For any novelists looking for a title, there's a near half-century available from the Wall Street Crash to the Watergate scandal.
Wednesday, 30 June 2010
A Century in Fiction
There must be some I missed, but here goes: the last 100 years in fiction...
For any novelists looking for a title, there's a near half-century available from the Wall Street Crash to the Watergate scandal.
For any novelists looking for a title, there's a near half-century available from the Wall Street Crash to the Watergate scandal.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Puffin Magic
I've been wanting to post about this for a while, but my camera has been uncooperative until today--this was not a book I was going to press flat in the scanner. It's Phil Baines's Puffin by Design, designed by Tom Sanderson, a companion to 2005's Penguin by Design. And it's a beauty!
A comprehensive and beautifully illustrated to 70 years of some of the most gorgeous children's books in publishing, this book is heaven to anyone interested in book design. Have a look at some of the inner spreads (click every image in this post for much bigger versions).
Perhaps best of all, though, is that cover, designed by Tom Sanderson. It's a photo, not a manipulated image. Sanderson was kind enough to let me use this image of its construction.
Having read this, I have a deep urge to revisit the books of my youth. Looking through the covers collected here has reminded me of numerous books I loved when I found them on school library shelves, but which had vanished into the deep storage of my memory in the intervening years--books which, more often than not, I first took down from the shelf because of the cover art.
A comprehensive and beautifully illustrated to 70 years of some of the most gorgeous children's books in publishing, this book is heaven to anyone interested in book design. Have a look at some of the inner spreads (click every image in this post for much bigger versions).
Perhaps best of all, though, is that cover, designed by Tom Sanderson. It's a photo, not a manipulated image. Sanderson was kind enough to let me use this image of its construction.
Having read this, I have a deep urge to revisit the books of my youth. Looking through the covers collected here has reminded me of numerous books I loved when I found them on school library shelves, but which had vanished into the deep storage of my memory in the intervening years--books which, more often than not, I first took down from the shelf because of the cover art.
Thursday, 24 June 2010
The Unexpected Intrusion of Television
UPDATED: See the end of the post for comments by John Parot.
It's all over the internet, at least if you visit the distinctly nerdy places I do: Penguin got some contestants on an irritating sounding become-the-next-great-modern-artist TV show to design a book cover, and then rushed the result into print. This is the underwhelming result:
The artist, John Parot, described his inspiration as "my reality and gay culture", apparently, which is part of my problem with this thing: it's about the artist and not at all about the book, which is a self-indulgent mistake. I don't mind the type, to be honest: at least it's hand-drawn, with all of the irregularities that entails, rather than being some free distorted font slaped on there. Overall, though, it's not much good, and the banner across the top makes it even worse.
Still, you only need to look at some of the other possibilities, and you can see how much worse it could have been. And I can't quite believe I just linked to the site of a "reality" show. Excuse me while I slit my wrists. Take a look at some of these hideous contenders, and you may feel the need to do the same:
This reminds me of the time Penguin asked musicians to design covers for them, and got a bunch of murky, shitty rubbish.
UPDATE: John Parot commented on this post, and I think it's fair to reproduce what he had to say here, to give his side of the story:
Hi! I thought I'd enlighten some of you haters. You misunderstood some things. I was asked to create a book design for the Penguin Classic "The Time Machine". When we met with the representative we were asked to create a cover that would win new readers to these old classics. My inspiration for the piece was not my "gay culture" or gayness or whatever it was called. On the T.V show the producer showcased my professional artwork. They sited that in my profession artwork I reference my gay reality and it is a constant theme. This book and the design has nothing to do with being gay.
I grew up in a Library, my Dad is a historian and librarian. I grew up collecting paperbacks and have seen many covers. For this cover I was thinking of the gorgeous Milton Glaser Illustrations in the sixties as well as the classic psychedelic sci-fi of the 70's That is where the "jumble of purple/pink" colors comes from. It is stylized time machine. not the one described in the book, but one i wanted new readers to go into. Since the book is psychological as well as fantastical, I decided my machine would have a profile of a person, to echo the struggles of the main character.
