aka "Bum Teeth"

Elephant's Graveyard 3

Lettering by Leanne Shapton

Helen

I hope to use this blog to periodically highlight the work of my lovely and talented co-workers. Afterall, it can get tedious—for everyone—talking about one's own work all the time. 

You are probably already familiar with the ongoing series of Albert Camus covers that Helen Yentus has been designing, and also the Chinua Achebe covers she is working on with Edel Rodriguez. Above are the first two in a repackaging plan for the work of Yukio Mishima. Pretty spectacular.

Gang of Four Plus

Barbara and Chip

Chip

Carol

Peter M

Archie

Chip

Barbara

A few of my favorite covers shown at the packed house, AIGA Knopf talk the other night. Moderated by Peter Terzian, it was, as expected, a lively, honest, hilarious, inspiring, touching and, at one point, way too cute discussion. A video of the evening will be posted on the AIGA website sometime in the near future.

The Book of Fathers

A cover I recently designed using the artwork of collagist extraordinaire, Nicole Natri. Please don't look at her website as she has a number of collages just dying to be book covers and I want to use them all.

Elephant's Graveyard 2

A cover series proposal put together with Jason Fulford (mostly his idea).

Cover design rocks

Most of us already know about Chip Kidd's band artbreak. Here's another one of my favorite cover designers, Joe Montgomery, and his musical side project, Black Pepper Sea. It features "eleven songs about dreams, animals, rain, silver, death, love, snow, birds, lust, the ocean, motorcycles and women with knives". Give it a download.

Pre-Nabokov pinning exercise

Rodrigo Corral has been helping guide New Directions back to design prominence with his awe-inspiring design and art direction. He asked me to do this cover for him. Originally, I wanted to use this terrific photo by Martin Klimas:

Unfortunately, he doesn't allow his work to be used commercially. Purists! Instead I had to make the damn thing and photograph it myself. This was done at a point when the Nabokov project was dead in the water.

Lolita Contest

Nabokov fans Venus Febriculosa recently held a Lolita cover design contest. They received 154 entries from 34 countries. Tough assignment. Lots of student work. The results were a mixed bag but there were a number of interesting solutions. Not sure I agree with all of their winners. I was asked to weigh in. My choices above.

Intellectual Property

Google has tons of patent applications online, including some interesting book and book cover patents. You can find inventions like  "dummy book for library shelves" and "doll with integrated book feature in doll cavity". Have yet to track down who first patented the jacket with flaps design we use today, but here is an awesome early electronic book.

Just type in "book" or "book cover" in Google patent search and all kinds of curious things show up.

I was first hepped to these by Sam Potts of Sam Potts Inc. Sam recently closed up shop and set off to China for a year. He will be updating us as to his whereabouts and whatfors here. 

Art Books

Steve Wolfe is one of a number of artists working today who use book covers for inspiration and subject matter. His trompe l'oeil recreations document the tattered pages and bent corners of book and memory. Steve Wolfe on Paper at the Whitney through November.

On related note, check out the NY Art Book Fair this weekend at PS.1.