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Tag: Penguin

Published November 2, 2009

Monday Miscellany, November 2nd, 2009

Unpublished concept jacket designs by London-based print designer Allan Sommerville for the Penguin’s Bill Bryson books (via Cosas Visuales).

Fonts — This is AWESOME: Wisconsin Public Radio’s To The Best of Our Knowledge talk fonts with Jonathan Hoefler and Tobias Frere-Jones, designers of Gotham, Matthew Carter, designer of Verdana, author Nicholson Baker, Tracy Honn, director of the Silver Buckle Press, and Kitty Burns Florey, author of Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting. Listen NOW.

Many Happy Returns — Author, academic and newspaper columnist John Sutherland (The Boy Who Loved Books) on 30 years of The London Review of Books for The Financial Times:

The LRB front cover logo was “THE LONDON REVIEW of Books” – the last two words being smaller. As the typography signalled, it was the review that mattered as much as the book under review. Articles in the LRB were, and are, long: anything between 2,000 and 5,000 words. On special occasions they can run into the tens of thousands. Rates of pay seemed to me startlingly high: three or four times, in the early years at least, what the TLS paid. Miller personally appeared austerely indifferent to money. I suspect he worked for little or nothing. Nor did rises or falls in circulation appear to trouble him overmuch. Quality was all.

(There’s also a rather lovely addendum about the LRB’s personal columns, so read to the end!).

Somewhere Towards The End — A wonderful essay on editor and author Diana Athill by Ian Jack,former editor of Granta, in The Guardian:

[W]hat held me about the writing was its candour. The quality has since become an Athill trademark, though in itself candour is no guarantee of literary pleasure or interest: frank books aren’t always good books and can often be tedious by boasting of their frankness. Athill’s way of being candid is more subtle and its effect more persuasive… Part of this comes from her considerable gift as a maker of sentences, which are so lucid and direct; some of it is owed to the breaking of taboos that then surrounded female sexual behaviour; most of it, though, stems from her triumphant struggle to “get it right”, a lesson she learned from two of the writers she edited. Rhys told her that the trick of good writing was “to get it as it was, as it really was”. Naipaul said that “provided you really get it right, the reader will understand”.

The Internationalist — An all too short interview with Penguin Canada’s David Davidar, who was recently appointed CEO of Penguin’s new division Penguin International, in the Globe and Mail.

And finally… I do love Tom Gauld:

eric gills busy day

(More on Eric Gill)

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Published October 29, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, October 28th, 2009

(The always awesome) FaceOut Books talks to Argentinian designer Juan Pablo Cambariere.

In the interview Juan Pablo mentions Alejandro Ros, “probably the greatest contemporary Argentinean designer”.

Alejandro Ros’ website — like his book design — is lovely, but it’s all Flash so you’re just going have to take a look for yourself…

The Creative Review‘s second extract from Penguin by Illustrators is the text of the presentation made by artist, engraver, illustrator and designer David Gentleman.

The first extract (mentioned here) was the text of a presentation given by Romek Marber.

It’s in the Retelling — Booker winner Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, on historical fiction in The Guardian:

A novelist doesn’t sit at the keyboard sucking her thumb, thinking “what next?” A novel arrives whether you want it or not. After months or years of silent travel by night, it squats like an illegal immigrant at Calais, glowering and plotting, thinking of a thousand ways to gain a foothold. It’s useless to try to keep it out. It’s smarter than you are. It’s upon you before you’ve seen its face, and has set up in business and bought a house.

And finally…

Some lovely identity design for the McNally Jackson in NYC by Christine Celic Strohl and Eric Janssen Strohl (via DesignWorkLife). Interesting enough Eric Janssen Strohl also designs books and beautiful colophons (and again, Eric’s site is Flash and so you’re going to have take look yourself)…

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Published October 12, 2009

Missed Things: Monday

I was talking about Romek Marber right before I left the building, so it seems appropriate to get things started with him too…

In an extract from a new book called Penguin by Illustrators, the Creative Review reprints the full text of the presentation made by Marber to the Penguin Collectors Society in 2007:

Much has been made of the grid; it has even been labelled ‘the Marber grid’. I believe that the pictures for the initial twenty covers, played an important part in forging the identity of the Crime series. The grid was important as the rational element of control. The consistency of the pictures contributed, as much as the grid, to the unity of the covers, and the dark shadowy photography gave the covers a feel of crime.

And on a related note, idsgn profiles Gill Sans, the ‘Helvetica of England’ which was used by Edward Young on the early Penguin paperbacks (Marber switched to Akzidenz Grotesk if memory serves…).

Coaxing — Ron Charles, Deputy Editor of the Washington Post’s Book World, interviewed in Bookslut:

The number of books keeps rising, as far as I can tell. The number of readers is stable or stagnant or even declining. When you look at the amount of space we spend covering television… I’m not criticizing my own paper, I’m criticizing my own industry. Who needs help watching TV? Reviews of television shows, I shake my head; I can figure out if I want to watch The Office or Curb Your Enthusiasm all by myself. But help me find a good novel, in this enormous stack of books at the book store. That’s a real service.

You can also follow (the surprisingly candid) Ron Charles on Twitter.

Meanwhile, Publishing Trends looks at Book Reviews, Revamped.

Correspondence — Eric Hanson, author of A Book of Ages, commemorates the 60th anniversary of the letter that inspired the lovely 84, Charing Cross Road (via The Second Pass).

If any of you haven’t read 84 Charing Cross Road, please go do so now…

The Billy bookcase turns 30 — Lucy Mangan celebrates in The Guardian.

And lastly…

I’ve linked here before on several occasions, but I just wanted to mention the all around awesomeness that is A Journey Round My Skull. Recent posts include BLICKFANG — The Eye-Catching Covers of Weimar Berlin and Thirty More Book Covers From Poland.

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Published September 23, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, September 23rd 2009

It’s funny how topics of conversation sometimes repeat themselves for no apparent reason. This week Romek Marber and his designs for Penguin have come up with sufficient frequency for me to take it as a sign I should post some links about about him:

Eye Magazine has a great article about his classic design of Penguin Crime Series:

Marber’s grid allows for different placements of title and author’s name depending on the length of the title and the needs of the design as a whole. There are small inconsistencies in some of the vertical measurements on a few of the books, probably due to printer’s error, but the basic design is sufficiently robust that it does not matter… With the typographic structure in place, Marber could concentrate on producing images that reflected the atmosphere of the books, which he read with relish from cover to cover. He was a graphic image-maker of great versatility, able to sum up the stories with motifs and ciphers that contrived to be both playful and threatening. Many of these whodunnits were decades old, but his interpretations gave them a contemporary allure.

The Ministry of Type shows you how to construct the famous Marber grid.

Apt Studio have a Marber WordPress theme (demo). Are any literary blogs using this I wonder?

And there’s this great Flickr set of Romek Marber Crime Covers.

Please let me know if you have any other good Marber links…

In other news…

The Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator 2000 by David Malki (via INDEX // mb).

The Awesomeness Manifesto — I’m a little skeptical about these kinds of manifestos simply because they’re not terribly useful, but Umair Haque’s list is as interesting for its criticism about the chimera that is ‘innovation’ as for what is says about the warm and fuzzy  ‘awesomeness’.

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Published September 21, 2009

Q & A with Paul Buckley, Penguin US 

Photo by Erika Larsen. Design by Paul Buckley

It is not every day that I get an email from the Vice President Executive Creative Director of Penguin US, so it was something of a surprise when Paul Buckley sent me a note a few weeks ago about a book cover design mentioned in my interview with his wife Ingsu Liu.

I had been conspicuously unable to locate the image online and Paul was able to help. But it seemed like too good an opportunity to miss, so I asked the Brooklyn-based designer if he would be willing to do a Q & A about his work as well. Again, much to my surprise, not only did Paul say yes, he managed get his answers back to me in record time (with annotations and links included!)…

Of Mice and Men

How did you come to book design?

