Somebody Use These NOW

I don't often post speculative covers here--as in non-published covers for books, covers created by designers for their own amusement--but the work of Belgian-based illustrator and designer Levente Szabó is too good not to be promoted. His Great Books Project involves creating dustjackets for a number of classic novels, and they're astonishingly beautiful and clever. Click any image below for bigger versions, and visit his portfolio for more, as well as a number of alternative sketches which most designers would kill to have come up with, let alone discard.

This cover, and that for Saramago's Blindness, below, are some of the cleverest applications of negative space I've ever seen.

  

Above is the proposed jacket, below is the design to be printed on the boards underneath

 

If the publishers with the rights to these books don't get in touch with Levente and snap up these designs straight away, then it's because they don't want to sell books.

Covers That Aren't But Ought To Be 2

UK-based illustrator and designer Neil Webb has done several published covers, like this for Portobello books...

..but I also really like these speculative covers he's done:

Click for bigger versions.

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.