by Suzanne Dean; photography Stephen Banks (Cape / February 2013)

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner; design by Charlotte Strick (Scribner / April 2013)

The Hamlet Doctrine by Simon Critchley & Jamieson Webster; design by David A. Gee (Verso September 2013)

Lionel Asbo by Martin Amis; design by Jamie Keenan (Vintage / May 2013)

Middle C by William Gass; Design by Gabriele Wilson (Knopf / March 2013)

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell; design by David Pearson (Penguin / January 2013)

The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot; design by Jamie Keenan (Liveright Classics / September 2013)

What the Family Needed by Steven Amsterdam; design by Jennifer Heuer (Riverhead / March 2013)

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu; design by Isabel Urbina Peña (Knopf / March 2014)

The Book of Heaven by Patricia Storace; design by Linda Huang (Pantheon / February 2014)

California by Edan Lepucki; design Julianna Lee (Little Brown & Co. / July 2014)

Fourth of July Creek by Smith Henderson; design by Allison Saltzman; illustration by Bryan Nash Gill (Ecco / June 2014)

Love Me Back by Merritt Tierce; design by Emily Mahon; illustration by Rizon Parein(Doubleday / September 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)

On Such a Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee; design by Helen Yentus; lettering Jason Booher (Riverhead / January 2014)

Your Face in Mine by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Riverhead / August 2014)

The Complete Stories by Clarice Lispector; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / August 2015)

Hotels of North America by Rick Moody; design by Keith Hayes (Little, Brown & Co. / November 2015)

A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin; design by Justine Anweiler; photography Jonathan Simpson (Picador UK / September 2015)

Motorcycles I’ve Loved by Lily Brooks-Dalton; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / April 2015)

Munich Airport by Greg Baxter; design by Anne Twomey (Twelve Books / January 2015)

One Day in the Life of the English Language by Frank L. Cioffi; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / March 2015)

Weathering by Lucy Wood; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / January 2015)

The Woman Who Read Too Much by Bahiyyih Nakhjavani; design by Anne Jordan & Mitch Goldstein (Stanford University Press / April 2015)

Addlands by Tom Bullough; design by Jenny Grigg (Granta / June 2016)

The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert; design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner / January 2016)

Dialogue by Robert McKee; design by Catherine Casalino (Twelve Books / July 2016)

How Propaganda Works by Jason Stanley; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / May 2016)

Imagine Me Gone by Adam Haslett; design by Keith Hayes (Little, Brown & Co. / May 2016)

Moonglow by Michael Chabon; design by Adalis Martinez (Harper / November 2016)

The Start of Something by Stuart Dybek; design Suzanne Dean; cover art by Marion de Man (Jonathan Cape / November 2016)

The Summer That Melted Everything by Tiffany McDaniel; design by Allison Colpoys (Scribe / August 2016)

The Wonder by Emma Donoghue design by Kimberly Glyder (Little, Brown & Co. / September 2016)

The Age of Perpetual Light by Josh Weil; design by Nick Misani (Grove Press / September 2017)

All We Saw by Anne Michaels; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Jouke Bos (Knopf / October 2017)

Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly; design by Alex Merto; photograph by Gregory Reid (W.W. Norton / December 2017)

Jerzy by Jerome Charyn; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / March 2017)

Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood; design by Rachel Willey (Riverhead / May 2017)

A Separation by Katie Kitamura; design by Jaya Miceli (Riverhead / February 2017)

Virgin and Other Stories by April Ayers Lawson; design by James Paul Jones (Granta / January 2017)

We All Love the Beautiful Girls by Joanne Proulx; design by Jennifer Griffiths (Viking / August 2017)

Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber; design by David Litman (Simon & Schuster / May 2018)

Cherry by Nico Walker; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / August 2018)

The Comedown by Rebekah Frumkin; design by Rachel Willey (Henry Holt / April 2018)

Evening in Paradise by Lucia Berlin; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / November 2018)

The Female Persuasion by Meg Wolitzer; design by Ben Denzer (Riverhead Books / April 2018)

Liveblog by Megan Boyle; design by Nicole Caputo (Tyrant Books / September 2018)

