|
Designs by Gregg Kulick
A fairly new edition (2008) of Heidegger's Being and Time, and the first design that strives to remind us this landmark work of philosophy was written in 1927.
And since it's been a really long time since I've read any philosophy seriously, I asked a professor buddy of mine what he thought of the big red X on the Wittgenstein cover. He offered two possible interpretations:
1. "There's the post-modern sense of undecidability with the X."
2. "It could be a variable (Wittgenstein will put you to sleep in X minutes)."
Ha! (More analysis / suggestions in the comments.)
Either way, philosophy didn't look this good when I was a student.
Design by Susan Dean
Illus. by Jamie Todd
The 2008 hardcover design by The Heads of State was one of my favorite covers last year, but the paperback design for All the Sad Young Literary Men doesn't disappoint: we get to see the obsessions of the three main characters -- writing, history, women -- and the winding and ultimately distracting paths they wander between them. (Nice use of New Yorker Bold too; does any typeface say "literary" more than that?)
Buy this book from Amazon.com
UPDATE: You asked for 'em. Here are the UK editions:
Paperback:
Hardcover:
Designer credit to come
At first glance ironic, until you notice the upside-down subtitle, at which point it becomes, um, tolerably anarchic. Love it.
Design by Henry Sene Yee
UPDATE: Henry talks about this cover over at his blog.
I haven't seen this in person yet -- it will be released in late April -- but the more I look at this, the more I like it.
Clearly the eyes belong to the same person, but the way they're offset suggests that something odd's going on, which is in fact the case: psychiatrist Leo Liebenstein believes that his wife has been replaced by a doppelganger. This psychic disruption is not the only thing hinted at by the intersecting concentric circles; there's a meteorologist who figures in the plot (as the title suggests).
Henry Sene Yee was nice enough to provide the design credit for this, but I forgot to ask him if those circles are die-cuts. If so, I'm dying to know what's underneath.
UPDATE: Since it's been mentioned several times in the comments, here's the US hardcover (first image below; design and illustration by Billie Jean). And someone sent in the Canadian cover as well (second image):
Sure as heck isn't the first time the same photo has been used on two book covers, but this just can't be good. The Great Gamble is from 2009; The Hidden War from 2001.
(My Unwritten Books designed by Rodrigo Corral; assuming the same for At the New Yorker)
We looked at My Unwritten Books last year (original post here); here's another similar minimalist design for At The New Yorker. Proof positive that really strong ideas can come in simple packages.
 /1/ It's a bird! It's a plane! It's porn!
Author Craig Yoe wrote in to tell me about his new book Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster. Paraphrasing Craig, "After selling the rights to Superman for $130, Shuster then did S&M porn for under-the-counter booklets called "Nights of Horror," sold in Times Square in the early fifties." More here, including some NSFW images. Buy this book from Amazon.com
/2/ Fantastic new book design blog
Designer Kimberly Glyder shows comps that didn't get published. Via another goodie, The Book Cover Archive blog.
/3/ BBC Radio Adapts JG Ballard's Drowned World.
Interesting to see the design evolution of one of my favorite books of the last few years, Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao:
Rodrigo Corral's modern, serious, and literary US design, strong enough to make it from hardcover to trade paper to mass market paperback:
The UK trade paper edition, which turns the title into the fuku (curse) that hovers over and eventually crushes Oscar:
And the UK mass market paperback, which aims somewhat lower than these others by reaching for the geeky, sci-fi-reading (but admittedly, pretty friggin' cute) part of Oscar's life.
(Call me out if I've gotten any of the attributions for the different editions wrong.)
Design by Gray 318
This not-yet-published cover for Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy is such a refreshing take, and not simply because it avoids all-too-predictable photos of iconic New York buildings or the skyline, already done any number of times.
When pure geometric designs works, boy, does it ever work. (Helen Yentus' Camus redesigns are great recent examples of this). Sure, these are buildings, but they're buildings whose abstraction and oblique orientation speak directly to the identity-twisting stories Auster is telling. They say a lot more than a photo of the Empire State Building flipped upside-down ever could.
One last thing: check out the copy on the Faber & Faber site, which calls The New York Trilogy "gripping for its starkness" and "bold (and) arresting." We could say the same things about this design, yes?
I lied: another last thing: Art Spiegelman's cover for the Penguin Deluxe Classics Edition, 'cause I know someone's going to bring it up...
|
|
