One place the phrase ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover’ doesn’t work is in the publishing and bookselling world. One of the most important factors that determine whether someone browsing for a book buys one is how the book looks. Cover designs that important.
Patrick Ness has a nice commentary on book design in the Guardian today
Arthur Hawkins, Rockwell Kent, Lustig, E. McKnight Kauffer, Milton Glaser, Paul Rand and Chip Kidd are just a few of the names of artists and designers known for the their dust jacket cover art.
Along these lines if you are going to be in NY in a couple of days the 92nd Street Y is having a panel discussion Art of the Book: Behind the Covers with Dave Eggers, Chip Kidd and Milton Glaser that will undoubtedly address the importance of book design.
One of the ways Penguin Classics is celebrating their 60th anniversary, is by having 5 designers, Paul Smith, Manolo Blahnik, Ron Arad, Sam Taylor Wood and Fuel, choose any design they wanted for their favorite Penguin classic. One 1000 copies of each version were published. Below is Paul Smith’s contribution.
Penguin Books UK has introduced a new series called My Penguin: Books By the Greats, Covers by You. They provide the classics bound in art quality paper that is BLANK and you provide the cover art. An absolutely novel approach to both publishing and bookselling. The books look like this when you buy them:
OK now lets create our own lists of possible cover artists for the Penguin Classics.
I’ll cover the Dostoevsky classics and you can submit your list via the comments link below:
Crime & Punishment – O.J. Simpson
Notes From Underground – Keith Haring
The Idiot – George …