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

Rem Koolhaas' Seattle Public Library with graphics by Bruce Mau

Full story: Link

Presentation board #4

Some old text versions

I'm just going through a pile of old files to get together everything relating to the process for this project. Perhaps some of it will be useful for the Powerpoint. Anyway, I found these old text interpretations which were attempting to disrupt the type with treatments influenced by the production of noise.

Presentation boards

It's that time again: I'm now busy trying to put the key parts of this project on A3 presentation boards ahead of next week's hand-in. [I'm using a grid from an old IBM catalogue as the basis for this layout. It is also the closest I've come to emulating the two colour printing that I mentioned way back in January.]

In other news, the overprinted CDs haven't arrived yet. Plus I need to complete the book tomorrow night so that I can photograph it and use the images on the presentation boards and Powerpoint.

Some page layouts

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.

Design Industry and Professional Practice assignment

Today I'm working on the essay for the Design Industry & Professional Practice module. It's actually my least favourite class. Possibly because it doesn't really suit my more typical way of working and also because it's very 'design management' influenced [and I can be a bit of a design management skeptic at times].

That said, I still need to turn in an assignment. I'm looking at the arguments for professional accreditation for the UK graphic design industry: a subject that has received more coverage of late due to a push by the Chartered Institute of Design. It also gathered a bit more momentum following the unwarranted criticism about the NHS 60 logo not long ago. Tomorrow we've got a tutorial to get some feedback on what we're doing, where we're up to, etc.

As a little diversion - and to try and develop some enthusiasm for the model we're following to prepare this report - I decided to spend a little bit of time thinking about a front cover for when it's finished. After messing around with some of the geometry that I'm using for the Negotiated Project module, I eventually did the above. It's supposed to be a graphic suggestion of how a fragmented industry may become united through accreditation. I liked incorporating some rough looking text for this one as recent projects have been a bit bolder type-wise. Plus it picks up on some of the little irregularities in the lining paper that it's printed on. Anyway... better get on with the essay itself now...

Displacing text

I've been using the grid to see how text might appear if the shapes are used to displace parts of the letter forms. The experiments shift from the very small adjustment through to the kind of movement that pretty much obscures the original message. Elements of this might be interesting to incorporate alongside sections of the photographic documentation.

Layout idea

I've been experimenting with a few ideas to see how I might use any text alongside this axonometric view/triangular tessellation layout. What I think I'd like is some variation of scale and detail throughout the print aspect but with some aspects linking through the individual parts. So in some places it would be an obvious aspect of the design but much more subtle in others. The above demonstrates a more blatant use of the grid.

Axonometric views

The earlier experiment with the tessellated image got me thinking more about axonometric views. There's something brutally objective about them - probably owing to the fact that they don't try to seduce the eye with perspective. There's nothing to pull you into the image but instead they remain as two dimensional studies. Well... that's my current reading of them. So I'm thinking that this kind of format might suit this purpose. The angular nature of some of the photos - and the building itself - corresponds well. Subsequently this approach would ensure that the project's final outcome would intrinsically be linked to the architecture: again, forging that relationship between sound and the environment in which it exists. [They also relate to some of the views we have been using in 3D Max.]

This development would mean moving away from the circular forms [they would probably work for Manchester's Central Library] but I've already got ideas about how the sound shapes could be used in this more linear way. Plus it also presents the opportunity to keep the idea consistently running through text, images and layout through the use of a repeated parallelogram shape [itself made up of two equilateral triangles that additionally form a hexagon when repeated].

I think there's more than enough versatility/flexibility in this geometry to keep it interesting.

Image idea

Just something that I've been playing around with today: it's sort of based around an idea surrounding sound as architecture while also considering how other geometric forms - outside of the circle - might be used to visually describe noise.

Visualization with text

Already mentioned in the previous post, here is the (inverted) version with text.

Print and bookcloth reference

I made a bit of an impulse purchase at Ratchford. Faced with rolls and rolls of bookcloth, I found myself saying "red" when asked what colour I was looking for. Then confronted with a pile of different reds, I ended up - in a state of confusion - opting for a two tone product that is a red woven thread across a blue background (above).

