From the Design Desk: Covers Are the Icing on the Cake
8.25.08 | Suzanne LaGasa | Art and Design, Design Desk
We spend a lot of time judging a book by its cover. We discuss covers in design meetings, present them, collect them, study them … We even read about them in blogs such as Henry Sene Yee Design, David Drummond / Covers and the New York Times Book Design Review.
I’ll pepper this post with the cover options we considered for some of our books. (My finger points to the one we ultimately chose.)
Probably my favorite site for book covers is run by the New York design firm Fwis. Their Covers site is sheer cover porn, just beautiful, cover after cover. It never tires…
Illustrator Julia Rothman seems to share our passion and started Book By Its Cover, a gorgeous site built to share and highlight books she loves.
There are many designers who specialize in book design, such as Rodrigo Corral who creates a wide range of designs for different aesthetics and narratives. And there are designers like Non-Format and Chip Kidd whose covers are unmistakable.
Then, there are those trying to automate the cover design process, like Faber & Faber with their print-on demand explorations. But they’re not taking the fun out of the design. The result are amazing, computer-generated, decorative borders based on Marian Bantjes’ sketches, and the loveliest custom-made B-HMMND font in these two-color covers. Read more about them here.
Do you have a book cover you just love? Sites you’d recommend for lovers of books and design?
Suzanne LaGasa
Designer
This isn’t specific to book covers, but I love http://infosthetics.com/. It’s a whole blog about how to represent & communicate information in the clearest and most visually rich way. Great post, Suzanne!
Thanks, Suzanne–so interesting, as always. I like that Inside Iran cover with the mosque… design:related is always an interesting read…
I do have a current favourite book cover. Its a book called Falling Cloudberries by Tessa Kiros. I love it so much that it inspired a big wave of design in our studio. But the funny thing is that it’s the back of the book that we love – a combination of vintage wallpaper and spot varnish text – quite beautiful and brilliant. I hope you have the chance to see it some time!
I am mad for the new line of classic covers put out by Random House UK.
http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/vintage/vintageclassics/
What a great bunch of links: I’ve been a fan of Book by its Cover, but have been hunting for more book design-related blogs.
i like to check in on the covers website maintained by fwis design…
http://covers.fwis.com