I went to SVA on an illustration scholarship, and was very intent on becoming an illustrator. While other parents were giving their kids children’s books, my father was giving me illustration annuals. But I supported myself during my college years working for various NYC design studios as a designer, learning through those around me… and at the same time pursuing freelance illustration assignments as well – basically learning both crafts simultaneously through different venues. Right after graduation I took a 3 month road trip spending my savings, and thus came home to Greenpoint needing an income. A studio manager at one of the studios I worked in during my early college years suggested me to her sister who was working at NAL/Plume/Dutton, as they needed a Junior Designer… I landed the position with a portfolio that was equal parts design and illustration. Though in the beginning I was very hardcore about becoming the best painter I could be, I quickly fell in love with designing book covers and never looked back… within two years we merged with Penguin. Though I’ve become far too busy (and lazy!) to pull out the oils and actually paint something, I did manage to get a few simple ink drawings in the Society of Illustrators this year. I realize these will pale in comparison to 99% of everything else done by the true working pros in the annual, but it was still a kick and an honor to have my work chosen for inclusion.

The World According to Garp

Can you describe your role at Penguin?

I act as a Creative Director overseeing a sizeable staff and many many projects. My Penguin publishing team is very open to me and my guys pitching ideas and we nicely act as an overall creative team, in a way that editorial and art together collaborate to create nice projects — most recently I’m directing a cover design book where we have the authors commenting on their covers, and a new series named Penguin Ink, where the world’s leading tattoo artist’s do covers for me. Recently in the stores is the gorgeous collaboration of Roseanne Serra with Ruben Toledo… this was all Roseanne’s brilliant art direction, and I had nothing to do with it — but it is gorgeous Penguin project that is very much worth checking out.

Art by Duke Riley
Waiting for the BarbariansArt by Chris Conn

How many imprints do you oversee?

Six

Does each imprint have a particular design style?

Yes, each imprint is very unique unto itself, as each Publisher/Editorial team brings their own style, as does each Art Director. In my group, Roseanne Serra and I collaborate on Penguin paperbacks, and to a lesser degree, with the Viking imprint as well. Roseanne art directs Pam Dorman books. Joe Perez smartly art directs Portfolio and Sentinel, which are brilliant business and political imprints. Darren Haggar art directs Penguin Press overseeing the packaging for literary giants like Thomas Pynchon and Zadie Smith… and while not it’s own imprint per se, Maggie Payette Art Directs our gorgeous poetry series.

The Jan Tschichold Penguin paperbacks are design icons in the UK. Is there a sense of that legacy within Penguin Group USA?

Very much so. We all have quite a few Tschichold books on our shelves. The UK Penguin art department, under the Art Direction of Jim Stoddart and John Hamilton, does an incredibly beautiful job of keeping that legacy alive.

How is American book cover design different from the UK?

I don’t know that it is all that different. In fact, Art Directors over here, and Art Directors over there, are hiring the same art and design talents on each side of the Atlantic.

Do you discern any current trends in American book cover design? Yes… very nicely a resurgence of designers and illustrators who do both the design and illustration; the whole package. Jaya Miceli, Chris Brand, Jon Gray, Gregg Kulick, Jamie Keenan, Rodrigo Corral, Ben Wiseman, Jennifer Wang, Tal Goretsky, etc – these are the folks creating the personally unique covers of today that will be the design icons of tomorrow.

Art by Chris Ware

How did the Penguin Graphic Classics come about?

We do a handful of what we call Penguin Graphic Classics Deluxe packages every list, and when it was time do one for Voltaire’s Candide, I handed it off to Helen Yentus who was in my group at the time. Helen wanted to work with Chris Ware on it, and off it went with us all happy that he accepted the assignment. When Chris’s sketch came in, it just sort of blew everyone away… Up to that point we’d never had anyone grab editorial control of a cover that way… Chris had gone hog wild and wrote all his own copy and illustrated and designed the living hell out of every square inch of this cover from flap to flap. It took forever to make its way around the packaging meeting table with everyone grabbing hold of it, reading it and laughing out loud. A short time later, our Penguin Publisher Kathryn Court declared that we needed to do more of these. Kathryn really nurtures good art and design and is one of the reasons I’ve been here so long.

Cover by Tomer Hanuka with design by Paul Buckley and Tomer Hanuka


Art by Anders Nilsen
Art by Charles Burns
Art by Roz Chast

How did you match the artists with the titles?

The titles were given to us by the Penguin Classics editorial team, and Helen and I would sit in my office surrounded by comic books and simply have fun matching this artist with that title.

