6/15/11

Contest #3

Name the designer, win the book.
Difficulty level: 5
scale of 1-10. 10 being the most difficult

6/1/11

Kids Today 5

Some student work from the spring 2011 book cover design class. Third and fourth year students. Special thanks to Evan Gaffney, Tal Goretsky, Chip Kidd and Megan Wilson for their inspiration and expert guidance.

Projects include:
Design a series of classics for a contemporary audience.
Design a cover for a How To book.
Design a cover for the novel Lake Overturn.
Design a cover for a book that is in desperate need of a new cover.

Nina Loschiavo



Rachel Willey




Michele Martinez




Alex Stikeleather





Daniel Rodriguez




Jinyi Roh


5/20/11

New Faulkners

We've freshened up our William Faulkner backlist. First six about to go to printer. There will be 20 in all. Lots of southern photography, William Eggleston and the like. Lettering by Jon Contino. The ebooks appear to have the new covers—whatever that is worth.



5/19/11

Blog Fodder Friday

LP inserts

Another great Gary Shteyngart book trailer.


Steve Albini has a food blog. Steve Albini!?

While we're at it, the Vegan Black Metal Chef

This website must have been seriously hard to program.

Somebody already owns this domain name.


Also. I'm looking for anything interesting being done in ebook/epub for ipad. More experimental the better. Post below or email me: jgall@randomhouse.com. Not looking for inspiration or to steal ideas or anything like that.

Finally, what it's all come down to: moustaches.

5/16/11

From the Killed Covers Show

Some of the work was reproduced in the Book Review this past Sunday.

I will repost the Charles Yu post when I get a chance to REWRITE IT. Thanks Blogger!

5/14/11

The New Yu

This is the hard cover jacket I designed about a year ago for Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. I really liked this cover. Art by Benbo George.
It made it so far as to be included on the bound galley. At the last minute it was killed and replaced with the UK jacket (seen below). Note to cover design novices: if you are ever in a meeting and someone says "Have you seen the UK jacket?" you know you are in trouble.
As baffling as it was at the time, I can see the point. The toy raygun approach may not have been the best solution, and is a cliche wrapped inside of a cliche, more accessible approach was needed. The novel is about a guy who fixes time travel machines and ends up getting caught in a time loop. He is in love with his computer's sexy voiced operating system and he has a pet dog. It's also a great book.

For paperback here is my bid for a wider pop audience. Die cut/step back cover, silver ink, a ton of wonderful quotes and a dog in a space suit. What more could one want? Cover illustration by our own Peter Quach.
Paperback available June 28.




4/28/11

dreamlike, insane

Rodrigo Corral's gorgeous new redesign for the paperback of Chuck Palahniuk's novel Tell-All. Rodrigo did original jacket as well.
.

4/26/11

Killed Covers

Show coming to the New York Times gallery. Opening May 12.

I'm curious which of my submissions will be included. Whatever is not on view I will display here as Killed Killed Covers.


4/19/11

30 Posters 30 Days

From the folks who brought us National Novel Writing Month and the 30 Covers in 30 Days event, we now have the script writing equivalent with the movie posters to match.


4/7/11

Guest Contributor: Fred Free

For those of you who don't know Fred Free, you are in for a real treat. Fred is one of the finest collage artists working today. You can see a sampling of his amazing work here, here and here. In addition, he has recently started a curated art blog called Variety Showcase.

Fred also knows his way around a library book sale. This week he pairs up some of his recent finds. Enjoy!








4/1/11

It's Poetry Month

Don't forget to sign up for Poem-a-Day!