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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.
Design by Nate Salciccioli
Designer Nate Salciccioli sent this in, and once I found out there was a good deal of hand crafting involved, I decided to share it with you all. Moral of the story? Sometimes it's a good idea to turn off the computer (well, mostly: see Nate's description of the process below) and pick up the wood burner.
"The initial idea was to burn the titles all on a solid piece of wood, so we went out to the Hardware store, and picked up the kit, as well as some cheap wooden baseboards to burn on. I had created the type layout digitally, and then used graphite transfer to ‘trace’ the type onto the wood. First attempts proved unsuccessful, as I tried to burn the type too small (it’s difficult to get too much detail with the somewhat clumsy metal instrument). In the end I burned the large words on separate pieces of wood, and scanned them all afterwards. The small words (e.g. ‘History of’ and ‘belt sander races’) had to be created in photoshop, as the type is too fine to be burned with the tools I had. All in all, the burning process took about 2 hours, the Photoshop work, about 4 (cleaning up some of the edges, etc).
The funniest thing about this project was that I burned this all INSIDE, it being less than 30 degrees out of doors. The result was the whole studio smelled like a lumber mill on fire, which was actually kind of fun. How my coworkers felt about it was vocalized with mixed reviews; some loved it, others sulkily breathing in the fumes."
Thanks for the background details, Nate.
Design by Jennifer Carrow
A few weeks ago it was David Drummond week, featuring posts here and here. This week (well, OK, a little more than a week) seems to belong to Jennifer Carrow, who designed The Best Intentions as well as this smart and funny jacket for this study of the benefits of melancholy.
I love how the heavier title type introduces the smallest bit of asymmetry and makes the frown a little more droopy. Someone's got their Occam's razor nicely sharpened :-)
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Design by Paola Ecchavaria
Saw this on the new books table last night. It's the latest in this year's mini-trend: the "book-on-a-book-cover" approach (also seen on The Last Novel and House of Happy Endings). It's really quite beautiful and elegant in person, and I'll leave it to those more zoologically inclined to determine if the wonderful spelled-out-in-random-letters creature at the bottom is actually more octopus-like than squid-like.
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Design by Chip Kidd
I'll be honest: I'm not exactly sure why I like this. It might be that I appreciate the restraint: for a history of controversial art, it would be all to easy to put something by Mapplethorpe or Koons or Hirst on the cover in order to create the titular "visual shock." Putting the Washington Monument on the cover drives home the idea that yesterday's controversy is today's banality.
Can someone help out and identify the object on the right? UPDATE: It's Constantin Brancusi's Bird in Space. Thanks to those who wrote in.
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Designer name to come
"The last great fight" is how some people refer to Buster Douglas' shocking victory over Mike Tyson in 1990. How shocking? Apparently only one sports book in Vegas would take action on the fight, and they were offering 42 to 1 odds. Even casual boxing fans know Tyson lost that night, which makes it odd (?) that we see Douglas down on the canvas on this cover.
Two guesses on why we're seeing what we're seeing: 1) What does Buster Douglas look like? Yeah, I don't know either. 2) Back to the casual fans: even they know an iconic 20th centry image when they see it:
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Designer name to come
I really want to like this, but no matter how hard I try to remember this is a serious work -- "Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignited the Space Race" reads the subtitle -- I keep thinking this is a children's book about Laika the space dog.
Or is it just me?
BTW, the above is the UK design. Here's the much more straightforward US edition:
Arsenals of Folly designed by David Heasty; The Horrid Pit designed by Jonathan Sainsbury
Arsenals of Folly picks up where The Horrid Pit (which we looked at a while ago) left off: let the photograph do its work, and recognize when less is more. There's tension in the cover of Arsenals of Folly: just how long *does* it take a mushroom cloud to form?
And for the sake of comparison:
Design by Josh Durham
Sent in by our friend Philippe (whom we met back in August), who wrote "You need to see this cover..." I'll go a step farther: if you teach, you need to show this to your students when you discuss the basics of graphic design. Repetition, balance, contrast, etc...they're all here. The type is somewhat shoe-horned in -- I'll grant you that -- but this is a great number of classes rolled into one book jacket.
UPDATE: A reader points out the similarity to this cover:
Designer names to come
Warm, cozy and handmade or cold and clinical? How do you want your baby to be made?
Design by Chip Kidd
Well, this should be a good way to start off the week. I'm expecting a number of you to give a hearty "meh" to this, a series of interviews with Allen conducted over four decades. But I have to tell you: it stands out on the new books table as much for what it's not than for what it is, much like the the Miranda July book did.
And I have at least two half-assed theories about this: 1) it's best to stay away from photography when the scope of such a book is so large -- from which decade do you select a photo?, and 2) regardless of his recent near return-to-form, Woody Allen is still a pretty polarizing figure. This design clearly signals what it is: a series of interviews, and not a biography.
Buy Conversations with Woody Allen: His Films, the Movies, and Moviemaking
Design by Carol Hayes
It's probably been done before, but I love the idea of this book: short essays about the one possession that occupies a big part of your life.
I haven't seen this in person yet, so I'm wondering if grouping the objects together so tightly allows them to pop from across the room, or if from a distance this looks like a still life instruction book.
Thought about grouping these as they've done here?
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Help me out with this one: I really want to like this, but something's just not right: I think it's because the subtitle and author name are fighting with the title for my attention. Reduce those two elements (subtitle and author name), tuck them under the "47" and to the right of the stock of the gun, and I think we might have something a little stronger. Reserving the military stenciling for the title might help a bit too.
(This is a UK title, so I don't know who designed it. Anyone know?)
Illustration by Chris Wormell, design by Nick Shah
Chapters postulate what will happen should the Earth get one, two, three, etc. degrees hotter, with six degrees resulting in apocalypse.
Two things I really like about this cover: 1) instead of a photoillustration of a swamped city, using an older illustrative technique like woodcut hints at the nasty future while referencing the past. In other words, that Mac Pro ain't gonna work under water. 2) The slightly askew text bobbing on the water clearly nails the premise of the book: shape up or (literally) ship out.
Design by Georgia Liebman (US Version)
An interesting example of essential differences between the UK and US markets.
Meet Louis Theroux. Who? Exactly. A famous television host in the UK, the cover with his face just wouldn't cut it in the US market. Plus, we get a flying saucer on the US version, and flying saucers are always cool.
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 Years ago -- about 10 -- I saw Spawn at a movie theater. Leaving the theater, I asked my friend Dave what he thought about the movie. His response (which, by the way, is still the perfect summary of the film): "The evil clown guy didn't fart enough."
Which brings us to this. Regardless of your political orientation, can we all agree on two things?
1) This is a really funny illustration, and
2) The elephant-squished world isn't farting enough.
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 An OK concept -- perhaps -- but I don't love the execution. And I have no idea what's gained with the treatment of/around the author's name.
 Remember the rather scary jacket for this? Here's the UK paperback (above). Much nicer, and continues a nice mini-trend of drawing wine bottles:
Quoting from a customer review on Amazon: "...(a) dreamy and emotive look at changing landscapes, both in (the author's) personal history and the history of America..." The hardcover (first image) presents loss more subtly than does the paperback (bottom), although both reference the flooding of towns in upstate NY that created reservoirs to provide New York City with drinking water. (Although both published in 2006, the skeptical part of me says that the paperback photo has an intentional Katrina-ish feel.)
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