Thursday 24 September 2009

Count the Flaws

Here's a book cover that reaches startling levels of wrongness. It's a new edition of the last book by American food writer/TV person Julia Child, who is currently the subject of a much-promoted movie.

Here's the cover:




Here are my whinges (and I've never read Child, so there may be more here to offend those of you who have):

1. It's cluttered to buggery.
2. We have yet another case of a memoir with the actor who plays the person rather than the actual person on the cover...
3. ..even though it's not even the book that said actor's movie is based on...
4. ..but it does feature a plug for that film (again, not the film of this book) that takes up 1/3 of the cover...
5. ..and another actor playing a real person, rather than the real person, and who's not even in this book, yet still manages to appear on the cover.
6. It also contains dead pig heads.
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10 comments:

  1. Derek24 September 2009 at 19:13

    Somehow the disasters from big publishers (Random House) are more satisfying than the ones from amateurs.

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  2. JRSM24 September 2009 at 19:19

    They are, aren't they? The knowledge that so many people had to decide along the way that THIS was what they wanted to produce.

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  3. Bob Fingerman24 September 2009 at 21:22

    Apart from those dead pig heads, everything about this cover is poor.

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  4. Anonymous24 September 2009 at 22:24

    I once designed a shitty high-school 'zine that they sold in the cluttery indie record store in my downtown. My crap-ball cover was better than this.

    Look at the weird splits and promo junk. It's like an ad for a rave, a car show, and a strip club all on the same page-- like those postcards you get handed to you at 2AM at the gay clubs. Minus the hollywood aspect, of course.

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  5. Brian Busby25 September 2009 at 07:48

    "SEE THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE"

    "READ THE BESTSELLING MEMOIR BY JULIA CHILD"

    Being told what to do by corporations always gets my back up. At first glance I thought you'd posted something from the pages Vanity Fair or People. This is nothing but an advert applied to the cover of a book.

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  6. MSB25 September 2009 at 08:09

    The film is actually based on Julia Child's book and Julie Powell's book. The cover is still an atrocity, though.

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  7. Saskia25 September 2009 at 10:53

    Heh, what initially bugged me the most was that I couldn't tell what was author and what was title typographically.

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  8. JRSM27 September 2009 at 02:16

    Thanks, all:

    Brian: "Being told what to do by corporations always gets my back up." I know what you mean. The box of my cereal keeps cajoling me to 'take the 2-week winter jeans challenge', to whichI have to say, wittily, "Fuck off, Kelloggs!"

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  9. Anonymous28 September 2009 at 00:48

    "cluttered to buggery"

    That is the best phrase I've heard all day.

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  10. Desperate Reader29 September 2009 at 09:44

    Only excusable if it's being given away free when you endure the film

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