Tuesday 28 June 2011

Covers That Aren't But Ought To Be 1

Sometimes I come across, or have brought to my attention, speculative cover designs that artists and designers have done for themselves. They're not published, and there are no plans for them to be, but they're easily good enough to be used. In an attempt to show these covers off, and maybe get some publishers looking at new work that would make their books look fantastic, here's the first in an irregular series of posts showcasing Covers That Aren't But Ought To Be.

The following are all the work of Andrew Barron. His portfolio is here. The Penguin branding is just to show what the final books might look like--unfortunately, these editions are not available in the real world, as I found to my disappointment after peering at tiny ISBNs and searching online catalogues. Click all for bigger versions.

The 'American Giants':



Garcia Marquez:


The Iliad, cover design and internal artwork:






Suskind:


Burroughs:


And finally, a book that does exist, but in an incredibly limited edition, The Job, a book Barron created and designed that was inspired by Burroughs's cut-up novels.





Marvellous stuff, and I really, really want that Iliad to exist, so that I can have a copy.

3 comments:

che said...

I would really seek out that Iliad if it did exist.I really like the Great Gatsby too.

Chasch said...

Thanks for sharing this. You're right, the Iliad is simply stunning. The one with the warrior in the lion (must be Achilles?) is incredibly beautiful; it illustrates the homeric simile of the warrior as lion so perfectly. It would be nice if it was available as a print, I would definitely buy it.

The concept of book covers that don't exist reminds me of Charlie Orr's Hypothetical library (http://hypolib.typepad.com/the-hypothetical-library/), which was an interesting project where he asked real authors to come up with ideas for books that they could write, but never would, and then designed covers for them. He hasn't done any in a while, now, but his covers for Neil Gaiman's If You Read This Book the World Will End (complete with a Raven padlock) was particularly gripping!

JRSM said...

Thank you for that link: what a wonderful idea, and so well executed. And yes, those illustrations should be prints!