What surprises me the most of all of you is no one has commented on the decline of the book cover from the 50's to the present. John Grisham covers anyone? The nineties were darker then some of the clunkers that were on the show last night! Finally, I love my cover and so do my new friends at Penguin. I would love to chat more on the subject. Come meet me. I will be signing copies of my design at the Vroman's: Wed, June 30th.
It's all over the internet, at least if you visit the distinctly nerdy places I do: Penguin got some contestants on an irritating sounding become-the-next-great-modern-artist TV show to design a book cover, and then rushed the result into print. This is the underwhelming result:
The artist, John Parot, described his inspiration as "my reality and gay culture", apparently, which is part of my problem with this thing: it's about the artist and not at all about the book, which is a self-indulgent mistake. I don't mind the type, to be honest: at least it's hand-drawn, with all of the irregularities that entails, rather than being some free distorted font slaped on there. Overall, though, it's not much good, and the banner across the top makes it even worse.
Still, you only need to look at some of the other possibilities, and you can see how much worse it could have been. And I can't quite believe I just linked to the site of a "reality" show. Excuse me while I slit my wrists. Take a look at some of these hideous contenders, and you may feel the need to do the same:
This reminds me of the time Penguin asked musicians to design covers for them, and got a bunch of murky, shitty rubbish.
UPDATE: John Parot commented on this post, and I think it's fair to reproduce what he had to say here, to give his side of the story:
Hi! I thought I'd enlighten some of you haters. You misunderstood some things. I was asked to create a book design for the Penguin Classic "The Time Machine". When we met with the representative we were asked to create a cover that would win new readers to these old classics. My inspiration for the piece was not my "gay culture" or gayness or whatever it was called. On the T.V show the producer showcased my professional artwork. They sited that in my profession artwork I reference my gay reality and it is a constant theme. This book and the design has nothing to do with being gay.
I grew up in a Library, my Dad is a historian and librarian. I grew up collecting paperbacks and have seen many covers. For this cover I was thinking of the gorgeous Milton Glaser Illustrations in the sixties as well as the classic psychedelic sci-fi of the 70's That is where the "jumble of purple/pink" colors comes from. It is stylized time machine. not the one described in the book, but one i wanted new readers to go into. Since the book is psychological as well as fantastical, I decided my machine would have a profile of a person, to echo the struggles of the main character.
What surprises me the most of all of you is no one has commented on the decline of the book cover from the 50's to the present. John Grisham covers anyone? The nineties were darker then some of the clunkers that were on the show last night! Finally, I love my cover and so do my new friends at Penguin. I would love to chat more on the subject. Come meet me. I will be signing copies of my design at the Vroman's: Wed, June 30th.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Lynd Ward II
Later this year, the Library of America is producing a very handsome two-volume set of six 'woodcut novels' by the great Lynd Ward. I wrote more extensively about Ward here, so go there to see why he's worth pursuing. All I can say here is that, even though I own all of these books already, I'm sorely tempted by the loveliness of this set.
Before now, the Ward flame has been kept burning by Dover Publications, who have reprinted many of his woodcut novels, as well as his illustrated version of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, in editions that are both cheap and attractive (except for the sometimes over-loud typography on the front covers). If you want to see what the fuss is about, any of those volumes are well worth your time.
Monday, 21 June 2010
Restraint
Having read about a "controversial" new YA novel, which rewrites Anne Frank's story to include "explicit and intimate details" of sex and lust, I was hoping that the cover might be in hideous taste, but it's sadly restrained.
For something less restrained you have to go to the Japanese, where this Manga version of her life features the wholly unnecessary inclusion of Astro Boy and his sister.
Speaking of the unexpected, I seem to have somehow signed up to a thing called Bookblips, which is some sort of social media/blog aggregating/news thing about books, which every week sends me a list of popular net articles about books. I do wonder at the software responsible for choosing images to go with the stories, though, as this is not necessarily the memorial José Saramago would have expected.
See this post for Tom Gauld's brilliant Saramago covers.
