Books, Design and Culture
Tom Gauld for the New Scientist.
By weird coincidence this tribute to Ingmar Bergman from the 1981 TV special “The Muppets Go to the Movies” with Beaker as Death also popped up in my timeline this week.
Comments closedI am lost for words in the face of so much tragedy this month, so I am just going to let the covers speak for themselves. Keep safe.
All The Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows by Ray Robertson; design by Jason Arias (Biblioasis / November 2023)
The type is Lithops from Velvetyne Type Foundry.
The Annual Banquet of The Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard; design by John Gall (New Directions / December 2023)
Bathhouse and Other Tanka by Ishii Tatsuhiko; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / November 2023)
The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman; design Nicole Caputo (Catapult / November 2023)
The Dimensions of a Cave by Greg Jackson; design by Kate Jensen / Rodrigo Corral Studio (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / October 2023)
The cover of the UK edition published by Granta was designed by Jamie Keenan.
Dust by Jay Owens; design by Eli Mock (Abrams / November 2023)
Family Meal by Bryan Washington; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / October 2023)
The Future, The Future by Adam Thirlwell; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / October 2023)
Going Infinite by Michael Lewis; design by Pete Garceau (W. W. Norton / October 2023)
Good Men by Arnon Grunberg; design by Anna Jordan (Open Letter / May 2023)
Hope by Andrew Ridker; design by Tyler Comrie (Viking / July 2023)
The Last Bookseller by Gary Goodman; design by Kimberly Glyder (University of Minnesota Press / October 2023)
The Marvels of Youth by Tim Bowling; design by Peter Cocking (Buckrider Books / October 2023)
Menewood by Nicola Griffith; design by Na Kim; art by Anna and Elena Balbusso (MCD / October 2023)
The cover of Hild, the previous book in the series, also features art by the Balbusso twins (design by Charlotte Strick)
Mister Mister by Guy Gunaratne; design by Jack Smyth (Pantheon / October 2023)
Palace of Shadows by Ray Celestin; design by Nathan Burton (Pan Macmillan / October 2023)
Sonic Life by Thurston Moore; design by Michael J. Windsor (Doubleday / October 2024)
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) by Sly Stone; design by Rodrigo Corral (Auwa / October 2023)
Vengeance is Mine by Marie Ndiaye; design by Jack Smyth (Quercus Publishing / October 2023)
The cover of the US edition of Vengeance is Mine, published by Knopf, was designed by Jamie Keenan.
Hey. I hope you’re safe and well and caught up on your podcasts, shows, and TBR pile.
I thought this was going to be a short post this month, and then it turned into a long one — or longer than expected at least. I don’t have too much to add to the covers. I’m busy, you’re busy. It’s almost October, literally no one has time for this! But there are some lovely covers this month. There’s a bit autumnal orange and ennui, some nice type, and a couple of Canadian covers (for those keeping count), and a couple of appropriately off-beat ones from our friends at New Directions.*
American Gun by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / September 2023)
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll; design by Kaitlin Kall (Simon & Schuster / September 2023)
The Circle by Katherena Vermette; design by Jennifer Griffiths; art by KC Adams (Hamish Hamilton Canada / September 2023)
Creep by Myriam Gurba; design by Clay Smith (Avid Reader Press / September 2023)
Disruptions by Steven Millhauser; design by Janet Hansen (Alfred A. Knopf / August 2023)
Fear by Robert Peckham; design by Tom Etherington (Profile / September 2023)
Goth by Lol Tolhurst; design by Timothy O’Donnell (Quercus Publishing / September 2023)
This whole thing is ridiculously in my wheelhouse. The cover photo is by the author (of course!), and there’s a fun note about trying to source the type in Timothy’s Instagram post about the design.
Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
I’m not sure it was the intention, but I like the trippy film title / goth art project quality of this.
How I Won a Nobel Prize by Julius Taranto; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown & Co / September 2023)
The Lights by Ben Lerner; design by David Pearson (Granta / September 2023)
Hopefully you’ve all had chance to listen to David on the Cover Meeting podcast by now. It’s really good!
The cover of the US edition published by FSG was designed by Thom Colligan. It’s interesting that they’re similar and yet different. I wonder if it was brief or just a creative coincidence?
