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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Imperial

Designer credits to come

The (forthcoming) publication of two books from William T. Vollman presents a pretty cool opportunity to see basic design elements used in different ways and to different effect. On top is the cover for Vollman's 1,344(!) page "encyclopedic gathering of facts, stories, impressions, and analysis about the volatile and tragic U.S.-Mexico borderland" (Booklist); below is the cover for his companion volume of photographs taken in Imperial County, California.



4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Those letterings... I don't fancy them much... :(

Joseph said...

Wendy: I really like the type on the first cover, but the type on the second definitely leaves me cold.

The Oxen of the Sun said...

I recently wrote a bit about Vollmann's Imperial on my blog, what a coincidence.

I'm a huge Vollmann fan and am very excited about this book, I just wish the cover were a different image. 1,344 pages is going to take me at least a month to read and I'm already sick of the cover. It seems they didn't consider that this is a book that people will be carrying with them for the better part of their reading year.

Whenever one of these highly buzzed, many-paged books comes out (Against the Day, 2666) its always a pleasure to spot who's reading them on the subway... its sort of like finding yourself in some unspoken secret society. Love all the awkward nods!

lainieyeoh said...

With the first cover, the way the type is positioned in front of the figure, at first glance I read it as: I'm Perial. Perial being the man.