Books, Design and Culture
Tom Gauld for The Guardian.
If I seem to be posting a lot about unread books and to-read piles, it is because I have a lot of unread books and a daunting to-read pile and I feel bad about it.
Comments closedI hope you’re keeping safe and well. Between work trips and sales conference it’s been a few weeks for me, and there are a lot of covers this month, so I am going to stop prattling and let you get straight to the post…
Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace; design by Rodrigo Corral (MCD / May 2024)
Birding by Rose Ruane; design by Charlotte Stroomer; photograph by Kelsey McClellan (Little, Brown / May 2024)
I feel like there was another ice cream book cover recently and that somehow Ben Denzer has manifested this.
Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru; design by John Gall; painting by Chad Wys (Knopf / May 2024)
John Gall also designed the cover of Hari Kunzru’s previous novel Red Pill.
Challenger by Adam Higginbotham; design by Pete Garceau (Avid Reader Press / May 2024)
Coexistence by Billy-Ray Belcourt; design by Kelly Hill (Hamish Hamilton / May 2024)
Dead Animals by Phoebe Stuckes; design by Will Speed (Hodder & Stoughton / April 2024)
Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna; design by Jo Thomson (HarperCollins / May 2024)
Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon; design by Gregg Kulick (Henry Holt / March 2024)
I was trying to think what this cover reminded me of, and then I remembered this.
The Great State of West Florida by Kent Wascom; design by Jeff Miller / Faceout Studio (Grove / May 2024)
Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck; design by John Gall (New Directions / May 2024)
This is the cover of the newly released US paperback. John Gall also designed the cover for the hardback, published by New Directions last year. Author Jenny Erpenbeck and translator Michael Hofmann recently won the 2024 International Booker Prize with Kairos.
Kilworthy Tanner by Jean Marc Ah-Sen; design by David Drummond (Esplanade Books / May 2024)
This composition brings to mind David Pelham’s covers for J. G. Ballard. (On a semi-related note, air-brushed covers are probably overdue a revival. Or is it a dying art now?)
Kittentits by Holly Wilson; design by Eli Mock (Zando / May 2024)
Like Love by Maggie Nelson; design by Suzanne Dean (Vintage / May 2024)
Suzanne Dean also designed the cover of Bluets by Maggie Nelson.
Loneliness & Company by Charlee Dyroff; design by Mia Kwon (Bloomsbury / May 2024)
Love Junkie by Robert Plunket; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / May 2024)
Olive Munday bringing his A game.
Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes by Adrienne Gruber; design by Tree Abraham (Book*hug / May 2024)
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley; design by Alison Forner; typography by Andrew Footit (Avid Reader Press / May 2024)
The Novices of Lerna by Ángel Bonomini; design by Sarah Schulte (Transit Books / May 2024)
Perfume & Pain by Anna Dorn; design by Math Monahan (Simon & Schuster / May 2024)
Just so much pink this month!
The Red Grove by Tessa Fontaine; design by Sara Wood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / May 2024)
The Skunks by FIona Warnick; design by Beth Steidle (Tin House / May 2024)
Supplication by Nour Abi-Nakhoul; design by Emma Dolan (Strange Light / May 2024)
Can anyone tell me who designed the cover of the UK edition of Supplication for Influx Press? I’d love to include it in next month’s round-up when it’s published.
The Z Word by Lindsay King-Miller; design by Andie Reid (Quirk Books / May 2024)
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This, but for my personal art and design projects, and my actual proper job.
(Tom Gauld for The Guardian, obviously. Tom is currently selling some original drawings in his shop if you would like to own one of his masterpieces)
Comments closedCanada Post is celebrating Canadian graphic novels with a set of stamps created by Chester Brown, Michel Rabagliati, Seth, and Jillian Tamaki and Mariko Tamaki.
While Canada Post has previously issued stamps featuring superheroes, it hasn’t specifically showcased the work of contemporary Canadian cartoonists before. These new stamps feature original drawings by each of the artists depicting their best known characters reading the books they’re in.
As a side note, I don’t know how well known Michel Rabagliati is outside of Canada (I’m actually not sure how well known he is in Anglo-Canada either come to that!), but his gentle semi-autobiographical graphic novels are all lovely. They’re beautiful drawn. Paul Moves Out, the first one I read, is a charming look at studying illustration and graphic design in Montreal the 1970s. It was published in English by Drawn & Quarterly back in the day, but it looks like it might be out of print, which would be a shame. Anyway, worth trying to find a copy if you can.
