Thursday, 24 March 2011

Cain

Spotted at the excellent John Gall's blog: Vintage US's new covers for James M. Cain's three most famous (and filmed) novels, created by Megan Wilson and Evan Gaffney.




Beautiful!

UPDATE: The sideways layout may be a reference to the occasional practise in the past of giving horizontal covers to various pulp and crime books. See here and here for more examples.
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6 comments:

  1. Craig D.24 March 2011 at 15:01

    Not sure if I like the sideways layout, but I think the "1940s movie title screen" design is brilliant, despite my usual dislike of phony retro. It's certainly better than more "quote from the text on a white background" nonsense.

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  2. JRSM24 March 2011 at 15:37

    Definitely! The sideways layout is has also been used a few times before on pulp/crime books: see http://therapsheet.blogspot.com/2008/11/book-you-have-to-read-grifters-by-jim.html and http://www.bookscans.com/Oddities/horizontal.htm

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  3. Ákos Polgárdi25 March 2011 at 00:50

    On the screen they look like vintage postcards, rather than books. It'd interesting to see one IRL, though.

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  4. Brian Busby25 March 2011 at 04:13

    Very nice. They've had me looking at my own modest Cain collection. I note that there isn't a bad or even mediocre cover in the lot. Is there something about Cain that brings out the good in design, or have I just been avoiding the crummy?

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  5. Curriculum Vitae25 March 2011 at 13:05

    These are not phony retro, they are the actual movie titles, re-drawn. The books are sideways because that is the shape of the movie screen.

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  6. J. Kingston Pierce26 March 2011 at 15:44

    There are many more examples of horizontal book covers to be seen here.

    Cheers,
    Jeff

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