Art by Michael Cho. Design by Paul Buckley

Are their plans to expand the series? What new covers can we look forward to in the future?

We do about 6 a year and I think we are all comfortable with that number at the moment. I just finished White Noise with Michael Cho… Moby Dick by Tony Millionaire just came out, as did Huck Finn by Lilli Carré, and Ethan Frome by Jeffrey Brown. In the near future, I’d really love to do something with Jim Rugg, Jeff Lemire, Mike Mignola, David Small, and I still hold out hope that one day Crumb will actually say to me “damnit you pesky bastard… ok, ok, I’ll do it”.

Art by Tony Millionaire


Art by Lilli Carre. Design by Paul Buckley

Do you still design yourself?

All the time… mostly in the evenings after everyone has gone home and I can focus without the constant distractions of the work day. My greatest hits are posted on my website.

 
Art by David Byrne. Design by Paul Buckley. 
Pigmented foil stamped on linen cloth
Art by Will Eisner. Design by Paul Buckley. 
Art direction by Ingsu Liu & Albert Tang
 Photo by Fredrik Broden. Design by Paul Buckley

Could you describe your design process?

I start each project with the hope that I’m going to do something unusual; and then I try my best to do just that — read the material and find a visually unique way to interpret it. I tend to go either very loud, or very subdued and moody. I do a ton of comps for every cover I work on — sometimes, 20 or more to explore what I’m thinking and all the tangents that come along during the process — I get nuts when freelancers send me two or three comps. I’ll show 3-5 of what I think are the best and receive comments and direction on those from editorial… when discussing why a designer did this or that, I think what people commenting on book covers seem to gloss over is that the publishers and editors have far more at stake than the cover designer — they have committed sums of money and must answer to the house and the author to make this book a success — so they are very strong about what they think the cover should be and nothing is being printed without their full consent.

Here are a few rejects from the pile… I’m not saying these covers are better for the individual book, than what got printed… maybe the books would have tanked with these covers… but they do illustrate how in-house visions do not always sync:

Upper left: art by Paul Buckley. Upper right: various stock.
Lower Left: art by Amy Bennett with descending placards by Paul Buckley.
Lower Right: painting by Keniche Hoshine with added stock image.
(see final cover here)
Various antique endpapers combined with altered ebay images
and antique portrait of feral child.
(see final cover here)

Do you approach fiction and non-fiction differently?

Often, yes. Fiction needs a more peripheral approach where I’m looking to capture a mood to reflect the book’s tone, whereas non-fiction often needs you to stare it directly face on and state precisely what the topic is.

What are your favourite books to work on?

Any title where the Editor and Publisher are open.

What are the most challenging?

Any title where the Editor and Publisher are nervous.

Where do you look for inspiration?

Everywhere. My staff blows me away daily. My wife shows me beautiful work constantly. Editors show me stuff. Blogs like yours so nicely showcase how much great work is out there. Friends deluge my inbox with artist links. Illustrators. Photographers. Fine Artists. Music. Furniture. All talent is inspiring. Cruising Flickr and the web in general has me bookmarking new people daily, and I can spend hours google imaging the most absurd things that always tangent me to the greatest places. I found and purchased an image for a difficult book cover project recently just because I decided to google “leucistic squirrel” after I noticed a few in Prospect Park. I have no idea how we all existed before the internet.

What do you look for in a designer’s portfolio?

A unique talent. Distinction.

Front cover art by Frank Miller. Design by Paul Buckley

What does the future hold for book cover design?

