Enjoyed a photostroll in Greenville, South Carolina, with good friend Prof. Gerald Lucas. See the updated gallery here.
Links
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Dust Jackets: A History
Although books as objects have been around for many hundreds of years, by looking at the history of the dust jacket, we can see how young the modern book design really is.
Book Riot has posted the interesting “The History of Dust Jackets: From Disposable to Collectable” for all of our entertainment, education, and general love-of-books reading.
(Check out their “Why are Books That Shape?” and “The History of Deckle Edges,” too.)
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American Alliance of Museums: Q&A with Book Designer
After reviewing hundreds of entries every year, the jury for AAM’s annual Museum Publications Design Competition awards only one publication with the Frances Smyth-Ravenel Prize for Excellence in Publication Design, recognizing it as the best submission overall. This year, the winner is David Levinthal: War, Myth, Desire, a publication of the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, designed by Design Monsters studio. We recently talked to the book’s designer, George Corsillo,to learn more about the concept behind his prizeworthy design: a four-volume retrospective of the artist David Levinthal’s photographs which took two years to complete.
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Inside Hook on Peter Mendelsund and book design
In fact, for all his acclaim in the field of book design, Mendelsund himself isn’t particularly fond of book covers, generally seeing them as an impediment that inevitably colors a reader’s perception of a book. “As much as I love book covers — I love making them, it’s fun — I don’t love the fact that there’s somebody between me and the text.”
These days, actually, the renowned book designer who never wanted to be a book designer tends to simply rip the covers off his books altogether. “If it’s a paperback, I’ll rip the cover off,” he says. “The books that are most important to me in my life don’t have covers on them.”
I didn’t know Peter Mendelsund’s name off the top of my head [Memory not what it used to be? —Ed.], but we’re sure familiar with his work, such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the Atlantic’s recent redesign. And what an interesting relationship with book design he has. Read more
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The Guardian: Graphic artist Art Spiegelman on Maus, politics and ‘drawing badly’
Forty years on from ‘the first masterpiece in comic-book history’, the Pulitzer-winning cartoonist talks fame, switching styles and why he doesn’t want to draw Trump
Maus on over to the Guardian. (Sorry.)
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It’s Nice That: We dive into a new archive of over 1,000 book covers from the Arab world
Egyptian designer Moe Elhossieny talks us through why he launched his Design Repository and what he’s already learned about Arabic book design from the collection.
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Ars: Publishers worry as ebooks fly off libraries’ virtual shelves
One thing I never read, if possible: ebooks. That said, in these strange times, they are what folks need — and, because these are strange times, it’s causing problems. Ars Technica has the story.
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Jazz Musician Lettering
The history of the album cover and show poster begins with jazz.