New Editions of Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm

Designs by Shepard Fairey

The always excellent Penguin Blog discusses these re-workings of Orwell classics.

Nineteen Eighty-Four Penguin UK Anniversary Edition

Design by Gray318

Australian reader Mick sent this in. Orwell's books have gotten a good amount of coverage on The BDR; I think this could well be my favorite.

UPDATE: Check out the back, inside front and inside back covers. Wow. Hat tip to Alan Trotter.

1984, 60th Anniversary Edition

1984 60th Anniversary Edition designed by Jason Johnson

From what I can tell, Plume's 60th Anniversary Edition of Orwell's 1984 recycles a design first used in 1983, which is notable because it's one of the few covers I've ever seen for 1984 that doesn't bring to mind any one of the following words or phrases:

big

scary

ominous

gigantic eyeball


Below is a design from 1978 a reader sent in; it (and Shepard Fairey's recent cover) is the kind of design we're most used to seeing.


Not having read this book in a very long time, what's the better approach? The subtlety of Johnson's design (those are eyes, btw), or aggressive, jackbooted thugs?

Remember These Orwell Covers?

Penguin UK is selling signed and numbered A2-sized (approx 16.5 x 23.5 inches) screen prints of these Shepard Fairey-designed covers. There are only 200 of them, and they're sold as part of a set (with the books). Details are here. UPDATE: They're sold out.

Previous post and comments on these covers are here.

We

Designer name to come

Frequently described as the book that inspired Orwell's 1984, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We is about to be released in this gorgeous Vintage Classics edition.


Architecture always seems to play a critical part in any envisioning of the future, and that's the case here: the protagonist lives in "an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass," separated off from the rest of the world by "the Green Wall." (Read a synopsis of the novel here.)

I don't know that there's such a thing as "dystopian architecture." But if there is, it's no doubt coldly rational, brutal and soulless. In other words, it probably looks exactly like this.

George Orwell books -- Penguin Modern Classics

I don't recall seeing these before - they were published in June of 2003. Nice, especially when viewed together. Anyone know who the designer is?

(A: Jamie Keenan).