The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / September 2023)
Love the red type on green.
Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova; design by Alex Merto (Zando / March 2023)
This gives me decidedly 1990’s New York publishing vibes.
Starter Villain by John Scalzi; cover art by Tristan Elwell (Tor / September 2023)
This just makes me think of a corporate Behemoth.
Time Without Keys by Ida Vitale; design by Tyler Comrie (New Directions / September 2023)
We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama; design by Mia Kwon; illustration by Grace J Kim (Bloomsbury / September 2023)
This is the paperback cover. Mia also designed the jacket of the hardcover published last year.
Wound by Oksana Vasyakina; design by Nicole Caputo; art by Jenny Barron (Catapult / September 2023)
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright; design by Kate Sinclair; art by Darek Grabus (McClelland & Stewart / September 2023)
I’m sure I’m not the only one to get Edward Hopper vibes from this cover.
The cover of the UK edition was designed by Suzanne Dean with a cover illustration by Anna Morrison.
*A bit of admin from last month: I finally managed to spend some time browsing a bookstore and I was able to ascertain that the cover of the US edition of Bridge by Lauren Beukes was designed by Kirin Diemont. Apologies to Kirin for not crediting her at the time in last month’s post. It’s updated now)
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Cover Meeting is a new book cover design podcast hosted by British designer Steve Leard.
Steve has recorded eight episodes for the first season, with a new episode released each week, and a second season planned for 2024.
The first episode, released earlier this month, is a wide-ranging conversation with David Pearson. David discusses his time at Penguin, working freelance, the issues of low pay in the industry, as well as his design process and the challenges of creating interesting work.
Links to download the podcast can be found here.
Comments closedI hope you’re safe and well wherever you are. What do we have this month? A few British covers for a change, a bit of Canadian content, a couple of indie presses, and even something from a university press, not to mention covers from all the usual suspects. Enjoy!
Anam by André Dao; design by Tiana Dunlop (Pan Macmillan / August 2023)
The Apartment by Ana Menéndez; design by Jaya Miceli (Counterpoint / June 2023)
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2023)
Breaking and Entering by Don Gillmor; design by Michel Vrana; photograph by Joe Cohen (Biblioasis / August 2023)
Bridge by Lauren Beukes; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / August 2023)
Lauren also designed the cover of Afterland by Lauren Beukes which was on my list of notable covers back in 2020.
I like the cover of the US edition of Bridge published by Mulholland Books too. Let me know if you know who designed it and I’ll add in the credit! It was designed by Kirin Diemont.
Caret by Adam Mars-Jones; design by Jonathan Pelham (Faber / August 2023)
Jonny also re-designed the previous books in this series to match. They’re a lovely set that somehow feel very British, and very Faber. They sort of remind me of postwar pub signs and vintage lettering on canal barges. Anyway, I like them a lot.
A Dictator Calls Ismail Kadare; design by Matt Broughton (Vintage / August 2023)
(If anyone at PRH in the UK would like to send me a higher quality image, I’d be happy to replace the not quite sharp one above)
The cover of the US edition of A Dictator Calls, available from Counterpoint next month, was designed by Farjana Yasmin.
Everything / Nothing / Someone by Alice Carriere; design by Strick and WIlliams (Spiegel & Grau / August 2023)
Hangman by Maya Binyam; design by Alex Merto; art by Belkis Ayón (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2023)
Happiness Falls by Angie Kim; design by Cassie Gonzales (Hogarth / August 2023)
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / August 2023)
I love the colour palette of this one. The lettering is fun too.
Learned by Heart by Emma Donoghue; design by Lucy Kim (Little Brown and Company / August 2023)
I wonder if there is a post in book covers with dots? Maybe even one of dots in circle pattern? that might be a bit niche…
Lost Believers by Irina Zhorov; design by Emily Mahon (Scribner / August 2023)
Another nice palette / lettering combo.