There will be a market that just wants/needs to download the material for reading purposes, and there will be a market that is looking for an object. What Penguin does with the Graphic Classics is a great example– some student will download Gravity’s Rainbow cheaply, while an older Thomas Pynchon or Frank Miller fan with a little more cash in their pocket will want the beautiful book/object. So I believe the cover design market will shrink in that way. Textbooks and travel guides will go digital first as there is no real reason to carry all that in your backpack or pay for all that book production. For digital readers, big budget fiction and non fiction titles will have moving covers, more like mini movie trailers. If Grisham were still with us, his future digital reader cover would be something akin to us looking at a murky black screen… the reader would hear running footsteps and ragged breathing… then a loud shot rings out, and a big red splotch hits your screen and drips to form the title type. Then one blurb after another flies across the screen and after a moment Grisham himself pops up in the corner thanking you for purchasing his new book and asking if you’d like to peruse his backlist titles… and click this link if you’d like to pay an extra dollar to help our troops in North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan or Iraq. Interior-wise, there will be tons of product placement… not necessarily for gratuitous reasons; but because people, places and things are mentioned on every page in every book be it fiction or non fiction; and if folks desire a more interactive read that really helps them get into the book in a different way, then it’s possible there will be quick jump links to everything – for instance… if in this book, the character is having lunch in Balthazar and then running off to the Standard Hotel for an ongoing affair… then why not have Balthazar and The Standard pay a small fee to the publisher to provide these links; this seemingly free advertising? Big money to had there. I reserve judgement as to whether any of this is a good thing or a bad thing… but as publishing goes more digital, I think it’s naive to think these things wont happen to books just as they happen everywhere else.

Thank you very much!

You bet.

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Published September 18, 2009

Something for the Weekend, September 18th, 2009


Bring the Noise — Toronto illustrator Michael Cho (known locally for his much-loved signage for the now defunct Pages Books & Magazines on Queen Street) discusses his jacket art for the Penguin Graphic Classics edition of Don Delillo’s White Noise.

I ‘m very happy to hear that D+Q are publishing a ‘petit livre’, Backalley Drawings, by Michael next year.

And watch this space for an awesome Q & A with Paul Buckley, the art director of the Penguin Graphic Classics series (coming soon!)…

But Is It Type? — Design educator Ellen Lupton on the difference between lettering and typography for Print Magazine:

I subscribe to the rather rigid theory that typography is about readymade, reproducible families of letterforms. Vernacular hot-dog signs, handwritten wedding invitations, and space-age logos aren’t typography…

Perhaps my quibble is an old one: you just can’t view real typography online. Beautifully printed books and magazines are still the best resource for designers who want to know what’s happening in their field. Yet the design discourse is unfolding in real time on the web, and this is where students and young designers go to participate and be inspired.

And while were on the subject of typography, I thought — as a bungling amateur — that Brian Hoff’s post 10 Common Typography Mistakes was useful. Although I like to think I was surprising good at Cheese or Font (for what it’s worth).

Publish Local — An interesting list from The Task Newsletter (via REFERENCE LIBRARY). Would this work for book publishing?:

  1. Find what’s missing
  2. Work in the gaps
  3. Figure it out together
  4. Make it visible
  5. Make it viable
  6. Research and plan
  7. Expand existing systems
  8. Plan transparently
  9. Start small
  10. Commit to it
  11. Learn about your local flora
  12. Don’t get permission
  13. Print what you’ve got
  14. Make positive spaces.
  15. Find funding

And lastly, I just had to post this…

London Shopping Guide — Revised second edition from 1977, cover design by John Carrod, seen at Covers etc on Flickr.

Two design classics in one: Penguin paperbacks and Harry Beck’s tube map. What more could you ask for?

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Published September 15, 2009

Q & A with Coralie Bickford-Smith, Penguin Press

Coralie Bickford-Smith was one of the first book designers I mentioned on The Casual Optimist and her distinctive cover designs have featured regularly ever since.

While Coralie’s work for Penguin clearly draws inspiration from the Arts & Crafts Movement and British inter-war illustration and design, it never seems trite or conventional. There is always an asymmetry, angle, pattern, or colour combination that gives it an unexpected twist that lifts it out of the ordinary. Her covers for Penguin’s ‘Gothic Reds’, for example, are amongst the most brilliantly stark, original, off-kilter and unsettling covers of recent memory.

It almost goes without saying that I am thrilled that Coralie agreed to an interview, and I’m using it as a shameless excuse to post a lot of images of her work.

When did you decide to become  a designer?

I don’t remember when I heard the term designer for what I wanted to do and it all became clear, but I spent my childhood collecting stamps, letraset, calligraphy nibs, books and making my own edition of the dictionary. All that made a lot of sense once I started studying design at university.

What is your role at Penguin,  and where did you work previously?

I’m a senior cover designer for Penguin Press, which publishes Penguin’s classic fiction list as well as non-fiction titles in science, philosophy, history, etc. Before I started at Penguin I worked in various jobs designing whole books, magazines and instore promotions for supermarkets. It was not until a started at Penguin that I settled down and really started to feel creatively fulfilled.