There There by Tommy Orange; design by Suzanne Dean; art by Bryn Perrott (Harvill Secker / July 2018)

Aug 9 — Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)

The Dutch House by Ann Patchet; design by Robin Bilardello; painting by Noah Saterstrom (HarperCollins / September 2019)

Lanny by Max Porter; design by Jonny Pelham (Faber & Faber / March 2019)

Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)

Muscle by Alan Trotter; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / February 2019)

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / August 2019)

The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

2 Comments

Published December 11, 2019

Notable Book Covers of 2019

2019 has felt interminable. It has also felt like there are never enough hours in the day to keep up. You can’t talk to me about TV shows or movies. I haven’t seen any.

When it comes to books, I’m fortunate enough to work in the industry. But what hope do casual readers have of finding the good stuff when the same few titles dominate the conversation and there is so much else competing for their attention?

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood and Daisy Jones and the Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid were inescapable this year.

Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Caroline Teagle Johnson (Ballantine / March 2019)

Daisy Jones and the Six had a glamorous, louche 1970s look. The US and UK editions, designed by Caroline Teagle Johnson and Lauren Wakefield respectively, took slightly different directions with the type, but the photograph (a stock image apparently) felt ideally suited to social media.

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood; design by Noma Bar (Chatto & Windus / September 2019)

The Testaments was everywhere and, like the recent Vintage Classics reissue of The Handmaid’s Tale, the cover illustration was unmistakably by Noma Bar. We live in an age where every cult movie and TV show gets a ‘minimalist’ poster now, and I found that The Testaments looked too familiar for me to find it engaging. It didn’t help that the cover of the 2017 US reissue of the The Handmaid’s Tale by Swedish illustrator by Patrik Svenson had already featured a similar 3/4s silhouette. Nevertheless, it was perhaps a bolder cover choice than I’m giving it credit for. If nothing else, it showed that bright green on book covers — once cursed and reviled — is suddenly all the rage!

In terms of trends, 2019 felt more like a continuation of previous years rather than a break with the past. There was a kind of conservatism to a lot of the covers I saw. My sense was that highly polished designs that looked comfortingly familiar were being approved over riskier ones that stood out from the crowd. The most interesting covers often came from small publishers, especially New Directions who seem to be giving a bit more creative license to the designers they work with (some of whom have 9-5s at much bigger publishers!).

Big centred blocks of utilitarian white type over elaborate backgrounds continued to be a mainstay. It’s the book cover as poster, and it works at any size, so I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.

Handwriting and hand-lettering remained popular too, although my sense is that enthusiasm is starting to wane as publishers are opting for greater legibility and designers are turning back to vintage type styles to give a sense of authenticity and craft. (I’m willing to admit the evidence might not back me up on this, however!)

Fun, swishy 1970s-inspired serifs like Benguiat Caslon revival Cabernet are back. People keep trying to make ITC Avant Garde — another iconic 1970s typeface — happen again too. I don’t think it works for the most part, but I can see why designers think it’s cool in a coked-up New York way. Warren Chappell’s earnest calligraphic sans serif Lydian, originally released in 1938, continued its unlikely rise as a go-to literary typeface. It even got an explainer at Vox.

*On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous* by Ocean Vuong; design by Darren Haggar; photograph by Sam Contis (Penguin Press / June 2019)

Black and white portrait photography has been the staple of biographies and classics for years, so it was interesting to see closely cropped black and white photographs used on the covers of a couple of new literary novels this year. This isn’t entirely new obviously. Black and white photography has long been used to signify that something is “art” (as opposed to, say, “pornography”). But I think the latest iteration of trend was started by Cardon Webb‘s 2015 cover for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara which used a black and white photograph by the late Peter Hujar.

Coincidentally the cover of the US edition of Garth Greenwell’s new novel Cleanness, publishing early 2020, was designed by Thomas Colligan and uses contemporary black and white photograph by Jack Davison. (The UK edition, designed by Ami Smithson fits this trend a little less neatly, but features black and white photograph by Mark McKnight)

Something that I didn’t anticipate was the use of contemporary landscape and figure painting on the covers of some the big literary releases of the year. Like black and white photography, it felt almost pre-digital — a grasp at traditional values of craft. I don’t know if I would go as far as to say it is a rejection of post-modernism. But maybe it is? I don’t know. Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Innocents by Michael Crummey; design by Emily Mahon; art by Diana Dabinett (Doubleday / August 2019)

Thank you to all the designers and art directors who’ve been in touch and helped me identify covers for my posts. I’m sorry if I haven’t replied to your message. It’s been a year.