Comments closedHey, I hope you’re safe and well. I’m a little bit ahead of schedule because fall sales conference season is upon us, and I have to be in New York for work next week. I’m less ahead than I would’ve liked — PRINT has already beaten me to the punch! — but here we are, a couple of days earlier than usual, with another look at some new and recent book covers. April is National Poetry Month in the US so there are a few poetry covers in the mix, as well as a couple of covers from independent presses, an Australian cover, and all the usual suspects.
Bones Worth Breaking by David Martinez; design by Alex Merto (MCD / April 2024)
Charlie Hustle by Keith O’Brien; design by Eli Mock (Pantheon / March 2024)
I just like the type and the colour palette here.
Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford; design by Henry Petrides (Faber & Faber / April 2024)
The Curse of Pietro Houdini by Derek B. Miller; design by David Gee (Avid Reader Press / January 2024)
Divided Island by Daniela Tarazona; design by Jack Smyth (Deep Vellum / April 2024)
The Formula by Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg; design by Pete Garceau (Mariner Books / March 2024)
Two nonfiction sports books in one post! Does Formula One really count as a sport? Not for me, Clive. But the subtitle says it is, and a Canadian friend once told me that for something to qualify as a sport it has to endanger your life in some fundamental way, so I guess F1 qualifies under Quebec Rules for Teen Boys if nothing else.
Anyway, it might be fun to do a post of interesting sports books covers at some point if I can find the time (let me know if any great examples come to mind!).
Honey by Victor Lodata; design by Robin Bilardello (Harper / April 2023)
Kill For Me Kill For You by Steve Cavanagh; design by Laywan Kwan (Atria / March 2024)
I feel like this is a bit different for a psychological thriller? I like the type a lot.
Knife by Salman Rushdie; design by Arsh Raziuddin (Random House / April 2024)
Interestingly, there is an “eye” motif on the spine with the Random House logo in the centre. Look for it next time you’re in a bookstore.
Also, this cover isn’t the first to riff, consciously or otherwise, on the cut canvases of Italian artist Lucio Fontana. The cover of Ball by Tara Ison, designed by Kelly Winton, comes to mind. I’m sure there are other examples (David Gee’s unpublished cover for Lolita. Are the more?).
Madness by Antonia Hylton; design by Daniel Benneworth-Gray (Footnote Press / March 2024)
Memory Piece by Lisa Ko; design Grace Han (Riverhead / March 2024)
The Moon That Turns You Back by Hala Alyan; design by Vivian Lopez Rowe (Ecco / March 2024)
The Obscene Bird of Night by José Donoso; design by Joan Wong (New Directions / April 2024)
Prairie Edge by Conor Kerr; design Kate Sinclair (Strange Light / April 2024)
The Roadmap of Loss by Liam Murphy; design by Lisa White (Echo / January 2024)
I don’t post enough Australian cover designs generally, and I’m late to this one, but I like the grunginess of it.
Short War by Lily Meyer; design by Emily Mahon (Strange Object / April 2024)
Sociopath by Patric Gagne; design by Rodrigo Corral (Simon & Schuster / April 2024)
36 Ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem by Nam Le; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / March 2024)
It’s nice to have two big, blocky, black and white type-only covers this month.
Twelve Trees by Daniel Lewis; design by Alison Forner; illustration by Eric Nyquist (Avid Reader / March 2024)
This reminded me of Eric’s illustrations for the covers of Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy designed by Charlotte Strick.
Weird Black Girls by Elwin Cotman; design by Michael Morris (Scribner / April 2024)
(The illustration also looks like something from Area X / the Southern Reach trilogy!)
While We Were Burning by Sara Koffi; design by Vi-An Nguyen (G.P. Putnam’s Sons / April 2024)
With My Back to the World by Victoria Chang; design by Thom Colligan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / April 2024)
You Are Here edited by Ada Limón; design by Mary Austin Speaker; art by Enikő Katalin Eged (Milkweed / April 2024)
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I feel like I’ve posting a lot about to-read piles recently. It’s mostly because I feel guilty for not reading more.
Comic by Errant Science.
