Against Happiness
Design by Jennifer Carrow
A few weeks ago it was David Drummond week, featuring posts here and here. This week (well, OK, a little more than a week) seems to belong to Jennifer Carrow, who designed The Best Intentions as well as this smart and funny jacket for this study of the benefits of melancholy. 
I love how the heavier title type introduces the smallest bit of asymmetry and makes the frown a little more droopy. Someone's got their Occam's razor nicely sharpened :-)
Buy this book from Amazon.com.
7 comments:
Funny that you chose this book! Inspired by your blog (to which I have subscribed for several months), I started a blog on children's and young adult book covers. My post of December 16 seems almost a companion post to yours on the Against Happiness cover. See: http://jacketwhys.wordpress.com/2007/12/16/yellow-jackets/
Typography and sans faces seem to be here forte based on the last post. I like this but crave something more...
Too minimal for my taste... Yellow does a good job at hinting at the stereotypical "happy face", but without the eyes this cover gets lost.
all that said, I still like it very much.
simplicity works quite well here. the combination of the title/author shaped as a frown against a yellow background is all that's needed for a reader to associate a not-so-happy smiley face. kudos.
I love it.
Great book cover.
I agree with you on the more droopy effect, quite good in fact. But wouldn't it work better if it were left to right and not right to left (as it is)? I wonder if the designer tried it?
As for the absence of the eyes, well, I see them closed!
smart. people probably don't see the frown at first or notice how it simply and cleverly represents the title. but they see it after a few seconds. that makes them feel smart and they're happy: then the read the title again...
cousin jenny is the best book designer in the world
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