The Affairs of the Falcóns by Melissa Rivero; design Allison Saltzman; lettering Boyoun Kim (Ecco / April 2019)

Also designed by Allison Saltzman:

*Come Closer and Listen* by Charles Simic; design by Allison Saltzman; art by Jessica Brilli (Ecco / July 2019)

All the Lives We Ever Lived by Katharine Smyth; design by Michael Morris (Crown / January 2019)

Aug 9 — Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)

Also designed by Na Kim:

Lie With Me by Philippe Besson; design by Na Kim (Scribner / April 2019)

Baron Wenkheim’s Homecoming by László Krasznahorkai ; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / September 2019)

Berta Isla by Javier Marías; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / August 2019)

Also designed by Kelly Blair:

*Chances Are…* by Richard Russo; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / July 2019)

Big Bang by David Bowman; design by Jamie Keenan (Corsair / August 2019)

Black Leopard Red Wolf by Marlon James; design Helen Yentus; art by Pablo Gerardo Camacho (Riverhead / February 2019)

Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant by Joel Golby; design by Linda Huang (Anchor / March 2019)

The cover of the UK edition, published by HarperCollins imprint Mudlark in February, was designed by Bill Bragg and is also very good:

The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / August 2019)

Also designed by Sarahmay Wilkinson:

*Swift* by David Baker; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W.W. Norton / April 2019)

Categorically Famous by Guy Davidson; design by Michel Vrana (Stanford University Press / June 2019)

Also designed by Michel Vrana:

*The Western Alienation Merit Badge* by Nancy Jo Cullen; design by Michel Vrana (Buckrider Books / May 2019)

The Colonel’s Wife by Rosa Liksom; design by Kimberly Glyder (Graywolf / December 2019)

Also designed by Kimberly Glyder:

*The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener’s Companion* by Liberty Hyde Bailey; design by Kimberly Glyder (Cornell University Press / September 2019)

Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer; design Rodrigo Corral (MCD / December 2019)

Also designed by Rodrigo Corral:

*The Topeka School* by Ben Lerner; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / October 2019)

Doxology by Nell Zink; design Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / August 2019)

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk; design by Alex Merto (Riverhead / August 2019)

Driving in Cars with Homeless Men by Kate Wisel; design Catherine Casalino (University of Pittsburgh Press / October 2019)

Also designed by Catherine Casalino:

*All This Could Be Yours* by Jami Attenberg; design by Catherine Casalino (Hougton Mifflin / October 2019)

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / July 2019)

Also designed by Pablo Delcan:

*The Social Photo* by Nathan Jurgenson; design by Pablo Delcan (Verso / May 2019)

The Dutch House by Ann Patchet; design by Robin Bilardello; painting by Noah Saterstrom (HarperCollins / September 2019)

Even That Wildest Hope by Seyward Goodhand; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / September 2019)

*Land and Forests* by Andrew Forbes; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / May 2019)

The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Janet Hansen; photography by Arthur Woodcroft (New Directions / October 2019)

Also designed by Janet Hansen:

*In Her Feminine Sign* by Dunya Mikhail; design by Janet Hansen (New Directions / July 2019)

The Five by Hallie Rubenhold; design by Jo Thomson (Transworld / February 2019)

Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford; design and illustration Beci Kelly (Transworld / August 2019)

Follow This Thread by Henry Eliot; design by Elena Giavaldi (Three Rivers Press / March 2019)

Holy Lands by Amanda Sthers; design by Tree Abraham (Bloomsbury / January 2019)

Also designed by Tree Abraham:

*The Remainder* by Alia Trabucco Zerán; design by Tree Abraham (Coffee House Press / August 2019)

Humiliation by Paulina Flores; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / November 2019)

Also designed by Nicole Caputo:

*The Crying Book* by Heather Christie; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / November 2019)

Indelible in the Hippocampus by Shelly Oria; design by Sunra Thompson (MacSweeney’s / September 2019)

Lanny by Max Porter; design by Jonny Pelham (Faber & Faber / March 2019)

Learning from the Germans by Susan Neiman; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / August 2019)

Tom Etherington is also the designer of Penguin magazine The Happy Reader:

Life Support by Julia Copus; design by Helen Crawford-White (Head of Zeus / April 2019)

*A Half-Baked Idea* by Olivia Potts; design by Helen Crawford-White (Fig Tree / July 2019)

The Light That Failed by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes; design by Richard Green (Allen Lane / October 2019)

Malina by Ingeborg Bachman; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / June 2019)

Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington; design by Matt Dorfman (W.W. Norton / April 2019)

Mothers by Chris Power; design by Grace Han (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2019)

Also designed by Grace Han:

*Bangkok Wakes to Rain* by Pitchaya Sudbanthad; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / February 2019)

Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin; design by Stephen Brayda (Riverhead / January 2019)

Muscle by Alan Trotter; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / February 2019)

Also designed by Gray318:

*Quichotte* by Salman Rushdie; design by Gray318 (Jonathan Cape / August 2019)

Never a Lovely So Real by Colin Asher; design by Jonathan Bush (W. W. Norton / April 2019)

Not Working by Josh Cohen; design by Matthew Young (Granta / January 2019)

Also designed by Matthew Young:

*What We Really Do All* Day by Jonathan Gershuny and Oriel Sullivan; design Matthew Young (Pelican / September 2019)

One Day by Gene Weingarten; design by David Litman (Blue Rider / October 2019)

Also designed by David Litman:

*Ask Again, Yes* by Mary Beth Keane; design by David Litman (Scribner / May 2019)

Our Women on the Ground edited by Zahra Hankir; design by Rosie Palmer; hand lettering by Lily Jones (Harvill Secker / August 2019)

Red at the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson; design by Jaya Miceli (Riverhead / September 2019)

Also designed by Jaya Miceli:

*Speaking of Summer* by Kalisha Buckhanon; design Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / July 2019)

Safe Houses I Have Known by Steve Healey; design by Alban Fischer (Coffee House Press / September 2019)

Also designed by Alban Fischer:

*The Hypothetical Man* by Paul Maliszewski & Ryan Weil; design by Alban Fischer (Trnsfr Books / March 2019)

Say Say Say by Lila Savage; design by Jennifer Carrow (Knopf / July 2019)

Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke; design by Anne Jordan & Mitch Goldstein (Open Letter Books / December 2019)

Sweet Days of Discipline by Fleur Jaeggy; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / August 2019)

Oliver Munday wrote about designing the cover for New Directions at Literary Hub earlier this year.

He also designed a lot my favourite covers this year…

Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman; design by Oliver Munday (Simon & Schuster / May 2019)

Turbulence by David Szalay; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / July 2019)

The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

Also designed by Tyler Comrie:

The Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)

Also designed by Rachel Willey:

*The New Me* by Halle Butler; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates; design Greg Mollica; art Calida Garcia Rawles (One World / September 2019)

The White Death by Gabriel Urza; design by Joan Wong (Nouvella / June 2019)

A Year Without a Name by Cyrus Grace Dunham; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown & Co. / October 2019)

*Consent* by Donna Freitas; design by Lucy Kim (Little, Brown & Co. / August 2019)

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Published August 16, 2019

Book Covers of Note, August 2019

Here are your August book covers of note. Another good month, I think?

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / July2019)

This is apparently available now (according to Faber’s Instagram at least!), but I haven’t been able to find it online. If anyone cares to share the ISBN, I will try to add a link.

The new design is inspired by the 1966 cover designed by Shirley Tucker.

Berta Isla by Javier Marías; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / August 2019)

This is an interesting change in direction from the cover of The Infatuations by Javier Marías designed by Isabel Urbina Peña and published by Knopf in 2013.

(The UK covers for Javier Marías’ novels published by Hamish Hamilton are photographic. If anyone can supply me with the design/photo credits, I’d be happy to add them in here for reference!).