Comments closedHello! I hope you’re safe and well wherever you are.
Before we get to the covers, a couple of brief admin things. First up, there have been a couple of behind-the-scenes changes at the CO this past month. They’ve solved a few tech issues for me and hopefully no one else has noticed. Secondly, I’ve been tinkering with the RSS. I’m not sure that’s quite right yet, so apologies if it’s not been working as expected. Let me know if you’re experiencing any weirdness.
I also wanted quickly mention that the deadline for the DPI mentorship scheme has been extended to April 12th. I’m not involved with the DPI, but some really great people are so if you are a designer from an under represented background living in the UK or Ireland, you should think about applying!
Anyway, it’s a really big post this month! The are lots of great covers with the UK, Australia and Canada all represented, as well as the usual folks from US. There are some compare-and-contrasts, a couple of covers from indie presses, a couple of covers for translations, and a couple of poetry covers too. There’s even a meandering digression in the middle (sorry). Enjoy!
Anxiety by Samir Chopra; design by Karl Spurzem (Princeton University Press / March 2024)
Candy Darling by Cynthia Carr; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / March 2024)
Crisis Actor by Declan Ryan; design by Stephanie Cui (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2024)
Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston; design by Nathan Burton (Harper / February 2024)
Free Therapy by Rebecca Ivory; design by Luke Bird (Vintage / March 2024)
Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon; design by Math Monahan (Scribner / March 2024)
So this cover sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. It reminded me of a cover design from a few years ago. It didn’t really look the same but, in my mind at least, this other cover featured a blue-red capsule shape (possibly a stretched illustration of a planet and its core) centred on a white background with black Swiss-style sans serif type. It was not exactly minimalist, but clean and precise. I think I saw it on Twitter back in the day. I thought it was maybe literary sci-fi or pop science, and published by one of the big American imprints. I was also pretty convinced that it was designed by Alex Merto or possibly John Gall. One of the dudes.
This is not the first time I have thought about this cover, and I can, or at least could, picture it quite clearly. The problem is that I can find no evidence of this cover ever existing, and the more I think about, the more the details shift and doubt creeps in. I don’t seem to have posted it anywhere, and I can’t find it in the usual places. It’s possible that I am getting some of the crucial details wrong, mentally combining a couple of covers into one, or it was something other than an actual book cover. But maybe this is some kind of Visual Mandela Effect thing, and this design that I’ve believed existed for years is actually a figment of my imagination.
My search has felt a bit like the online equivalent of walking into a bookstore and asking for the book with the blue cover. It has made realise that we have very few tools to find cover designs in a systematic way, especially since the Book Cover Archive stopped being a going concern. You just kind of have to browse and I hope you eventually look in the right place (or risk slowly lose your sanity).
Anyway, if this mystery cover is ringing any bells with you, please let me know and put me out of my misery. I have been going slightly crazy. (This sort of thing happens more than I care to admit by the way, but it is particularly bad this time! And, no, I do not have much of a life. Why do you ask?)
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel; design by Lynn Buckley; photo by Jenna Garrett (Viking / March 2024)
Two boxing covers in one month…
The History of My Sexuality by Tobi Lakmaker; design by Arneaux (Granta / January 2024)
(Thanks to Jon Gray for helping me with the design credit for this and the other Granta title Three Births below. Publishers: post the design credits with your cover reveals!)
The Hive and the Honey by Paul Yoon; design by Craig Fraser (Simon & Schuster / March 2024)
The cover of the US edition of The Hive and the Honey, published by S & S in October last year, was design by Oliver Munday.
How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone by Cameron Russell; design by Arsh Raziuddin (Random House / March 2024)
I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall; design by Jack Smyth (Soft Skull / February 2024)
Lobster by Hollie McNish; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / March 2024)
The two Jacks
The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu; design by Juliana Lee; art by Justin Metz (Celadon Books / March 2024)
While looking for the other, possibly imaginary, book cover, I came across the cover for the New Directions edition of The Musical Brain by César Aira designed by Rodrigo Corral and Zak Tebbal a few times. It was on one or two best of 2015 lists, including mine.
Is neon-style lettering on covers a bit of thing? (see also Candy Darling above)
No Judgment by Lauren Oyler; design by Tree Abraham (HarperOne / March 2024)
Those curvy “u”s are fun.