Do you work on particular  imprints?

At Penguin Press we have a number of imprints: Allen Lane, Particular Books, Penguin Classics, Modern Classics, Red Classics and Penguin Paperbacks. Our art department shares the titles around so we get to work on different projects and designers are not tied to one imprint.

Penguin is synonymous with British book design. Is there a sense of that legacy within Penguin  itself?

Absolutely, it’s great to work for a publisher with such a rich design heritage. The responsibility to live up to that can be quite daunting at times, but you just have to get on with what you do and enjoy it, otherwise it would get paralysing. The reputation means that design is valued within the company, which gives the designers a stronger voice. Not that we get carte blanche — sales and marketing obviously have their say — but there isn’t always the decision to play it safe, we’re given a bit more rope to take some risks and hopefully push things further. So we get to have a lot of fun with design and feel listened to and respected.

Could you describe your  design process for book covers?

The first stage of every new cover is nerves and self-doubt: can I do something interesting, visually smart and get across the fundamental nature of the book and help it sell? Nightmare. So I get reading and then try to throw away all my concerns and fears and start getting stuff down on the page, sketching on paper and working things out on the computer. Usually that means trying out a lot of rubbish and having to trust that eventually something will emerge from the process that works. When that happens I can breathe a short sigh of relief and then get on with developing and refining until the cover is finished.

Your work often incorporates  traditional Arts and Craft elements like ornamentation, illustration,  and hand-drawn type. Is this something you strive for or is it dictated  by the nature of the projects?

I suppose those elements are close to being obsessions of mine — I was heavily into William Blake and William Morris as a child. Some projects have quite open briefs so I can pursue a particular vision — the first of my hardback classics grew out of a fascination with Victorian book bindings, which inspired me to experiment with foil-stamped cloth bindings. Other times there will be an element in the brief — illustration for the Boys’ Adventure series for example — that I latch on to and try to get the most out of, with lots of period research and careful commissioning. A lot of the hand-drawn type on my books is commissioned — Stephen Raw is great at period type — but I’d like to develop my own skills in that area as well. John Gray is a constant source of inspiration, the energy in his hand-drawn type is incredible.

What are your favourite  books to work on?

I would say the cloth classics right now. I really enjoy the process of getting the best colour combinations and the feel of the end result in my hands. Representing classic literature through patterns is fun there is so much to go on within the text. Life only doing these would be dull though, so I like that I get to work on a variety of titles. I like that there’s always another area in which to push myself as a designer. I think its coming up with concepts I like best. The rush of the moment where you show it to someone and they get it. When you feel that you know you have got it right.

What are the most challenging?

They’re all challenging at the start, when I think I might make a hash of this one. Conceptual covers for non-fiction can be quite a challenge — especially when there’s a late change to the title or subtitle that makes a great design suddenly redundant. It can be hard scrapping a cover I’ve become attached to and has been approved. I just have take a deep breath and remind myself that the cover is there to serve the book and not the other way around…

How is designing for a series  different for designing an individual cover?

As you would expect, it’s a more intense process. I always have to have rules that will work across the series, from colour usage to typography. There are often period-specific elements that have to researched and backed up. It there’s a grid it has to work across the whole series and not get tired and boring. It’s a longer process, and the energy and attention to detail has to be maintained to the end. With individual covers its a bit more organic as you won’t have to pay down the line for decisions that might create difficulties if spun out into a series. If it works it works and once you’ve got it you move on.

Do have a favourite set  from your recent designs?

Again it has to be the cloth classics as they sit so satisfyingly on the shelf as a set. I tend to pick my work apart after each series is finished and make notes about what I would do next time and how I can improve on the way I approach the typography and the images, well all of it really. I think designers are harsh critics of their own work; there’s a dissatisfaction that motivates us to keep producing new stuff, new approaches.

Where do look for inspiration  and who are some of your design heroes?