The Case Against Reality by Donald Hoffman; design by Sarahmay Wilkinson (W. W. Norton / August 2019)

The Catholic School by Edoardo Albinati; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2019)

Thank you to the good folks on Twitter who helped me identify the designer and then the typeface. It turns out the type is “Lydia” from Colophon Foundry — a revival of the Bold Condensed styles of (you guessed it!) Lydian.

Chances Are… by Richard Russo; dsign by Kelly Blair (Knopf / July 2019)

Doxology by Nell Zink; design Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / August 2019)

And you can read a recent interview with Jack about his work at It’s Nice That.

Ether by Evgenia Citkowitz design by Henry Sene Yee (Picador / July 2019)

You can listen to Henry discussing his work with Holly Dunn on the latest Spine podcast.

Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford; design and illustration Beci Kelly (Transworld / August 2019)

The cover of the US edition, which will be published by Scribner in January 2020(!) was designed by Jaya Miceli featuring a collage by Toon Joosen.

Lithium by Walter A. Brown; design by Keith Hayes (W. W. Norton / August 2019)

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / August 2019)

More Noble Than War by Nicholas Blincoe; design by Steve Leard (Constable / August 2019)

This reminded me of Henry’s cover for A Wall in Palestine by René Backman published by Picador in 2010…

The Need by Helen Phillips; design Rachel Willey (Simon & Schuster / July 2019)

I stopped keeping track of ‘flora-intertwined-with-type’ covers a while ago, but this would be a nice addition to that list.

One Giant Leap by Charles Fishman; design by Richard Ljoenes (Simon & Schuster / June 2019)

Our Women on the Ground edited by Zahra Hankir; design by Rosie Palmer; hand lettering by Lily Jones (Harvill Secker / August 2019)

The cover of the US edition published by Penguin was designed by Na Kim.

The Perfect Plan by Bryan Reardon; design by Jason Booher (Dutton / June 2019)

I like this cover a lot, but it is surprisingly un-bonkers for Jason. I would not have guessed he was the designer!

The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán; design by Tree Abraham (Coffee House Press / August 2019)

Tree also designed the cover of the UK edition published by And Other Stories last year. She wrote about the process of designing both covers for Spine not so long ago (they really are doing a better a job of this than me, aren’t they?).

The Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

I think it’s kind of interesting to see these two designs side by side….

Speaking of Summer by Kalisha Buckhanon; design Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / July 2019)

Sadly this image doesn’t quite do justice to just how brilliantly orange this cover is in IRL. And apparently flowery collages are the new thing…

The Western Alienation Merit Badge by Nancy Jo Cullen; design by Michel Vrana (Buckrider Books / May 2019)

Michel has also dusted off his comics publishing endeavour Black Eye Books if you’d like to support him. There is a new book by Jay Stephens planned for next month.

White Flights by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Graywolf / August 2019)

This is one of my favourite covers of the year so far, I think.

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Published July 23, 2019

Book Covers of Note, July 2019

Oof, I am very late with this month’s covers post. I think it’s quite a good one though as these things go…?

Categorically Famous by Guy Davidson; design by Michel Vrana (Stanford University Press / June 2019)

Swishy retro fonts are definitely a ‘thing’ now. In this instance I believe the font is Cabernet JF — an unofficial revival of Benguiat Caslon — which has been mentioned here before. The sans is Futura of course. I rather rashly went on record not so long ago saying Futura is a little overused on university press covers (much to the chagrin of Robert Bringhurst!), but I think it works here.

Come Closer and Listen by Charles Simic; design by Allison Saltzman; art by Jessica Brilli (Ecco / July 2019)

Cruising by Alex Espinoza; design by Robert Bieselen (Unnamed Press / June 2019)

More swishy-swishiness. The positioning of the first “i” in “Cruising” does some work here.

Cults by Herb Lester Associates; design and illustration Brian Rau (Herb Lester Associates / July 2019)

The Dry Heart by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / July 2019)

Pablo also designed the cover of Ginzburg’s Happiness, as Such, also out this month from New Directions.

