David Pearson has created yet another volume of the Penguin Great Ideas series—volumes by philosophers, writers, political theorists that all adopt the same small format. But for each book, Pearson creates a typographically-rich cover that comments upon the author, volume, or era. Pearson has posted the fifth volume on his flickr stream, or you can see the previous Great Ideas volumes on his website.
This video of book designer Irma Boom (and Senior Critic at the Yale School of Art) features an extensive discussion with Boom about her process of making books, from her tiny dummies, to being on press, to the final piece.
Yet what I appreciate most about this video is Boom’s disgust for handmade books: “I’m mad about books, but I hate handmade books. They have to be industrially made. A book which has been made by hand, showing traces of handicraft, to me is hideous, really disgusting…Books are made to spread information. They’re reproductions, so they should be distributed around the world in multiples.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Visual Editions is a London book publisher that attempts to combine the visual and textual narrative of the written word. Originating in 2009, Visual Editions started after recognizing the “large divide between text-driven literary books on the one hand and picture-driven art and design books on the other. And we wondered why this divide seems so extreme, when most of us compute visuals in our everyday more than ever before. We believe this visual everydayness adds to the way we read, it adds to the way we experience what we read and the way we absorb and understand the way stories are told: through words and pictures.”
I first discovered Visual Editions while reading Alice Rawsthorn’s article today in The New York Times, “The Invincible Book Keeps Reinventing Itself.” Rawsthorn reviews a number of books—both printed and digital–that visually heighten a reader’s experience of the written word. She describes Visual Editions as creating “books that are as seductive to look at as they are to read.”
Visual Editions first book is Laurence Sterne’s 1759 experimental novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Their design is “filled with visual jokes: a closed door is illustrated by a folded page; beads of sweat by spots of varnish; and the famous “black page” in the original book is replaced by two pages on which the text is over-printed in black.”
Though I rarely buy books overseas, I’m sorely tempted by this edition, if only because one of my last undergraduate papers was precisely on the visual texture of Tristram Shandy. As an 18th century text, Sterne was already calling attention to the visual page, with full spreads as marbled pages or his infamous black page to represent a funeral, or a whispy line drawing in the middle of the page to illustrate a “flourish of the stick.” These visual anomalies in a fictional work were used as a way to enhance or add meaning to the textual narrative.
To view more images of the book, visit Visual Editions or their Tristram Shandy microsite.
A Mohawk paper promotion, printed in 13-colors, that is also about the art of bicycling? Too good to be true.
Mode of Transformation showcases the evolution of the bicycle as the perfect metaphor for the story of Superfine. Like the bicycle, Superfine is custom-crafted, constantly pushed to the limit, and made to last. Both are objects of endless fascination. Both have sustainable qualities that, more and more, are being brought to the surface. And undeniably, both have a passionate following within their domain.
You can see more images of Mode of Transportation over on For Print Only.
About Paris 48°49N 2°29E is a volume by photographer Ami Sioux, containing hand-drawn maps of specific places in Paris juxtaposed next to photographs of the same location. What’s most compelling about this book is that the image is not directly correlate to the hand-drawn map, but each become associative interpretations and presentations.
According to Sioux, “On various occasions, people had handed her a hand drawn map of directions to a party or to their house rather than a street address as east Berlin was still being rebuilt. In each city, she asked 50 of its inhabitants to hand-draw a map to a place of their choosing, a place that is significant or important to them personally, for any reason. She then used the maps to navigate to each location and take a photograph to represent each location. This book portrays a side of each city as interpreted by those who live and work in it every day. Its not a “guide” to the new cafe or club, but rather, a unique way of discovering different parts of the city.”
A new tumblr theme, that looks similar to Robert Bringhurst’s canonical The Elements of Typographic Style.
A flickr archive of W. W. Norton book designs.
If you thought the sneek peek was good, wait until you see the complete series of redesigned Fitzgerald by Coralie Bickford-Smith, featured below. Though Bickford-Smith used foil-stamped dust jackets for this series—a departure from her famous cloth bound classics—the interiors reveal the repeated design on the front and back covers.
All I have to say is, keep ‘em coming.
Prolific portfolio of book designs by Kelly Blair.
I recently finished reading Penguin 75: Designers, Authors, Commentary, a volume by Penguin Art Director Paul Buckley. Beyond offering a unique perspective on book design—with commentary by both the designer, author, and art director for each book cover—I found the reprints of Penguin Classics to be the most interesting case studies. Buckley has commissioned everyone from illustrators to type designers and tattoo artists to cartoonists, to re-cover the classics, almost always producing beautifully witty results. As Buckley writes, “When dealing with our more special Penguin Classics, we are always thinking of how to create a special package. It has to be gorgeous, gifty, just something you have to have for its sheer beauty.”
As an English major, I already own most of the canon. Yet, I’m am tempted by certain cover designs—most notably, clothbound hardbacks like Coralie Bickford-Smith—and so I’m left with two copies of the same novel in my library.
Lilli Carre’s illustrations for The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn fits this exact predicament. Twain’s novel has a debatable political charge, so it is no easy task to capture the “Adventures” that fill the story.
Peter Mendelsund created nearly 50 mock ups for the book cover of the now-bestseller, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. View this slideshow to see the behind-the-scenes development.
“Horizontalism and Readability”: An article on Thinking for a Living by Frank Chimero on the history and current application of the horizontal canvas for screen reading and website design.
© 2011 Jessica Svendsen