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(I'm currently traveling and caring for a sick family member so posts will be limited for a few days, but this landed in the comments on a recent post and it made me laugh, which is exactly what I need right now.)
"Auuuuugh!!
Listen People. Google “Book Cover Design Blogs”. This book blogging thing is getting way out of control. I’m all for freedom of speech but this market is more saturated than government TARP funds. The gig of promoting of one’s self or others through the guise of “information” is UP!
I know, I know, This blog was here long before others, but the spawned droids run amok!
OK, back to work!"
Design by Brett Yasko
Because you don't really know what conspiracy is lurking around the corner...or do you?
Design by Sarah Rainwater
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Punk means different things to different people, which in a way is very punk. The cover of Nicholas Rombes' A Cultural Dictionary of Punk gestures away from politics and class and instead settles on the DIY aesthetic which for many is its defining characteristic. (Whether or not punk is dead was hotly debated over at the Jacket Copy blog a few weeks ago; check out their interview with Rombes and (especially) the comments.) I love the straightforward handbill look of this, and that there's no pink to be seen anywhere on this cover is a major plus in my book.
I don't discuss the interiors of books nearly enough as I'd like to or should (here's a notable exception), but I will note Rombes' book reproduces some pretty cool graphic design artifacts from the era, such as Linder Sterling's Buzzcocks poster:
W/R/T the above, Linder said of collage: "For a short period I'd found a perfect mode of articulation. Punk was cutting out the question, 'Can I do this?'"
The answer, of course, was (and still is) yes.
Laying low for the July 4th holiday weekend, but if your book cover jones just won't quit, or you're new to the site, here are the most popular posts of 2009 so far:
The BDR's Favorites of 2008
The BDR's Favorites of 2007
The BDR's Favorites of 2006
Books on Book Covers
The Craftsman
As always, thanks for stopping by. Traffic for The BDR is up 35% for the year so far, and I can't thank you enough for that.
Be safe, be nice, see you soon.
Design by Kapo Ng@A-Men Project
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I love this cover for Percival Everett's I Am Not Sidney Poitier, about a man named Not Sidney Poitier (really) who is adopted by Ted Turner (yes, that one). There's much more to the story; Time Out NY's interview with Everett is a good place to start.
In less-skilled hands this could have gone wrong, with too much emphasis placed on the "Not Sidney" (I'm thinking about the usual suspects, like strikeout text or obscured faces). A book that deals with race and perception has to have characters who are out in the world; what better way to communicate this visually than with a calling card?
Designer credit to come
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Fellow book design bloggers Ben and Eric over at The Book Cover Archive blog posted the cover for the new paperback edition of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib earlier today, and I'm glad they did, as it gives us the opportunity (on two blogs) to discuss covers like the one you see below, the subtitle of which is "PEN Writers Speak Out on the Power of the Word."
Of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib, Ben or Eric (sign your posts, fellas! :-)) writes "I find it timeless and wonderful, with a gravity rarely seen on the shelf...Solid, well balanced, impactful." As the day has drawn on I find myself agreeing with that assessment more and more, and it's helped me to see what's so strong about the cover for Burn This Book, a "collection of essays that explore the meaning of censorship and the power of literature to inform the way we see the world, and ourselves."
Both designs provoke us to think about definitions. Publishers Weekly calls The Ballad of Abu Ghraib "the complete story of Abu Ghraib." I'm old and cynical enough to know there's never a complete story, and I think the Penguin designer of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib knows this too. We're familiar with some -- but not all -- of the images of torture perpetrated at that prison, but no matter how "complete" the visual and historical record becomes, there will always be something about what happened there that is not accessible to us as readers or to designers who are tasked with defining, visually, what the book tries to communicate.
Americans throw around the word "censorship" like Krewe members throwing beads off a Mardi Gras float. You're not being censored if you can't wear shorts to work. You're not being censored if Apple doesn't sell your stupid app. Not being able to mourn your dead, getting shot for demonstrating election results, governments banning art and books as incendiary: that gets us closer to a definition. But what does it feel like? What does it look like? Again, wisely, Burn This Book's designer knows better than to try to reduce censorship to a single visual conventional image.
So. Check out the cover design for The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (and Burn This Book, of course) and tell me what you think about what I contend is thoughtful, brilliant design.
Simon & Schuster tweeted yesterday that the cover for Audrey Niffenegger's second novel Her Fearful Symmetry is final; sorry but I couldn't find a larger image other than this one, from the S&S site. The book is set in and around Highgate Cemetery and there's a ghost or two, so this skyward view from a creepy place works real nicely, I think.
I couldn't help but think almost immediately of Jen Wang's design for In The Woods; anyone know if she's involved with the Niffenegger book?
A BDR reader (who's also a writer) asked me a great question a few days ago:
"I think a great deal about what a book will look like when it's done. Ultimately, though, on my previous books, the jackets were done with little or no say from me. Now, as I finish up another, I wonder: How does a writer push his publisher to pay attention to design? Can a writer lobby to have one of these elite designers you talk about so often assigned to his book?"
Anyone care to jump in?
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