The internet is a huge and readily accessible resource. I can spend ages going from site to site just soaking up inspiration. I like to collect objects that I see in junk shops/ebay/charity shops. Bookshops too of course – I really enjoy the Oxfam book shops, so many gems to be found. As for design heroes, there are many. The Williams I mentioned earlier — Blake and Morris. Then there’s so much inspiration in the Penguin back catalogue, form people like Romek Marber and Alan Aldridge. In current book design, John Gray and David Pearson often come up with things that make me think wow, look what you’ve done, that’s amazing. There are also many outside of the book world I admire, such as Orla Kiely. I love her use of colours, and also the 70’s vibe. I have a thing for 70’s orange plastic, and her stuff reminds me of that, its really comforting.

What does the future hold  for book cover design?

Covers are still a lot of the time the only piece of marketing material to attract the customer so I don’t think that is going anywhere fast. We might go through a wave of utter tripe as everyone gets all excited about 3D or animated covers, and the novelty of technology takes precedence over good design. Electronic books are inevitably going to impact physical publishing, but the printed book is a very successful technology in its own right and I don’t think it will be entirely displaced. For all the advantages of ebooks — portability, interactivity, production and distribution savings — there’s something potent about the physical object that will always have a strong appeal. I like to think that as the volume of physical books declines, the average quality of the design will increase, because books will have to work harder to justify their physical presence.

Thanks Coralie!

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Published August 19, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, August 19th, 2009

‘The 100 Best Comic Book Covers’ Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 at Kelly Thompson’s 1979 Semi-Finalist blog. I am not a comics nerd (believe that if you will), but there’s some great stuff (new and old) in this epic list…

Open to Question — The New York Times reports on Sony’s decision adopt the “open standard” ePub format for all their digital books. This means that “books bought from Sony’s online store will be readable not just on its own device but on the growing constellation of other readers that support ePub”. Progress of sorts I would say, but before you break out the bunting, David Rothman questions how “open” this format actually is at TeleRead.

Book Design on Twitter — Ben at the Book Cover Archive has posted a list of book designers who Tweet.

Ben’s list was also a nice reminder to mention  Jennifer Tribe‘s amazing directory of book industry people on Twitter.

Book Worship —  Shawn Hazen’s blog cataloging “graphically interesting, but otherwise uncollectible, books that entered and exited bookstores quietly in the 50s, 60s, and 70s.” Lovely (via Book Cover Archive blog).

Penguin Symbols — I know I just mentioned designer David Pearson’s Flickr the other day, but how fantastic is this? “An investigation by Production Manager Hans Schmoller into the origins and usage of Penguin devices”

And speaking of Penguin…

Covers And That — Jim Stoddart, Art Director of Penguin Press, discusses their book cover process and looks at some of the new covers for book released this month:

Each cover may face a wide range of hurdles and conflicting opinions, this is the very nature of book covers. Good designers tend to be very focussed and resiliant, and the value of a good sense of humour cannot be underestimated. As with most design jobs there is a balance of concept, craftsmanship and time dexterity required. Any number of changes to the brief may occur even once the design is finished. But in Penguin Press it is widely appreciated that the more a cover is ‘tweaked’ by a committee the less chance there is of retaining that original spark that we all know helps a book stand out in a world where thousands of books are vying for attention.

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Published August 14, 2009

David Pearson’s Flickr

Print designer David Pearson‘s Flickr stream has all the new additions to Penguin’s Great Ideas series, but also his abstract covers for Éditions Zulma, including this one for Pierre Albert-Birot’s Mon Ami Kronos (via the BCA).

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Published August 12, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, August 12th, 2009

Typographic book covers by Ed Cornish for the 2009 D&AD student award brief for typography (via We Made This).

Tools of the Trade — The Montreal Gazette talks to Hugh McGuire about Book Oven and the new self-publishing landscape:

Call it Self-publishing 2.0. And it’s one of the fastest-growing sectors of the book world, which is itself enjoying a nice growth period despite the recession and the glut of competing media choices.

“Like in any other media, when you the make tools of publishing easy, people will take advantage of it,” said Hugh McGuire, founder of Montreal self-publishing start-up Book Oven. “It’s just now coming into public consciousness.”

It is troubling however that the photograph accompanying the article suggests that Hugh only rents the top-half of his office space!

Richard Green’s redesigns for ten of Penguin’s classic romance thrillers seen at Noisy Decent Graphics.

