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Tag: Typography

Published June 21, 2019

Book Covers of Note, June 2019

Apparently it is June already. I’m pretty sure it’s a terrible mistake. 

Here are your book covers of note.


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


Cogito by Victor Dixen; design by Jim Tierney (Collection R / May 2019)

This reminded me of something. I’m not sure exactly what. The best I could up with was Nicole Caputo‘s stripey op-art cover for Liveblog by Megan Boyle, but that’s not it at all… 


The Girl at the Door by Veronica Raimo; design by Julian Humphries (Fourth Estate / June 2019)


The Grand Dark by Richard Kadrey; design by Will Staehle (Harper Voyager / June 2019)


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


The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write by Gregory Orr; design by Jared Oriel (W.W. Norton / June 2019)


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


Norco ’80 by Peter Houlahan; design by Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / June 2019)


November by Jorge Galán; design by Steve Leard (Little, Brown / June 2019)

I’m starting to detect a colour scheme at work here, Steve… ;-) 


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

Are we seeing a trend for close cropped photographs of… arms? (Don’t get me wrong, these are both beautiful photographs / covers.)

Also of note in a compare-and-contrast sort of way, the cover of the UK edition of On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous published by Jonathan Cape was designed by Suzanne Dean:

 


Open Me by Lisa Locascio; design by Kelly Winton; collage by Katrien de Blauwer (Grove / June 2019)


Patsy by Nicole Dennis-Benn; design by Steve Attardo; handlettering by Sarahmay Wilkinson (Liveright / June 2019)


Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh; design by David Curtis (Tor / June 2019)


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


The Sun On My Head by Geovani Martins; design by Clare Skeats (Faber & Faber / June 2019)


The Ungrateful Refugee by Dina Nayeri; design by Christopher Gale (Canongate / May 2019)


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

This reminds me (a little bit) of the Penguin English Library covers art directed by Coralie Bickford-Smith a few years ago:


William S. Burroughs and the Cult of Rock ‘n’ Roll by Casey Rae; design by Matt Avery (University of Texas Press / June 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)


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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Published May 14, 2019

Jon Gray on Designing Book Covers for Zadie Smith

Swing Time by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / November 2016)

It’s Nice That talks to Jon Gray, AKA Gray318, about his design process and working on covers for high-profile authors like Zadie Smith: 

Jon’s covers are not simply aesthetically pleasing; they’re also suitably thoughtful. He always asks for the most text possible from his clients, in order to kickstart his creative process. “I struggle designing without knowing the mood of the book, it’s character,” he says. “I’m not good at fishing in the dark for concepts and I think my best work comes about when it’s rooted in the text.”

But sometimes, he has to make do with very little. Which is why working with gifted authors like Zadie Smith and wonderful editors like Simon Prosser (Zadie’s editor) is such a blessing: “They will send me a great brief that outlines the plot and sets the mood. There will be visual references and often a strong sense of the area that the book should sit, but with plenty of room to experiment.”

He adds that working with high-profile clients is easier than one might think. “People often imagine that designing covers for big authors is going to be harder somehow. It’s true that marketing and sales departments have a big say in the final cover, but generally, if you can make an author and their editor happy, the rest will follow.”

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Published May 3, 2019

Fight the Power with Joy

Theo Inglis, whose book Mid-Century Modern Graphic is published this month, has a lovely post on the AIGA Eye on Design blog about the work of artist, teacher, activist, and designer Corita Kent:

In 1962, Kent saw work by Andy Warhol for the first time, and her aesthetic changed markedly, becoming bolder, flatter, more abstract and brighter, often with saturated, almost fluorescent, colors. Her new style was so successful that it became became known as “nun art,” and was often imitated. Her adherence to the Pop Art aesthetic was well suited to her joyous aims: Kent said she wanted her art to “give people a lift” and help them get “more fun out of life.”

Pop Art’s celebration of the urban everyday also empowered Kent to introduce more quotidian sources into her text works. During the ’60s, she began to incorporate lyrics from pop songs, advertising slogans, and snippets of text seen on signs and packaging into her work, often pairing them with religious text. It was a move that elevated the ordinary to the spiritual, and became a frequent theme in Kent’s art and teaching. She found delight in the commonplace, and believed that the divine could be seen anywhere, even amidst the chaos of the modern city. Kent often took her students on urban expeditions—even day-long trips to gas stations and car lots—armed with cameras and viewfinders.