Happiness, as Such by Natalia Ginzburg; design by Pablo Delcan

Expectation by Anna Hope; design by Jo Thomson (Doubleday / July 2019)

Feel Free by Nick Laird; design by Yang Kim (W.W. Norton / July 2019)

The Fell by Robert Jenkins; design by Jason Anscomb (RedDoor Press / July 2019)

The Great American Cheese War by Paul Flower; design by Dan Mogford (Farrago / June 2019)

(There is probably a post to be had of covers that feature ‘guns’ made of other things. Although I’m struggling to think of any other examples off the top of my head, so maybe I’m thinking of artworks and/or magazine covers? Or just imagining it?)

A Half-Baked Idea by Olivia Potts; design by Helen Crawford-White (Fig Tree / July 2019)

Harbart by Nabarun Bhattacharya; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / June 2019)

Maggie Brown & Others by Peter Orner; design by Lucy Kim (Little, Brown & Co. / July 2019)

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead; design by Oliver Munday (Doubleday / July 2019)

Novacene by James Lovelock; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / July 2019)

Radical Ritual by Neil Shister; design by Sarah Brody (Counterpoint / July 2019)

Say Say Say by Lila Savage; design by Jennifer Carrow (Knopf / July 2019)

The Travelers by Regina Porter; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / July 2019)

The cover of the US edition published by Hogarth last month was designed by Michael Morris.

I would have have a hard time telling you which country these covers came from if I didn’t already know. Using the US spelling “Travelers” on the UK cover confuses the issue, but I don’t think either cover looks particularly American, which is kind of interesting. Michael Morris recently discussed his version with Spine.

Turbulence by David Szalay; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / July 2019)

The cover of the UK edition of Turbulence, published at the end of last year by Jonathan Cape, reminded me of Anne Twomey’s 2015 cover for Munich Airport by Greg Baxter…

Interestingly, the barcode on the front of the UK edition actually works. You can read an interview from earlier this year with designer Rosie Palmer about the UK cover over at Spine.

Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky; design by Janet Hansen; ice rendered by Justin Metz (Knopf / July 2019)

The Weil Conjectures by Karen Olsson; design by Emma Ewbank (Bloomsbury / July 2019)

The cover of the US edition published by FSG this month was designed by Alison Forner and Thomas Colligan, with art by Jessica Halonen.

weil conjectures US design alison forner and thomas colligan art jessica halonen

We Went to the Woods by Caite Dolan-Leach; design by Jaya Miceli (Random House / July 2019)

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Published May 17, 2019

Book Covers of Note, May 2019

Here are this month’s book covers of note.

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane; design by David Litman (Scribner / may 2019)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess; design by Kelly Winton (W.W. Norton / May 2019)

Has anyone done a post on A Clockwork Orange covers over the years? I feel like someone must have.

Crossing by Pajtim Statovci; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / April 2019)

Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2019)

The Ghost Notebooks by Ben Dolnick; design by Stephanie Ross (Vintage / January 2019)

The cover of the hardback edition published last year by Pantheon was designed by Kelly Blair.

The Hypothetical Man by Paul Maliszewski & Ryan Weil; design by Alban Fischer (Trnsfr Books / March 2019)

The Ice House by Tim Clare; design by Leo Nickolls (Canongate / May 2019)

I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman; design by Anna Morrison (Vintage / May 2019)

Land and Forests by Andrew Forbes; design by Megan Fildes (Invisible Books / May 2019)

Life Support by Julia Copus; design by Helen Crawford-White (Head of Zeus / April 2019)

The Man They Wanted Me To Be by Jared Yates Sexton; design by Matt Dorfman (Counterpoint / March 2019)

Matt also designed the cover of Jared Yates Sexton’s previous book The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore.

The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore by Jared Yates Sexton; design by Matt Dorfman (Counterpoint / August 2017)

man they wanted me to be design matt dorfman

Map of Another Town by M.F.K. Fisher; design by Anna Morrison (Daunt Books / May 2019)

Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington; design by Matt Dorfman (W.W. Norton / April 2019)

Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman; design by Oliver Munday (Simon & Schuster / May 2019)

The Unpassing by Chia-Chia Lin; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / May 2019)

The Unwanted by Michael Dobbs; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)

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Tag: oliver munday

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