Dirty Stories — Eric Reynolds, Marketing Director for the Seattle-based art comics publisher Fantagraphics, interviewed in PW:

The book industry has been in a state of flux for at least a year or two years. I think that’s going to continue as everyone adapts to the larger challenges that print media is facing, and that’s going to affect anybody that publishes in print. It comes down to electronic delivery and the shrinking book market in general and just how you navigate these sorts of things… Without making it sounds like we’re totally awesome, we face the same problems that any understaffed, under-funded company does, but we’re streamlined, and there’s not a lot of fat to be cut.

Ornament — Doug Clouse and Angela Voulangas, authors of The Handy Book of Artistic Printing (published by Princeton Architectural Press), have created a nice website and blog for their book about letterpress type.

(I do love this book, but for the sake of full disclosure I should stress that PAPress are distributed in Canada by my employer Raincoast Books).

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Published August 7, 2009

Something For The Weekend, August 7th, 2009

Winnie and Wolf — cover design by Alex Camlin (the chap behind that rather wonderful Harvard Review overhaul). I’m hoping to speak to Alex for the designer Q & A series later this month.

And just while were on the subject, Caustic Cover Critic looks at the new designs for the Penguin World War II Collection.

In Search of Lost Time — David L. Ulin, Book Editor of the LA Times, on the lost art of reading:

Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. Why? Because of the illusion that illumination is based on speed, that it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time.

Here we have my reading problem in a nutshell, for books insist we take the opposite position, that we immerse, slow down… Yet there is time, if we want it. Contemplation is not only possible but necessary, especially in light of all the overload.

But, if you sympathize with this perspective be warned: you are weak and you just don’t love books enough (and you’re probably a calcified narcissist).

Talking Books — I don’t agree with everything here (OK I actually disagree with a lot of it and, I’m sorry, describing the Globe & Mail as “daring” is just  delusional), but Ian Brown, writer, arts journalist and broadcaster has some interesting things to say about Canadian literature and culture in a sprawling interview over at Conversations in the Book Trade:

[T]he novel is no longer the prime example of literature. Nor does it need to be. Too much attention can ossify a genre. If anything is in trouble, it’s literary fiction–but again, only because there are so many alternative ways to consume good writing these days. The book itself is a fantastic technology, but literary fiction has some serious competition for my attention.

And as this has been something of slow week, and because I was chatting about it with book designer Jason Gabbert on Twitter (who is responsible for the lovely C.S. Lewis redesigns above), I’m just going to take this opportunity to (re)plug my image library on Image Spark and (while I’m at it) my slightly stream-of-consciousness inspiration blog The Accidental Optimist.

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Published July 29, 2009

Midweek Miscellany, July 29th, 2009

Geometric books covers at Design Daily.

The Debate That Will Not Die — Mike Shatkin weighs in on DRM and tries to find that elusive middle-ground. The discussion continues into the comments (of course)…

Unputdownable — A nice ad campaign by Saatchi & Saatchi for Penguin Books in Malaysia (via The 26th Story).

Great Ideas — The Caustic Cover Critic looks at the covers for all 20 of the new additions to Penguin’s Great Ideas series. Some fantastic typographic stuff here as you might imagine, although — to be honest — I think there are one or two weaker entries in this round and the purple motif works better for some books than others…

A New Page — (Much linked to elsewhere, but in case you missed it) Nicholson Baker’s meticulous vivisection (or “epic takedown” if you prefer) of the Kindle in The New Yorker:

The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The problem was that the screen was gray. And it wasn’t just gray; it was a greenish, sickly gray. A postmortem gray. The resizable typeface, Monotype Caecilia, appeared as a darker gray. Dark gray on paler greenish gray was the palette of the Amazon Kindle.

This was what they were calling e-paper?

And if you can’t get enough of that Kindlenfreude feeling…

David L. Ulin, book editor  The LA Times, weighs in on Amazon’s troubling reach.

Niches — Richard Nash, formerly of Soft Skull Press, talks about his new community-based venture, tentatively called ‘Cursor’, in Publishers Weekly.

And finally…

A Journey Round My Skull has a nice post of vintage Swedish books covers from collected from the excellent  Martin Klasch. I particularly like this vampiric cover for Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep by Martin Gavler from 1963 (above).

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