The Curtain, US and UK

Kundera designed the cover of his The Art of the Novel, and I'd wager a guess that he also did the cover of Faber and Faber version of this (the second image), a collection of essays on the craft and history of the novel.

This is a wonderfully clear illustration of different approaches to book cover design: one goes straight for the subject -- "A book about books? Let's put a book on the cover!" -- the other straight for the title / metaphor.




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The Reluctant Fundamentalist, US and UK -- and Norwegian!

UPDATE: Elisabeth Bjone of Norwegian publisher Cappelen has sent an image of the soon-to-be-published Norwegian The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I think this works much better than the US and UK versions. The designer is Are Kleivan.



ORIGINAL POST:

Briefly, this is about a young Pakistani who graduates from Princeton, is recruited by an elite NYC financial company, and how his life changes in post-9/11 America and his return to Pakistan. The Guardian has a very good review.

The first image is the US cover, and I think it works for me, although I can't stop thinking this guy looks a bit too much like Benjamin Bratt from Law & Order. The stubble on his face is a nice touch, as the main character does grow a beard as he moves toward a more "authentic" Islamic life.



The UK cover (below) looks like a whole lot of things coming out of the UK recently (I'll try to round up some examples), but it hints at something the US cover doesn't: the book is essentially a monologue, with the main character telling his story to an American in a cafe in Pakistan. I'm guessing that would be them on the lower left.


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Punk Marketing

I'm sorry to employ an overused phrase, but I think I just threw up in my mouth a little (not so much over the design, but just over the fact that this book exists).

Ascent, UK and US

On top, the more subtle UK cover of a novel that poses the question "What if the Soviets sent a man to the moon before the Americans, and we never knew?" Below that, the US version, with far superior type and a really unnecessary hammer and sickle. The placement of it is *so* wrong.

Dry Manhattan

Amazing to think Prohibition lasted 13 years. The pull-quote in the NY Times review claims that there were 15,000 saloons at the start of Prohibition in 1920 and 32,000 just a few years later. Wow.


This cover strikes me as a little gimmicky, especially viewed next to the excellent photo accompanying the article in the Times:

Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the year's oddest book title

Apparently, it is the 29th year that the Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the year's oddest book title will be awarded. How is this important cultural event NOT on my calendar?

As you would expect, there are some real doozies; suprisingly, there's not a Continental Philosophy title in the whole bunch.

The front-runner is said to be How Green Were the Nazis? Nature, Environment and Nature in the Third Reich:


But don't discount The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification.


Here I was all set to place my bets for the NCAA tournament, and now this comes along to compete for my money. Damn you, Bookseller/Diagram Prize!

Con Ed

This is an interesting one to think about, and I'd love to hear from y'all. I think the main reason this cover fails is because both the title and the main imagery, no doubt meant to be complemetary, are actually fighting for attention. Either tell the story cleverly through taking the title beyond simple type, or render the title simply and give me the payoff in the illustration.

Thoughts? Can anyone point me to a cover that does both and is all the better for it?

You Don't Love Me Yet

Designer name to come.

Teased on the front page of the Village Voice as "Jonathan Lethem's rock 'n' roll novel."

Uh oh.

I like Lethem. I loved Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn. But if Delillo and Pynchon can't pull off rock n roll I'll be surprised if Lethem can. It doesn't look good: the Voice reviewer describes the lyrics to one song as "tough to imagine as a song written by adults, let alone enjoyed by hundreds of fans."

Re the design: (1) that's an older picture of Lethem on the cover, isn't it? (2) why all the ital / oblique? I don't hate it, but I always have to wonder when I see it. Does it make the book look like it's moving FASTER?
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Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, US and UK versions

The US version is on top; the UK version on the bottom.

For a book that's about "the ways performers chose, in the course of a song, to comment on themselves" and the ways in which performers are "inordinately interested in proving how real they are," the US version seems far too limited. Kurt Cobain (I think) on the cover, the all-too-predictable punk rock pink -- this just doesn't say "75 years of music history" to me. The UK version is trying much harder to reach into music history and to portray the artifice that is the subject of the book -- the flat figures are propped up and the cover as a whole looks like a diorama or sorts.



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Support the Book Design Review. Or Just Buy Some Because They're Cool

I've created a series of postcards and greeting cards based on some scans from one of the greatest things in my possession: a "My First Communion" booklet from the 1930s. I've posted three of them here, but there are others at:

http://www.bellyitcher.com

If you're a fan of graphic design, religious kitsch (or both), you might enjoy these.