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Wednesday, April 09, 2008

The Mayor's Tongue

Design by Gray 318

The placement of the apostrophe and the mysterious period after the author's name are sure to drive a few of you mad, but I think we can ignore those two design choices if we focus on the curly tip of the tongue and the deft placement of "a novel" (OK, the deft placement of "a novel" three times).

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is probably the same designer who designed the Riverhead Summer 2008 catalog: http://booksellers.dk.com/static/pdf/riverhead-summer08.pdf

Anonymous said...

Also, Riverhead is the book's publisher.

David Drummond said...

Wow. For all the times you are told "could be type only" as if that were a fall back position, this cover shows how exciting a type only cover can be. I want the poster.

Matt said...

This cover is fantastic. The placement of the apostrophe and period are obviously intended to be awkward and don't bother me. There's nothing accidental about the mayhem on this cover! It's outstanding.

Anonymous said...

It's Jon Gray. And I think the catalog was just done in house, but I could be mistaken on that...

Marian said...

I love it! And I'm a veteran editor & copyeditor. It's liberating.

Hey, question for you, Joseph. I'm living in the UK for a bit these days, and I notice that the UK pubs don't feel the need to put "A Novel" or "Stories" on those respective types of books, evidently betting that bookstore goers can figure it all out. What do you know about this? Now I'm thinking the U.S. practice is a bit annoying. Maybe somehow reductive. Does anyone else have insights to offer?

RTF said...

Does the book have anything to do with Dada or Futurism?

Anonymous said...

Lovely, really lovely.

Anonymous said...

Nice to look at. All those letters, the zig zagging, reds, blacks and whites...

Not sure what it all means. I guess the receipt looking tongue and odd mouth illustration—which I actually only saw after reading through the comments—falls short in painting any sort of image of what this book may be about.

Surely book cover design should at least attempt to allude to the nature of the books subject. As apposed to just looking pretty from a design standpoint.

Looks like a children's story book...