I had expected Ratchford to be a shop where I could just browse and agonise over materials for ages but it's predominantly a wholesale company. So when someone was taking time out from dealing with a massive order to assist with a poxy metre of book cloth and a few other sundries, it made sense to be that bit more decisive. So this snap decision has suddenly informed the colourway for the finished product. (The red, by the way, was to keep it working within the British Library's brand guidelines.)

This is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact it has just focussed what I'm doing with the print aspect as I have something definite for it to work alongside. So I've subsequently developed a treatment for the photography that I believe compliments the hue of the cover.

Also I was re-reading my undergraduate dissertation the other day [not for fun - just because there are parts of it that are relevant to my PhD application] and I had interviewed the boss of Azuli Records about how they approached the design for the label when it first launched. Despite being based in London, Azuli capitalized on what was then a demand for American releases by faking their origins and positioning itself as a New York label. The tracks were even shrinkwrapped and had a Stateside telephone number on them. Anyway, they were saying that a problem with the early logo design was that the US labels used old printing presses for the details on the records. Over here in the UK - where the records were manufactured - the print was of a superior quality. To combat this slick printing, they did some photocopies of the original logo to rough it up a little before handing this more ragged artwork to the printer. The suddenly more lo-fi interpretation suddenly had the authenticity required to be able to charge a couple of quid more for a record assumed to be an import.

This inspired me to see what would happen if I was to try out a similar approach with the photos: so that they were printed and re-scanned so they lose some of their sheen. The reason for this was to try and capture some of the qualities of the print that had first caught my attention when looking at vintage paperbacks. I had toyed with the idea of carrying out some traditional printing techniques but - as Amy discovered with last semester's project and Dave has found out through his current work - more contemporary processes can be much more convenient. So the above is an attempt to put some of the graininess into the print without resorting to derivative Photoshop filters. They have also been printed on cream coloured paper just to knock back the tones that bit further (while also relating to the kind of cheap buff stock that is used in paperbacks). I'm also suggesting that these re-scanned versions then be printed on quality white stock just to give some contrast between the imagery - that will then have some sort of heritage feel - and some crisp typographic elements. I also tried out the same re-printed method out with the logo (below)

EarMark logo

I've been working on a logo for the (mythical) publisher of this product. I opted for the name EarMark to note the reference of the project to hearing, but then the name also relates to "earmark" itself: to put aside or reserve.

I now have the above which pleases me as it has a shape evocative of the stealth bombers that influenced the previous core module project. It also works as a stylized letter 'E'. I'm also considering how I can build it under book cloth for a cover so that it is debossed or embossed with the colours defined as different layers.

Before arriving at this I had tried a number of options that were representive of the ear. Mainly the human ear but also some from animals. A lot of these started off looking obvious before being simplified down to just vague shapes. But I was also interested in this idea about how you might set aside something that is intended for a very specific purpose. Additionally I considered how this may relate to the use of books.

I had also suggested the phrase "dog-eared" at some point so began to look at the way that pages are folded to mark a particular place. From this I experimented with 45 degree angles and how this might work within a logo. I did consider using folds as part of this. But then I produced an early version - influenced by old paperback designs by German publishers like Rowohlt. That one is pictured below and was used a couple of weeks back alongside some Virtual Worlds research work. You can actually see the shape for the more developed version starting to appear (albeit minutely) in this early experiment.

Paul Octavious - The Book Collection

More here: Paul Octavious - The Book Collection.

Decibel Dingbats by Sokratype

Available (for free) over at dafont.com.

There are also a couple of other dingbats based on sound/music notation featured on the same site.

Death of the Diner by Ed Nacional

More work by Ed Nacional. I had already mentioned to Dave about an idea for a folded book/brochure for this project. (That idea is currently scrawled on a scrap of paper somewhere.) Meantime, I spotted this - titled 'The Death of the Diner' - which itself is a study in typology with a nice typographic touch to make the project completely cohesive.

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).