Shop Indie Bookstores

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Jeans

Every so often there is a jacket that reminds me of something Chip Kidd said in his Onion interview (which seems to be offline, unfortunately). Y'all probably know the quote:

One of the things I learned while majoring in graphic design in college, that I've always taken very much to heart... The teacher one day drew an apple on the blackboard, and then wrote the word "apple" underneath it. He pointed to the whole thing and he said, "You should never do this." He covered up the picture and said, "You either just have the word," then covered up the word and said, "or you just have the picture. But don't do both." It's insulting to the reader, or the viewer, or whoever.

With these words in mind, I give you Jeans.

PS: does anyone know what kind of jeans these are?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Kidd has broken that rule himself (and admitted it) on more than one occasion, which leads to the even older adage: first learn the rules, then break them.

This book is about jeans themselves. I think it would be strange not to have some visual of them on the cover. That said, I wish that they had found some way not to run type (and such a standard, novelistic, ubiquitous font) over the hands. It breaks up.

A more clever solution would have been to just have the pocket - or just cover the whole cover as if wrapped in a pair of Levi's. The hand is nice on its own, but the composition is too close up and yet not close up enough.

Or, have the word "Jeans" stitched on the pocket. Now that would have been a great integration.

This cover? Meh.

Joseph said...

Ingrid: you're right -- in the same interview, he talks about breaking the rule, esp. with the cover of All the Pretty Horses.

Kitty said...

They're Jordache jeans.

William said...

A comment on the blog rather than this particular cover - this is my first visit after a summer break from the blog world, and I just wanted to compliment you on an excellent blog that I will be certain to visit more regularly in the future.