“Book design has become more important than ever – but what makes an iconic jacket, asks Clare Thorp.” BBC Culture takes a look.
BBC on “Iconic” Book Covers
50 Books, 50 Covers (2019 Edition)
Once again, it’s time for the annual 50 Books, 50 Covers awards!
My favorites: Blackness at MoMA, Specimen Days, 14 books by Gustavo Piqueira • 2012-2018), Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle, and … not all of them, certainly. Interesting and challenging. Definitely worth checking out!
Text for Proofing Fonts, from H&Co.
Type designers love a good pangram. Pangrams, of course, are sentences that contain each letter of the alphabet at least once, of which the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog is surely the most famous. […] I find them singularly useless in type design, and I don’t use them in my work.
Find out what does work over at Hoefler&Co. with another fantastic post on type design.
NYU takes book design online
Washington Square News discusses NYU’s attempts to — like pretty much everything else — get book design online:
The studio course focuses on book art and teaches students about the production of books, from interior and exterior design to binding techniques. Without the physical studio space and the materials it provides, digital learning has paved an unprecedented pathway for the course to continue.
H&Co on book … uh, types (for the times)
Five typography-adjacent books for indoor times, from Johnathan Hoefler:
All five share a sincerity, an attention to detail, and a sense of humor that has kept me smiling for weeks.
The Online Archive Is Now Open to All
With nearly 1,500 objects and 9,000 hi-fi images, Letterform Archive offers unprecedented virtual access to our collection.
—Online Archive
How Adobe InDesign Took Over
Way back in the day — that is, before the mid-nineties — publishing on the Mac consisted of Quark XPress. Okay, sure, there was Aldus Publisher and some bit players, but it was basically Quark or nothing. I used Quark in book design back then, and … basically hated it.
I was one of the early adopters of InDesign, dragging co-workers and companies along with me, as part of my time working at Tropicana. Not the juice cartons themselves — those were done in Illustrator — but the ancillary stuff, like marketing materials, sell sheets, and so on.
AppleInsider ran a piece a while ago (I’d missed it, initially), “How Adobe InDesign took over publishing with Steve Jobs’ help.” Good history for those of you who don’t know about those days or want a trip down memory lane, best summarized, in fact, by a commenter on the article: “This covers an interesting arc. Adobe went from an ambitious upstart trying to unseat an established, albeit arrogant, standard, to becoming the arrogant standard.”
“Books remain stubbornly, thrillingly relevant”: the enduring value of book design
From DesignWeek, a great story on AIGA’s 50 Books | 50 Covers.
“The 2010s were supposed to bring the ebook revolution. It never quite came.”
From Vox:
“Publishing spent the 2010s fighting tooth and nail against ebooks. There were unintended consequences.”
Fascinating look at the how’s and why’s of traditional books vs. ebooks. (Needless to say, I’m firmly on the side of the traditional printed version.)
NPR’s Book Concierge
“The Book Concierge is NPR’s annual, interactive, year-end reading guide. Mix and match tags such as Book Club Ideas, Biography & Memoir, or Ladies First to filter results and find the book that’s perfect for you or someone you love.”
How This Doubleday Art Director Designs Book Covers, From ‘Frankenstein’ To ‘Fitness Junkie’
“Emily Mahon has been Art Director at Doubleday Books since 2006, and has also done freelance work for a wide range of publishing clients, including St. Martin’s Press, HarperCollins, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Henry Holt and Company, Alfred A, Knopf, Little, Brown and Company, Simon & Schuster, among others.
I asked Mahon about her approach to book cover design, the design process, working with outside artists, and updating classics like Frankenstein.“
Interesting interview with an accomplished book designer and art director, courtesy of Forbes Magazine.
Exhibit celebrates 50th anniversary of Cary Graphic Arts Collection at RIT
“Rochester Institute of Technology is celebrating the 50th year anniversary of its internationally renowned collection of books and artifacts dedicated to the history of the printed word.
The Cary Graphic Arts Collection is hosting a retrospective exhibition, “The Founding Collection and Beyond,” displaying pieces from the library that belonged to printer Melbert B. Cary Jr. and later acquisitions that have shaped the collection since its inception in 1969.
A public reception will be held at 4 p.m. Oct. 9 in the Cary Collection on the second floor of Wallace Library on the RIT campus.”
If you’re in/near Upstate NY, this might be worth attending.
In Utah? Check out University of Utah’s Book Arts Program
“The rhythmic sounds of paper being cut, the letterpresses being used and the scent of ink drying — this world and program is hidden to most students at the U, but it is more than worth your attention. […] A wide range of classes are offered to students on all things book: bookbinding, letterpress printing, book design, paper making, artist books and several typography courses.”
“These Are the Best University Press Book Designs of 2018”
Better late than never: LitHub’s round-up of the best university press book designs of 2018 (see previous post, as well).
Spine: University Press Cover Round-Up
Spine, my favorite book design site, has “a new feature in which notable book cover designer Jordan Wannemacher periodically highlights a selection of recent university press cover designs. Please enjoy this celebration of amazing work.”