Melvilles & Murder

Melville House are really kicking seventeen brands of arse with their book covers these days (see here, for example). Here are the first eleven books in their International Crime series.

I absolutely love these. They work as a series, with the limited palette, bold shapes, unflashy (but attractive) type and big fields of solid colour common to all. But then each author also gets their own identity within the series. The Kurkovs play wittily (and Saul Bass-ily) with the dinner-suit/penguin association, and the Derek Raymonds are just brilliant, reminiscent of old Romek Marber crime novel covers for Penguin.

I could kiss this publisher.

UPDATE: Kelly Blair did the Jakob Arjouni covers, and Christopher King did the Derek Raymond covers.

Mëlvïllës

Two sets of books coming from Melville House late this year and in the middle of next year. The latter set are the first books in a projected 'Neversink Library', and use a simple but stylish series of cover designs based on silhouettes.

I'm completely up for this series, because Irmgard Keun is great, that Simenon is really good, and the little-known (in English) Ödön von Horváth is fucking awesome.

More Germanic shenanigans start in December with these Heinrich Böll reprints, each of which uses stark symbols (mostly made up of circles and other simple shapes) to represent the book

And that title font has to be Mrs Eaves Italic, which is one of my favourites.

I have no information on the designers for either of these books. The Böll books are designed by Kelly Blair, and the Neversinks by Christopher King.

AIGA Nominees

Via This Isn't Happiness, I saw the AIGA 50 Books/50 Covers selections. Here are my favourites, excluding those I've already talked about elsewhere on the blog.

Designed by Barbara de Wilde

Designed by Brad Norr

Designed by Catherine Casalino

 

Designed by Alison Forner

 Designed by Robin Bilardello

Designed by Isaac Tobin

Designed by Keenan

Designed by Kelly Blair