Manor on the Viridian Sea by Eleanor P. Sam; design by Dorian Danielsen (Isalea Publishing / August 2023)
My Name is Iris by Brando Skyhorse; design by Richard Ljoenes (Avid Reader Press / August 2023)
Prophet by Helen MacDonald and Sin Blache; design by Dan Mogford; lettering by Martin Naumann (Vintage / August 2023)
Sublunar by Harald Voetmann; design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions / August 2023)
Hilarious,
Trialectic by Peter A. Alces; design by Jenny Volvovski (University of Chicago Press / August 2023)
Triangles are my favourite shape.
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Lit Hub has posted an interesting conversation between designers Pablo Delcan and Jamie Keenan. Nominally it’s a discussion of their respective US and UK covers for Ingrid Robeyns’s Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth, but the best stuff is about the way they work and the job itself.
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Oof. This is a little too on the nose from Roz Chast (for The New Yorker).
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Tom Gauld for The Guardian.
My ‘to be read’ wall feels particularly bad at the moment. I did, however, read an ARC of She’s a Killer by Kirsten McDougall on vacation, which is fun if you like an unreliable narrator who is not quite a genius, but very possibly a sociopath (and has an imaginary friend).
Comments closedSpecial effects designer Adam Savage (Mythbusters) visits the warehouse of The Earl Hayes Press, a prop house that’s been making printed material for Hollywood movies for over hundred years. Fake newspapers, magazines, currency, and product labels all came from their printing presses. Historian and archivist Michael Corrie of YouTube channel Props To History walks Adam through some of the iconic props that originated by the press, including Blade Runner‘s ID badges and, incredibly, the passports and letters of transit from Casablanca. So good.
(via Waxy)
Comments closedEven though it’s still just about July — a supposedly “quiet” month in publishing — I’m running late once again. Hopefully everyone is on vacation and won’t notice that it’s basically August already and I am here sliding in under the wire. There are some great covers this month though. A bit of collage, some really nice typography, and lots of pink and red. Enjoy!
The Absolutes by Molly Dektar; design by Yeon Kim (Mariner / July 2023)
I like this cover a lot, but I’m shamelessly stealing it from Lit Hub’s most recent book cover round-up (a benefit of being last to post!), so I hope the design credit is correct because I couldn’t verify it before posting!
Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen; design by Andrew Walters (Two Lines Press / June 2023)
I had this noted as down as July cover, but the book was actually released in June. The cover of the Two Lines Press edition of Running Through Beijing by Xu Zechen has also been re-designed to match.
The Black Eden by Richard T. Kelly; design by Robbie Porter (Faber & Faber / July 2023)
Cat Prince by Michael Pedersen; design by Gray318 (Little, Brown / July 2023)
Jon’s design for Michael’s previous book Boy Friends, which features an illustration by Nathaniel Russell, was on last year’s notable book cover list.
The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Fernando Pessoa; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / July 2023)
Counterweight by Djuna; design by Tal Goretsky (Pantheon / July 2023)
Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch; design by Emily Mahon; illustration and lettering by Studio Martina Flor (Doubleday / July 2023)
Excavations by Hannah Michell; design by Arsh Raziuddin (One World / July 2023)
This reminded me of the 2017 cover of Smoke by Dan Vyleta designed by Mark Abrams with an illustration by the late Colombian artist Alejandro García Restrepo who passed away last month.
The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt; design by Allison Saltzman (Ecco / July 2023)
Nothing Special by Nicole Flattery; design by Katya Mezhibovskaya (Bloomsbury / July 2023)
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter; design by Natalia Olbinski; art by Angela Faustina (Scribner / July 2023)
I love pretty much everything about this cover.
Screwjack by Hunter S. Thompson; design by Math Monahan (Simon & Schuster / July 2023)
The Sea Elephants by Shastri Akella; design by Dave Litman (Flatiron Books / July 2023)
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; design by Regina Flath (Del Rey Books / July 2023)
I think this delivers just about everything you want from a horror / thriller cover.
Someone Who Isn’t Me by Geoff Rickly; design by Jesse Reed; art by Jesse Draxler (Rose Books / July 2023)
The Stolen Coast by Dwyer Murphy; design by Dave Litman (Viking / July 2023)
A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / July 2023)
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Sergio García Sánchez‘s cover illustration, coloured by his partner Lola Moral, for the recent fiction issue of The New Yorker is lovely.
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