The largest ever exhibition of Corita Kent’s work in the UK, Corita Kent: Power Up, is currently on display at House of Illustration in King’s Cross until May 12.

Theo’s book is available May 7 from Pavilion Books. 

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Published April 19, 2019

ABCD Award Winners 2019

The winners of the 2019 Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD) Awards were announced earlier this month and, as in previous years, the winners are an eclectic mix of styles. It is always interesting to see the covers that the designers themselves vote for. Only a couple of the winning designs have been featured here before. 

Young Adult


Run, Riot by Nikesh Shukla; design by Michelle Brackenborough (Hodder Children’s Books / June 2018)

Sci-fi/Fantasy


Folk by Zoe Gilbert; design by David Mann (Bloomsbury / July 2018)

Non-fiction


Money by Laura Whateley; design by Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / October 2018)

Series Design

Miriam Toews; design Jonathan Pelham (Faber & Faber / September 2018)

Classics/Reissue


Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier; design by Hannah Wood; embroidery by Hand & Lock (Virago / February 2018)

Children’s 0-5


Helping Hen by Claudia Ripol and Yeonju Yang; design and illustration by Claudia Ripol and Yeonju Yang (Owl and Dog  Books / November 2018)

Children’s 6-12


The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf; design by Thy Bui; illustration by Pippa Curnick  (Orion Children’s Books / July 2018)

Literary Fiction


Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata; design by Luke Bird (Portobello Books / July 2018)

Crime/Thriller


That Old Black Magic by Cathi Unsworth; design by Leo Nickolls (Serpents Tail / March 2018)

Mass Market


When Katie Met Cassidy by Camille Perri; design by Sinem Erkas (Piaktus Books / June 2018)

You can find my previous posts on the ABCD Award winners here: 2018; 2017; 2016; 2015 and 2014.

And while we’re on the subject of awards, the Australian Book Design Association have announced the shortlist for this year’s awards.

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Published April 15, 2019

Book Covers of Note, April 2019

Well, if the sun’s turned cold and the sky’s got black, it must be April!1 Here are this month’s book cover selections… 


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


All Ships Follow Me by Mieke Eerkens; design Henry Sene Yee (Picador USA / April 2019)

Another cover for the Lydian file. (I posted a link to this on Twitter, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned it here — Kaitlyn Tiffany recently wrote a piece on the Lydian phenomenon for Vox if you want to read a bit more about it) 


Feast Your Eyes by Myla Goldberg; design Lauren Peters-Collaer (Scribner / April 2019)


The Flip by Jeffery J. Kripal; design by Tree Abraham (Bellevue Literary Press / March 2019)


Four Words for Friend by Marek Kohn; design by Clare Skeats (Yale University Press / April 2019)

Some lovely type there… Can anyone tell me what the title typeface is please? It seems like a good alternative for our old friend Lydian there…

The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Meara; design by Erin Craig; art by Matt Buck (Hanover Square / March 2019)

Is this the first Harlequin book cover to feature on the site? Possibly… 


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

A couple of bold design decisions here — neither the author name or the subtitle (“The Life and Work of Nelson Algren”) are on the front cover.


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


Notes from a Young Black Chef by Kwame Onwuachi with Joshua David Stein; design by Stephanie Ross; photograph Matt McClain (Knopf / April 2019)


The Other Americans by Laila Lalami; design by Janet Hansen (Pantheon Books / March 2019)


The Mountain that Eats Men by Ander Izagirre; design by Steve Leard (Zed Books / April 2019)


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


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


What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker by Damon Young; design by Sarah Huny Young (Ecco / April 2019)


You Are What You Read by Jodie Jackson; design by Steve Leard (Unbound / April 2019)

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Published March 19, 2019

Munich ’72: The Visual Output of Otl Aicher’s Dept. XI

Munich ’72. The Visual Output of Otl Aicher’s Dept. XI, a book about the design team for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, is currently on Kickstarter. The project is the result of three of years of research and it needs a little help to get it over the finish line, so maybe go take a look?  

