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.

Run, don't walk.

Original Knopf design team on stage together for the first time.

Not to be missed. October 21.

Treasure Trove

A Journey Around My Skull

Wardrobe based on book cover design

What's cooler than that? Maybe that her name is Lorena Cupcake?

flip-flop

For the fine folks at TCG (Theater Communications Group). Two plays in one volume by Irish born playwright, Enda Walsh. 

First round played on the "flip the book over" idea a bit too much:

The New Electric Ballroom coming to St. Ann's in October.

Can't say I really blame them...

Rejected:

Accepted:

Totally Wired

A couple of recent illustrations for Wired magazine.

For an article about the battle between a group of anarchic pranksters and the Church of Scientology:

For an article about the growing online "t-shirt economy":

Bernie Fuchs

1932-2009

Great illustrator. Part of Mad Men's DNA.

Great Plug for New Dan Brown Novel

Product Placement

Catholic Boy

Jim Carroll died of a heart attack this past weekend. A poet and minor rock figure, he was mostly known for his song "People Who Died" and for his book "The Basketball Diaries", which was later turned into a Leonardo DiCaprio movie. His album "Catholic Boy" is pretty damned excellent.

I still have this copy of "The Basketball Diaries", which was passed around my high school class and somehow, miraculously, made it back to me. Perfect adventure reading for the suburban 17-year-old male: plenty of basketball, illicit sex, and heroin addiction as streetwise kids run amok in NYC. It was far more compelling than the required reading at the time. "Tess of the d"Urbervilles" anyone?

While the cover design is nothing amazing, I suppose it could be lauded for its design restraint, which is not something one usually associates with the mass market format. There's even a block of unused white space running down the side. The type is stacked in that left/right/middle rag that you see on jazz albums. And Jim looks pretty cool in the photo—dressed all in black, dirty white Adidas, and a haircut one could probably have duplicated on Astor Place. Best thing about the cover? Its still attached to the book. 

Sneak Peek

We are in the middle of a huge Nabokov series redesign. Tying into Nabokov's love of lepidoptery, I asked twenty different designers to design specimen boxes for the twenty different books. The only restrictions were that one had to use paper and pins to illustrate the title. The boxes are then photographed by Alison Gootee. Since Playboy is already running a piece on these, I thought I'd offer a quick look. These first four are coming out very soon. The rest will follow in the coming months, hopefully dovetailing with the Knopf publication of Nabokov's final manuscript, "Laura", in November. Clockwise from upper left: Stephen Doyle, Yentus and Booher, Carin Goldberg, and Michael Bierut.

Coming soon: Dave Eggers, Chip Kidd, Marian Bantjes, Sam Potts, and, of course, many others.

Much more to report on these in the coming weeks.

Elephant's Graveyard #1

Norman Mailer vs. Rip Torn

Aristotle vs. Kant

Although I am really (really!) happy with how this cover turned out:

at the time, I was totally (totally!) convinced that this was the way to go:

Author nixed. Was it so wrong?

Top: photographed by Simon Lee

Cover Approved

In fine company too: Levar Burton, Jeremy Piven's sushi, and Baader Meinhof chic. Now if I can just do something about the cover that's about to be killed by Costco...

Fancy Book Learnin'

The book cover design class I teach at SVA starts tonight. Here are a few projects from some of last semester's students.

Lorrie Moore series by Andy Schoonmaker

Frankenstein by Andrew Schaff

J.D. Salinger series by Cara Possemato

Lorrie Moore cover by Megan McLaughlin

The Scarlet Letter by Rebecca Malley

Hire them!

Not that the world needs another book cover related blog...

Until I am able to find that free month or two to focus on the details of my website, I thought I’d start posting some things onto this blog. I’ll be posting some of my projects, work by colleagues, some student stuff, and lots of other sundry items. We’ll see if I can maintain the pace...

 

In the leadoff spot:

 

I asked Peter Buchanan-Smith to redesign our Raymond Carver backlist. He came up with the brilliant idea of using Todd Hido’s photographs on the covers. The first four are just coming out and they are gorgeous and perfect. Peter interviews Todd over at The Sun and Anchor blog: