Suzanne Dean: the secret to a good book cover

Suzanne Dean designed the cover for the Man Booker prize winner 'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes. She talks about creating some of the most striking book jackets of the past 20 years.

To judge a book by its cover is so patently unwise that it has long been a metaphor for other forms of misinterpretation. But only a very naive author would suppose that the cover of his or her book was irrelevant. It’s the first thing we see, and there’s no way to make it entirely objective: a book’s cover offers an interpretation of its contents – some inflection, if only by its typeface or colour. And yet its effect on the reader is mostly subliminal. Book designers are the ultimate hidden persuaders...


Full article: Telegraph

Report cover

I've nearly finished the report for this project and for a while I have been talking about producing it in the format of a paperback book. So I just need to do a few more hours on it and then I can send it for printing. The above is the cover image which is based on the Marber Grid that was interesting me right at the beginning of the project. I've also used the Akzidenz Grotesk font for the title which relates to those vintage Penguin and Pelican paperbacks but the other text is using the British Library's favoured Syntax.

More recently I had become interested in the idea of noise from the perspective of it being very much about personal perception - despite wanting to produce something that felt like it was a very objective overview. One of the key things that was brought in of late was the visual disruption that can also come from resolution and - following the earlier method of printing material and re-scanning to lose some of its detail plus the use of the enlarged pixel - I've been producing images that combine different dpi outputs. This idea was also applied to the book cloth with the above shape being made up of the same piece being scanned at different sizes so that there's a contrast between the woven surfaces. I had also been manipulating the images during scanning to build on this idea of disruption within space so that crept in too. Plus there's the geometric forms that relate to my liking for textbook-type imagery.

Hoepfully this report element will be complete today and I can mainly focus on completing the CD packaging deliverable over the next fortnight.

Central Station creative social network

A friend suggested that I join the Central Station creative social network up in Glasgow. I'd already checked this site out earlier as they had a 'sound' month with lots of people working largely within the visual arts reponding to auditory influences. Anyway, I joined and got some feedback on a few bits of work that I uploaded. Yesterday I got a nice email to say that they wanted to put one of the images on the homepage. So there it is: bottom left under the 'Bulletin' text. I like those 13 sided polygons too, by the way.

Another proposed internal image

Above is a continuation of the idea of visually disrupting an image of the space to convey a suggestion of how noise exists there. Again, this is using the same angular grid pattern. (I'm quite liking the line of the applied geometry following that of the escalator.)

I'm also currently favouring the idea of not using any images of either people or books within this. I think that the images then become about an overview of a space and possibly have the objectivity that I mentioned when discussing my thoughts on axonometric views. I also believe that the lack of visitors within the illustrations makes them an ideal accompaniment to the CD: at least with regards to the sounds that fill these voids having no definition as to their root cause. The way I see it, this should then leave it open to interpretation and require more personal investment by the viewer/listener.

Penguin 1980s covers by John Squire

From Creative Review via Dave:

Penguin launched its Decades series this month, with five titles each representing the best novels of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. We really liked the covers for the 1980s series, designed by a man perhaps more known for his art (and the Stone Roses): John Squire...

The plans for the series were announced earlier this year (and covered in Design Week) and are part of Penguin's 75th anniversary celebrations. But we thought Squire's efforts, which hit the shops this month, were so nice that they warranted a post. Squire created a series of paintings for the covers under the direction of Penguin's Jim Stoddart.

You can view the rest of the covers for classics from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, here. They were created by Peter Blake (50s), Allen Jones (60s), and Zandra Rhodes (70s) under the art direction of John Hamilton at Penguin.

Available via the following links:

Hawksmoor (Penguin Decades)
An Ice-cream War (Penguin Decades)
Latecomers (Penguin Decades)

Proposed internal image

Another visual idea for the inside of this book. This one uses aspects of the grid that was previously mentioned alongside some photography of the space.

I made some notes the other day and mentioned something about how visual disruption within depictions of the environment could be a metaphor for the noise that exists there. The above was an attempt to illustrate that idea although, for me, there's something a bit disturbing about the image.

Views

Independent's The New Review: The Design Issue

The New Review supplement that comes with the Independent was a design special today. It contains a lot of interesting material but, for me, it was the feature on book covers (coinciding with the Faber & Faber exhibition at the V&A) that immediately stood out. It includes some interesting perspectives from the people involved in making book covers about their way of approaching the task and the difficulties involved with distilling a very detailed story into one definitive image.

There's also a shopping page based around what you can purchase in museum and gallery gift shops. (That one is is online: www.independent.co.uk/life-style.)

Polar by Siggi Eggertsson

After mentioning how flexible that triangular form was the other day, I spotted the above image by Siggi Eggertsson.

Visual Complexity inspiration

Pop Sketch Series / Jake Elliott The Shape of Song / Martin Wattenberg Narratives 2.0 / Matthias Dittrich Visualization of iTunes Libraries / Caleb Larsen 3D Tour of Classical Music History / Anonymous Prof Mo Money Mo Problems / Nick Hardeman Chart Arcs / Martin Dittus More at www.visualcomplexity.com

Vintage book campaign

Below are addverts for an old book campaign by Rudi Bass that ran in the New York Times. These were spotted on the blog of Brooklyn graphic designer Ed Nacional.

Books #5

Perhaps the finest collection of Pelican covers I've found on the web so far is via this link. Arranged according to decade, it is probably the best organised selection too. There are also all the combined Flickr Pelican uploads from across the globe here.

Meantime Olly Moss has done some computer game packaging using the classic Marber grid (below). The full set is viewable on his site (here). However the idea is reminiscent of a number of other projects I had noticed. There was Littlepixel's 'Cover Versions' idea - i.e. classic albums re-imagined as Pelican books - (here), Spacesick's 'I Can Read Movies' series (here) and the Stephane Massa-Bidal's 'Website Collection' posters (here).

Meanwhile, I stumbled on a great blog that is more concerned with the history of books but it is very interesting all the same (here).