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Design by Kapo Ng@A-Men Project
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I love this cover for Percival Everett's I Am Not Sidney Poitier, about a man named Not Sidney Poitier (really) who is adopted by Ted Turner (yes, that one). There's much more to the story; Time Out NY's interview with Everett is a good place to start.
In less-skilled hands this could have gone wrong, with too much emphasis placed on the "Not Sidney" (I'm thinking about the usual suspects, like strikeout text or obscured faces). A book that deals with race and perception has to have characters who are out in the world; what better way to communicate this visually than with a calling card?
Designer credit to come
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Fellow book design bloggers Ben and Eric over at The Book Cover Archive blog posted the cover for the new paperback edition of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib earlier today, and I'm glad they did, as it gives us the opportunity (on two blogs) to discuss covers like the one you see below, the subtitle of which is "PEN Writers Speak Out on the Power of the Word."
Of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib, Ben or Eric (sign your posts, fellas! :-)) writes "I find it timeless and wonderful, with a gravity rarely seen on the shelf...Solid, well balanced, impactful." As the day has drawn on I find myself agreeing with that assessment more and more, and it's helped me to see what's so strong about the cover for Burn This Book, a "collection of essays that explore the meaning of censorship and the power of literature to inform the way we see the world, and ourselves."
Both designs provoke us to think about definitions. Publishers Weekly calls The Ballad of Abu Ghraib "the complete story of Abu Ghraib." I'm old and cynical enough to know there's never a complete story, and I think the Penguin designer of The Ballad of Abu Ghraib knows this too. We're familiar with some -- but not all -- of the images of torture perpetrated at that prison, but no matter how "complete" the visual and historical record becomes, there will always be something about what happened there that is not accessible to us as readers or to designers who are tasked with defining, visually, what the book tries to communicate.
Americans throw around the word "censorship" like Krewe members throwing beads off a Mardi Gras float. You're not being censored if you can't wear shorts to work. You're not being censored if Apple doesn't sell your stupid app. Not being able to mourn your dead, getting shot for demonstrating election results, governments banning art and books as incendiary: that gets us closer to a definition. But what does it feel like? What does it look like? Again, wisely, Burn This Book's designer knows better than to try to reduce censorship to a single visual conventional image.
So. Check out the cover design for The Ballad of Abu Ghraib (and Burn This Book, of course) and tell me what you think about what I contend is thoughtful, brilliant design.
Simon & Schuster tweeted yesterday that the cover for Audrey Niffenegger's second novel Her Fearful Symmetry is final; sorry but I couldn't find a larger image other than this one, from the S&S site. The book is set in and around Highgate Cemetery and there's a ghost or two, so this skyward view from a creepy place works real nicely, I think.
I couldn't help but think almost immediately of Jen Wang's design for In The Woods; anyone know if she's involved with the Niffenegger book?
A BDR reader (who's also a writer) asked me a great question a few days ago:
"I think a great deal about what a book will look like when it's done. Ultimately, though, on my previous books, the jackets were done with little or no say from me. Now, as I finish up another, I wonder: How does a writer push his publisher to pay attention to design? Can a writer lobby to have one of these elite designers you talk about so often assigned to his book?"
Anyone care to jump in?
Designer credits to come
On top, the hardcover. Below that, the paperback. I love seeing little tweaks like this. Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna, Dean & Britta) is a musician after all; why hasn't the guitar been there all along?
US design by Megan Wilson
Portraying what a daydreamer sees (the US cover, first image) strikes me as more powerful than an external view of the act of daydreaming (the UK cover, second image).
We've all got our knickers in a twist over the future of book publishing and what it means for the book arts, but have you ever thought about the potentially lucrative future of this-is-not-a-book-cover book cover design? ;-)
(Top image is from Amazon.com, bottom from Amazon.co.uk.)
The Daniel Clowes-drawn cover draws you in, but under the dust jacket is the real payoff: two William Steig illustrations printed on the hard casing.
Anyone know if there are similarly delightful surprises on vol.1?
Design by W.H. Chong
Something tells me the young adults at which John Marsden's contemporary novelization of Hamlet is aimed -- even (especially?) those who agree with the mighty Couch Flambeau ("I hate Shakespeare / He's too hard to read / I wish he were dead / Oh, he is?") -- might give the Bard another shot when they see this. Yes, the placement of "a novel" is pretty horrible. But if you're a 13-year-old, do you care?
Design by Rob Grom
I had to ask designer Rob Grom about his cover for Mishna Wolff's memoir of "(growing) up in a poor black neighborhood with her single father, a white man who truly believed he was black."
Says Rob: "I was provided with a bunch of photos from the author and the classic school portrait stood out from the rest. I originally wanted have a custom made gold chain with the title on it, or an embroidered hat with the title on it, but my creative director Steve Snider thought that it should have the same feel as the book cover for Born to Kvetch. So, we brainstormed and decided an afro was the way to go."
Jennifer Carrow's design for Born to Kvetch appears below. Both make me smile.
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