While I'm on the topic of e-foolishness, it would be great if a certain Nigerian spammer stopped trying to leave comments on old posts. A word of advice to them: if you're looking for someone to scam, choosing a less alarming fake name than 'Elizabeth Bathory' would be a wise move.
For something less restrained you have to go to the Japanese, where this Manga version of her life features the wholly unnecessary inclusion of Astro Boy and his sister.
Speaking of the unexpected, I seem to have somehow signed up to a thing called Bookblips, which is some sort of social media/blog aggregating/news thing about books, which every week sends me a list of popular net articles about books. I do wonder at the software responsible for choosing images to go with the stories, though, as this is not necessarily the memorial José Saramago would have expected.
See this post for Tom Gauld's brilliant Saramago covers.
While I'm on the topic of e-foolishness, it would be great if a certain Nigerian spammer stopped trying to leave comments on old posts. A word of advice to them: if you're looking for someone to scam, choosing a less alarming fake name than 'Elizabeth Bathory' would be a wise move.
Thursday, 17 June 2010
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 Alison Forner
Designed by Robin Bilardello
Designed by Isaac Tobin
Designed by Keenan
Designed by Kelly Blair
Rathna Ramanathan's Type
A delightful recent purchase was the Tara Books edition of Christian Morgenstern's In the Land of Punctuation. Morgenstern's poem is effectively a fable of political intolerance and genocide, with different punctuation marks as the different races or political factions involved. Tara have translated the poem into English, and produced it as a beautiful picture book, with artwork by Rathna Ramanathan.
Ramanthan is based in both London and Chennai. I'd dearly love to reproduce several of the book's double-page spreads here, but as it's quite short, that seems unfair. Instead, here are a couple of single pages which should give you some of the flavour: all of the illustrations consist entirely of typography in black and red (with overprinting).
She has worked on two other books for Tara, providing the type for The Fivetongued Firefanged Folkadotted Dragon Snake, and the typographical illustrations for the nonsense picture-book Anything but a Brabooberry, by Anushka Ravishankar, of which here are some sample pages.
More of Ramanthan's work is viewable at her website, including a wonderful talk on small presses here.
EDIT: I first learned of this book from here, Levi Stahl's interview with Tara's director. There are further samples of the book's art there, too.
Ramanthan is based in both London and Chennai. I'd dearly love to reproduce several of the book's double-page spreads here, but as it's quite short, that seems unfair. Instead, here are a couple of single pages which should give you some of the flavour: all of the illustrations consist entirely of typography in black and red (with overprinting).
She has worked on two other books for Tara, providing the type for The Fivetongued Firefanged Folkadotted Dragon Snake, and the typographical illustrations for the nonsense picture-book Anything but a Brabooberry, by Anushka Ravishankar, of which here are some sample pages.
More of Ramanthan's work is viewable at her website, including a wonderful talk on small presses here.
EDIT: I first learned of this book from here, Levi Stahl's interview with Tara's director. There are further samples of the book's art there, too.
Monday, 14 June 2010
Niroot Puttapipat's Russian Legends
Having only just discovered the artwork of Thai-born, london-based Niroot Puttapipat, it must be shared! I encountered it first via the Folio Society's Myths and Legends of Russia, by Aleksandr Afanas’e.
See the rest of the illustrations here, and Puttapipat's artwork for Jane Austen here, for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám here, for Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book here, and for much else here. It's beautiful work, with a delicacy of touch and incredible intricacy that really appeals. The coloured work at those links reminds me of the best of Arthur Rackham, while the Russian legends shown above have the same beautiful and sinister appeal as the work of Vania Zouravliov's, whose cover for Vintage's edition of the Grimms' Fairy Tales I love.
See the rest of the illustrations here, and Puttapipat's artwork for Jane Austen here, for The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám here, for Andrew Lang's Red Fairy Book here, and for much else here. It's beautiful work, with a delicacy of touch and incredible intricacy that really appeals. The coloured work at those links reminds me of the best of Arthur Rackham, while the Russian legends shown above have the same beautiful and sinister appeal as the work of Vania Zouravliov's, whose cover for Vintage's edition of the Grimms' Fairy Tales I love.
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