Text Adventure

The book itself isn't coming out until September, but I'm already looking forward to Michael W. Clune's Gamelife, a memoir of growing up through 1980s computer games. Partly this is because I'm pathetically right in the middle of the target demographic, having spent a ludicrous amount of time in my pre-teenage years typing variations on "LOOK ROOM" and "HIT ORC" into a Vic-20, while it responded "SYNTAX ERROR. READY:" with blithe indifference. Partly this is because Clune's previous memoir, about heroin addiction and academic life, White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin, was excellent. And partly because it has such a witty and clever cover (designer as yet unknown):

White Out's cover was also rather good, if less original:

Text adventures were weirdly compelling despite (because of?) their limitations. I remember the ridiculously difficult Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, which killed you at almost every arbitrary choice, and a King Solomon's Mines game that responded to commands it didn't know with "YOU TALKING PIDGIN, BWANA?". I even spent a vast amount of time writing my own text adventures in BASIC, destined to remain unplayed by anyone besides my indulgent father.

Clune's book will surely be more interesting than that last paragraph. It would have to be, really.

Blackboard

Puffin Chalks are a new series of classic children's books from Penguin's Puffin imprint, making charming use of chalk illustration and typography for their covers. The design is by Dana Tanamachi-Williams of Tanamachi Studio, with art direction by Deborah Kaplan and Kristin Logsdon. The first few titles are out now. Click to embiggen.

..with more to come later this year, although I don't have final cover images for those. Tanamachi-Williams has also put up time-lapse videos showing the creation of two of the covers. It's lovely seeing this work being done physically, not digitally.

Cloudy

There are these things called word clouds, which are various graphical representations of the concordance of a text. For example, here's one for this very blog, in the shape of a dog (click for a readable version).

Somebody (Thunder Bay Press/Canterbury Classics) has hit on the idea of using these to make the covers for their Word Cloud Classics reprints. Each book has significant words and phrases lifted out and arranged in the covers. It's a simple idea, and done quite nicely. I'm not sure they're my cup of tea, but they look quite appealing.

Sadly Not Sans Comic Sans

The late Mordecai Richler was one of Canada's great modern writers--a genuinely funny comic novelist capable of deeply moving work. I started with his Barney's Version (read the book, don't see the misguided movie version), got hooked and worked my way back in time though his earlier books.

Just the other day I encountered a set of covers from McClelland & Stewart for his backlist. Oh dear. Somebody decided that badly kerned Comic Sans would be the perfect font for these otherwise classy-looking books. I don't know how that happened.

It's unfortunate, because there's actually a very nice typeface designed and named in Richler's honour, which would have done splendidly...

While we're on Richlers, any time his daughter, Emma, wants to put out her third novel, I'll be buying it.

Vintage Bond II

Sorry for the break--illness of a particularly irritating and boring kind has got in the way. But in the meantime the rest of the upcoming Vintage Classics UK James Bond covers have emerged. I'm still not convinced, but I must admit they're growing on me. Here's the complete set.

Some, like Thunderball and The Spy Who Loved Me, seem just right, while I feel as though others aren't quite there yet. What do you think?

Typography of Lust

The full, folded-out cover for the new Penguin Classics US deluxe edition of the Kama Sutra (first discussed here); sex-type by Malika Favre, overseen by Paul Buckley. Click for a much bigger version.

I think this qualifies as the most obscene spine in my library, or at least equal-most with this one.

Another Moment in the Sun

I posted about John Sayles's huge and beautiful A Moment in the Sun before, but now I have my copy and it's just lovely, so I'm doing it again. Several astute commenters guessed that the cover was the work of poster artist Aaron Horkey, and they were spot on.

In the flesh this is an absolutely gorgeous book, with the cover printed with metallic inks. Even better, the blurb and the ISBN are on a detachable sticker, so you can remove all the commercial stuff from the book and just have it as a work of art. McSweeney's really do know how to produce a book. Click on the photos for bigger images.

And for scale, here is the book with a dog called Boswell and a bottle of whisky. The latter is the reason why this and the last of the photos above are a bit blurry.

Disco Dubliners

The choice of completely the wrong typeface can wreck a cover (not that either of these would be marvellous otherwise). From a public-domain publisher called Simon & Brown come these two James Joyce books with a typeface that cries 'DISCO!'. You can just imagine the bright flash of light that would run along the letters in a late-1970s TV show opening credit sequence.

O Liver Sacks

Drawn to my attention by A Journey Round My Skull is the cover of the new Oliver Sacks book. "In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world." (Click for a bigger version)

Designer as yet unknown--it's a Knopf books, so it could be any one of a number of geniuses. UPDATE: And it's the work of genius-in-chief, Chip Kidd (thanks, Anon and Liska!)

Daniel Justi

Daniel Justi is a Brazilian graphic designer who creates (among other things) bith typefaces and book covers. Unsurprisingly, the use of type on his covers is both strong and effective. Here is some of my favourite work from him, with images stolen from his website.