The Observable Universe by Heather McCalden; design by Arsh Raziuddin and Gaby Pesqueira Ortiz (Hogarth / March 2024)
Two very nice, poster-like covers from Arsh Raziuddin this month:
Pelican Girls by Julia Malye; design by Joanne O’Neill (Harper / March 2024)
Piglet by Lottie Hazell; design by Jenni Oughton; art by Noah Verrier (Henry Holt / February 2024)
Beci Kelly designed the covers of the UK (left) and Australian (right) editions of Piglet:
Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash; design by Joanne O’Neill (Harper Perennial / March 2024)
And two contrasting covers from Joanne O’Neill too this month:
Sorry for the Inconvenience But This Is an Emergency by Lynne Jones; design by Steve Leard (Hurst / March 2024)
There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib; design by Tyler Comrie; photograph by Matt Eich (Random House / March 2024)
Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk; design by Kaitlin Kall (Dutton / March 2024)
The slightly more gothic cover of the Australia and UK editions of Thirst was designed by Luke Bird. Scribe are publishing it in October.
Three Births by K Patrick; design by David Pearson (Granta / March 2024)
The Understory by Saneh Sangsuk; design by Emily Mahon (Deep Vellum / March 2024)
The cover of the UK edition of The Understory, published by Peirene Press in October last year, was designed by Orlando Lloyd. The illustration is by Miki Lowe.
Your Absence is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson; design by Jason Arias (Biblioasis / March 2024)
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I love this illustration by Klaas Verplancke for the recent ‘Style Issue’ of the New Yorker (which has a fun animated version of the cover on its website).
It works on lots of levels, but it also feels like a bit of nostalgic throwback. People look at their phones these days (although I did see someone with a word search book on the Toronto subway this morning, so some people are keeping it old school at least).
Grid patterns suit the cover of the New Yorker so well though. They work as a representation of Manhattan’s city grid and its skyline, as well as magazine layouts and puzzles. I was reminded me of Sergio García Sánchez’s “Modern Life” cover from a couple of years ago (itself a riff on Piet Mondrian’s New York-inspired painting “Broadway Boogie Woogie“). Chris Ware divided the cover into a comic book (ish) grid during the pandemic too. I’m sure there are more examples. (Grids are good!)
Drew Dernavich for the New Yorker. My to-read pile probably isn’t structurally important, but I wouldn’t pull a book out of the bottom of the stack that’s for sure.
Comments closedI enjoyed Joshua Hunt’s recent New York Times article on the Criterion Collection:
Always in awe of auteurs but never in their thrall, Criterion producers have never been afraid to look beyond the biggest and most marketable names. When Criterion released “Peeping Tom,” a ’60s psychosexual thriller by the English director Michael Powell, the company chose not to ask Scorsese to record the audio commentary, though he would have been the obvious candidate, having done them for other Criterion editions of Powell films. The job instead went to a feminist scholar, Laura Mulvey, the author of the influential essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which brought forward the concept of “the male gaze.” Over the years, such decisions added up to an editorial voice that became influential, even authoritative, transforming a mere distributor of films into a creator of film culture.
There are also some nice details about the look of the collection:
Criterion’s distinctive visual language began to emerge in the early ’90s when [Rebekah] Audic, the former head of design, started building up its art staff with an aim “to really show the power of these films through the cover designs,” she told me. To do that it was sometimes necessary to go through every frame of film in search of the perfect image. Other times, images alone were not enough. “For the cover of ‘RoboCop,’ we had an actual aluminum-cast letterpress plate made and then photographed the plate with a 4-by-5 camera,” Audic says. It took days, she told me, but “using a physical piece of metal gave it a feeling of aesthetic truth.”
I don’t know if the Criterion Designs book, written and edited by Criterion art director Eric Skillman, is still available. It must be 10 years old now (dies) — I didn’t see it on the Criterion website — but there’s a nice piece about it on AIGA’s Eye on Design blog from around the time it came out. There is also a Criterion Designs blog, but it hasn’t been updated for a little while (am I imagining that Eric Skillman had a blog himself once upon a time?).
Oh and as an aside, the illustration for the NYT article is by Ben Denzer, who also designs book covers, and is the creator of Ice Cream Books should you ever need to pair great literature with frozen desserts (and who doesn’t?).
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