Wednesday, 24 August 2011

Faber Faces Front

These came out in early July, but I only just saw them for the first time in an Australian bookshop. They're a set of reissues from the Faber & Faber backlist, the 'Secrets and Lies' collection, each of which uses a big photo of a face for the cover. I'm not sure why, but they don't quite work for me. Perhaps it's that, though many of these are historical novels, the photos themselves look so new--though why this should bother me, I don't know. So much for intelligent criticism. They are, however, a welcome change from the usual headless cropped photos on book covers.









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9 comments:

  1. Óscar Palmer25 August 2011 at 01:50

    I can't imagine being relaxed at my bookshop with all those eyes fixed on me. I don't think I would leave them for long on my coffee table either.

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  2. Craig D.25 August 2011 at 14:04

    Reminds me of this:

    http://tinyurl.com/4x4bmj7

    Only less impressive. These feel like random stock photos.

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  3. Bob Fingerman25 August 2011 at 14:40

    I'd put those down as some of the worst covers ever featured on this blog. They'd certainly keep me from purchasing.

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  4. JRSM25 August 2011 at 23:45

    Oscar: I saw them in a row and they are a bit confronting.

    Craig: Yes! The missing cousin!

    Bob: It definitely feels as though something was lost between idea and execution.

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  5. Matthew Adams27 August 2011 at 19:47

    The type going across the nose looks like a bandaid. Also, having those eyes staring directly into yours is confronting. These covers would have looked much better without the photo, just a blank background (though they still would be ugly), the purpose of the staring faces escapes me. Are some of them photos of the authors?

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  6. JRSM28 August 2011 at 00:26

    None of them are author photos... though maybe that would have been better.

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  7. Olaf Nelson5 September 2011 at 15:15

    Several (especially Secret Scripture and Intimacy) look like self-help-guru books, where the face of the guru (with expression of concerned superiority) commands misguided readers to buy and promises salvation. Except that these mostly look cold and uninviting, and only the last one looks like a person with a story, let alone one worth reading.

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  8. JRSM5 September 2011 at 15:57

    Ha! Yes--they just need some defensive initials like 'MD' or 'PhD' after the author names...

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  9. John Self10 September 2011 at 05:17

    Faber keeps doing this - reissues of interesting books, with series covers which just don't come up to scratch. They had better face the fact that their in-house design isn't terribly good. Picador UK had a similar problem but then started farming more design out to decent independent designers, and the transformation has been impressive.

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