(via Under Consideration)

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Published March 18, 2019

Book Covers of Note, March 2019

It’s almost the first day of spring, the snow and ice have just about melted in Toronto (for now!), and everything is still awful, so it must be time for March’s book covers of note! 


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


The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson; design by Helen Crawford-White (Grove / March 2019)


The Bold World by Jodie Patterson; design by Jaya Miceli (Ballantine / January 2019)


Boşluktakiler by Tom McCarthy; design by David Drummond (Jaguar / February 2019)

This is the Turkish edition of Men in Space by Tom McCarthy. I like how the composition and colour palette echo the cover of the US edition published by Vintage, designed by John Gall:

It also reminds of the golden leaf cover for ‘True Faith’ by New Order designed by Peter Saville.  


The Cook by Maylis de Kerangal; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / March 2019)

(I feel like a Freudian could have a field day with this cover.)


Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Lauren Wakefield (Hutchinson / March 2019)  

The cover of the US edition published by Ballantine (I couldn’t find an image without the book club sticker… sorry), was designed by Caroline Teagle Johnson. The book is getting a lot of buzz so I’ve seen both versions of the cover a lot online. It’s a pretty striking photo. I’m curious about where it came from… 

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


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


Good Kids, Bad City by Kyle Swenson; design by Henry Sene Yee (Picador / February 2019)


Halibut on the Moon by David Vann; design by Erin Fitzsimmons (Grove / March 2019)


Heroine by Mindy McGinnis; design by Erin Fitzsimmons (Katherine Tegen Books / March 2019)


I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You by David Chariandy; design by Tree Abraham (Bloomsbury / March 2019)


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


Midnight by Victoria Shorr; design by Sarah-May Wilkinson (Norton / March 2019)

This uses some very fancy metallic stock that you can’t really appreciate from the image.

The type reminded me a little of the cover of a Faber & Faber collection called Sex & Death from a couple of years ago designed by Luke Bird.


The Municipalists by Seth Fried; design by Matt Taylor (Penguin / March 2019)


Rutting Season by Mandeliene Smith; design by Grace Han (Scribner / February 2019)


Unspeakable by Harriet Shawcross; design by Jamie Keenan (Canongate / March 2019)

And sticking with blue-green covers… 


The Wall by John Lanchester; design by Utku Lomlu (Norton / March 2019)

The cover of the UK edition published by Faber & Faber (featured in January’s post) was designed by Alex Kirby:


When Brooklyn was Queer by Hugh Ryan; design by Rob Grom (St. Martin’s Press / March 2019)

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Published February 22, 2019

J.D. Salinger Anniversary Editions Designed by Moker Ontwerp

To mark the 100th birthday of J.D. Salinger, Amsterdam-based design studio Moker Ontwerp were asked by Dutch publisher De Bezige Bij to design brand new covers for four of Salinger’s most famous books.

There are longstanding requirements for J.D. Salinger covers. No photographs or illustrations can be used, and the title should always be above the author’s name and set in bigger type. To break the rigidity of these rules and bring more expressiveness to the design, the studio decided to write all the titles with a brush instead of using a font, while setting the author’s name “as seriously as possible” in stately Roman Capitals.

The results, I think, speak for themselves… 

Thanks to Henk van het Nederend at Moker Ontwerp for letting me know about this project. 

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Published February 14, 2019

Book Covers of Note February 2019

Thanks to the weather cancelling everything, I’m not horrendously late with this month’s covers post!


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


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


Consent by Leo Benedictus; design by Alex kirby (Faber & Faber / February 2019)


The Current by Tim Johnston; design by Pete Garceau (Algonquin / January 2019)

You can read about the icy process behind this cover at Spine Magazine. 


