Photography and design for print production
Book design in all its forms, from jackets and hardcover books to trade paperbacks, mass-market paperbacks (although rarely), and academic journals.
A History of Arab Graphic Design is easily the best introduction to the history of modern Arab visual culture on the market today. It lacks the jargon of exhibition catalogues, leans heavily on visual sources, and dismisses some previously held assumptions about Arab art[.]
Something for those of us in the West who sometimes suffer from Western-centricity. More at the Brooklyn Rail.
Great list — I agree with almost all of them, but wanted to call a few out especially:
Infinite Country, mentioned here;
O, Steven Carroll, cover by John Gray;
Speak, Okinawa, Elizabeth Miki Brina, cover by Janet Hansen; and
Migratory Birds, Mariana Oliver, cover by Anna Morrison.
In “XXXX Swatchbook,” Evelin Kasikov explores all of the variables of CMYK printing without a single drop of ink. She catalogs primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, two-dozen combinations showing how rotation affects the final pigment, and a full spectrum of rich gradients. In total, the printing-focused book is comprised of four base tones, 16 elements, and 400 swatches of color entirely hand-embroidered in 219,647 stitches.
Six years. Six years.
More @ Colossal.
Five book design items that caught my attention recently.
First, from ArtNet News. Prior to basically everything, Andy Warhol did this:
“The whimsical book was a collaboration with interior decorator Suzie Frankfurt, who wrote the ridiculous recipes, and the artist’s mother, Julia Warhola, who provided the calligraphy, replete with charming misspellings. [It] was the last of a number of books Warhol designed in the 1950s, before he shot to fame in 1962 with Pop art compositions featuring Campbell’s soup and Coca-Cola. Book design offered him a valuable creative outlet during the years he worked as a commercial illustrator.” See more.
The rest are from the New Yorker‘s “Briefly Noted” reviews — which, I’ll admit, inspired the title of this post. They pick four titles weekly, and while I’m sure many are great, actually great book design is rare. So to have four in two weeks … well, just had to say, “noted.” (The New Yorker is, of course, subscription — but there is a free account with limited options if you’d like to read their review.)
The first three are from the March 8th, 2021, issue, starting with In Memory of Memory:
The simplicity of the concentric rectangles — and “destination” dot — is mesmerizing.
Next, Cathedral:
Not a simple illustration in this case, and still an attention-getter in the background. Nice.
Next, my favorite of this set, The Weak Spot:
A very brief (176 page!) debut novel with hits-above-its-weight cover design. (Content, too, presumably…;)
Lastly, from the March 15th issue, Infinite Country:
Color and composition unite into something … infinitely good.
Enjoy.
Creativeboom points out that Heath Kane, not a citizen but in fact a subject of the Crown, has designed new covers for George Orwell’s classics Animal Farm, 1984, and more.
Two interesting things about this: they call it the “final printed edition,” without further explanation. I somehow doubt there won’t be more editions in print — high schoolers everywhere would mourn, professors cry, and surveillance societies everywhere smile. Okay, overdramatic, but still.
And, I really preferred this one:
“A technicoloured cover can draw me to it like the proverbial moth to a flame. But as covers get more vivid, the buyers’ senses can become overwhelmed. They can’t see the books for the rainbow.”
Spine’s Vyki Hendy argues that monochrome — by which she means black-and-white-or-shades-thereof — is powerful. I’d argue that single-color items should belong in this category, too, but her piece stands on its own. Take a look.
“It’s hard to believe that a decade has passed since I published one of these annual Favorite Fonts lists. A lot has happened in the interim: I now have less hair, more grey hairs, sometimes complain about my back, and now live in another country! Anyway, that’s quite enough about me. Here are, then, in no particular order, my favorite typefaces of 2020…”
Some great choices here, especially:
A layer font — something described as “fashionable for a while” — this one deserves to be on a book cover.
Special mention: ILT’s web design. This blog and this entry both are easy to look at, well put-together, and something that makes me a little envious.
Read all of the 2020 favorites, or ILT’s main page.
From Bookshop.org’s description: “Why do some book covers instantly grab your attention, while others never get a second glance? Fusing word and image, as well as design thinking and literary criticism, this captivating investigation goes behind the scenes of the cover design process to answer this question and more.”
“As the outward face of the text, the book cover makes an all-important first impression. The Look of the Book examines art at the edges of literature through notable covers and the stories behind them, galleries of the many different jackets of bestselling books, an overview of book cover trends throughout history, and insights from dozens of literary and design luminaries.”
Looks like great stuff (if you’ll pardon the expression). Get it from Amazon Smile or Bookshop.org. (Via Kottke, unsurprisingly.)