The Far Field by Madhuri Vijay; design by Kelly Winton (Grove / January 2019)


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

I like this jacket a lot, but it’s what’s under it that really caught my eye:

The whole package looks great:


Golden State by Ben H. Winters; design by Gregg Kulick (Mulholland Books / January 2019)

The cover of Ben H. Winters previous novel Underground Airlines, also published by Mulholland Books, was designed by Oliver Munday:

Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters; design by Oliver Munday (Mulholland Books / July 2016)
Golden State by Ben H. Winters; design by Gregg Kulick (Mulholland Books / January 2019)


Good Enough by Jen Petro-Roy; design by Liz Dresner; cover art by art Romy Blümel (Feiwel & Friends / February 2019)


Hold Still by Nina LaCour; design Samira Iravani; cover art by Adams Carvalho (Penguin / February 2019)

This is, of course, the same creative team behind the cover for We Are OK by Nina LaCour:

We Are Okay by Nina Lacour; design by Samira Iravani; illustration by Adams Carvalho (Dutton / February 2017)


Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli; design by Jennifer Carrow (Knopf / February 2019)

The cover for the UK edition of Lost Children Archive, published by Fourth Estate, was designed by Jo Walker: 


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


Never Enough by Judith Grisel; design by Emily Mahon (Doubleday / February 2019)


The Peacock Feast by Lisa Gornick; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2019)


Sick-Note Britain by Adrian Massey; design by Steve Leard (Hurst / February 2019)


Tentacle by Rita Indiana; design by Steve Marsden (And Other Stories / January 2019)


Thick by Tressie McMillan Cotton; design by Oliver Munday (The New Press / January 2019)

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Published January 27, 2019

Book Covers of Note January 2019

Here are this month’s book covers of note. Better late than never I suppose! (And so much for that New Year’s Resolution to better at blogging in 2019!). I’ll be starting on February’s post next week…


Cusp by Josephine Wilson; design by Alissa Dinallo (UWA Publishing / August 2018)

Starting my first 2019 covers post with a book from 2018 is not ideal, is it? Ah well… Take a look at some of the rejected covers on Alissa’s Instagram.   


The Dreamers by Karen Thompson Walker; design by Anna Kochman (Random House / January 2019)


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


Joy Enough by Sarah McColl; design by Catherine Casalino (Liveright / January 2019)


Maid by Stephanie Land; design by Amanda Kain (Hachette / January 2019)

You guys are weird… 

Pretend I’m Dead by Jen Beagin; design by Alex Merto (Scribner / May 2018)

The cover of the UK edition of Maid, published by Trapeze, also features rubber gloves FWIW. Sadly I don’t know who designed it.  


McGlue by Ottessa Moshfegh; design by Ben Denzer (Penguin / January 2019)


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


No! by Charles Nemeth; design by James Paul Jones (Atlantic Books / January 2019)


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

I saw this in a bookstore on a recent visit to the UK. It stood out in a display of new nonfiction. I think it was the doodle-like looseness of the approach that initially caught my eye, but I also like that it feels like a parody of the contemporary nonfiction cover template. 


Old Newgate Road by Keith Scribner; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / January 2019)


An Orchestra of Minorities by Chigozie Obioma; design by Gray318 (Little, Brown & Company / January 2019)

Jon also designed the cover of Chigozie Obioma’s previous novel The Fishermen:

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma; design by Gray318 (Pushkin Press / February 2015)

The cover of the UK edition of An Orchestra of Minorities, published by Little, Brown, was designed by Nico Taylor.

Also in the UK, Pushkin Press have a new edition of The Fishermen with a cover by Anna Morrison:

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma; design by Anna Morrison (Pushkin Press / January 2019)
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma; design by Gray318 (Pushkin Press / February 2015)


Salt On Your Tongue by Charlotte Runcie; design by Gray318 (Canongate / January 2019)


Savage Frontier by Matthew Carr; design by Dan Mogford (Hurst / November 2018)


The Soprano Sessions by Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall; design by Mike McQuade (Abrams / January 2019)


To the River by Don Gillmor; design by Five Seventeen (Random House Canada / December 2018)


The Wall by John Lanchester; design by Alex Kirby (Faber & Faber / January 2019)


The Weight of a Piano by Chris Cander; design by Kelly Blair (Knopf / January 2019)

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Published January 4, 2019

Eye Test

Jeremy Nguyen.

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