A year ago, I read a piece in The Guardian by Danuta Kean on book cover design and was struck by this quote from Jason Arthur, a publishing director at Penguin Random House:
“I used to think British book design was the best in the world and that the Americans were 20 years behind... But that has changed in the last two or three years, especially with fiction from the US that put our designs to shame.”
JASON ARTHUR
If you have been following this blog for a long time, you will know that I have a bit of a thing about book covers. It might be a little too much for some. But I have a very personal affiliation with this area of design, going back to my teens. Later, it was to become the source of freelance work from many of the independent publishers in London during the 1960s. From 1968, I worked in the publishing industry for a wonderful decade as art director of William Heinemann and later William Collins (Fontana Books).
Wind on 40 years, and I still find it difficult to pass a bookshop without being magnetically drawn in. I have always taken an interest in what is going on in that world. It's a place where so many great designers and illustrators have cut their creative teeth. It was, and probably still is, an area with little financial reward, but always with a reasonable amount of creative freedom, just as long as there was an art editor/director at the publishing house fighting your corner.
Why am I telling you all this? Well, a very odd thing happened to me last month. I had been commenting for some time, mostly on Facebook, about what I feel is an increasing drop in the standards of British book cover design. This came to light by my regular visits to bookshops over the past year and in particular visiting the big chain, Waterstones, where the most recent publications are placed face up on tables. My main criticism was centred on the depressing similarity of the covers being produced, most with an emphasis on very large type and a lot of it taking up 75% of the available space. This is often hand-drawn in varying degrees of conscious naïveté. Anyway, my criticisms started a debate on Facebook and then moved to the more bitchy Twitter, with various people, mostly unknown to me, starting to add their comments.
All fine by me, as I’ve always loved a healthy debate on design. But I’d clearly crossed the line with this group when I happened to feature the cover of a book that I’d recently bought, about which I said: “Shame about the cover, another missed opportunity”. Little did I know that I had inadvertently stumbled into an encampment of (I assume) young designers, who very quickly made it clear to me that I had criticised not just one of their disciples but, to quote one recipient, “the greatest book cover designer in the world”. High praise indeed.
From then on, there came a stream of criticism about me from every which way, leading to the inevitable sarcasm and ageist jibes. Over the course of a week, I was systematically taken apart for daring to criticise the work of a hero. Trying to put my case on the character-restricted Twitter was hopeless, as I was spending too much time editing back my comments to fit. I eventually made my apologies and left them to their ongoing rant.
So, here I am on my own turf, where I can explain more calmly, and hopefully understandably, my views on the state of British book cover design and in the process get a more balanced, less abusive and wider response than that from the small cohort I was ambushed by. But, of the abuse, as my youngest and wisest daughter commented: “You probably deserved it.” She may be right. I leave that to you to decide.
Some historical background
The book cover, jacket or (more accurately) wrapper started its life as protection for the highly decorated, blocked bookbinding cases of the mid-19th century. In the early 20th century, these wrappers started to become decorated as a way of advertising the books they protected. But the First World War put a halt to that, with the usual shortage that accompanies wars. Things picked up in the 1920s when the wrapper became the jacket and took centre stage as the binding case decoration receded. This new creative area was quickly adopted as an art form in its own right, with the styles of the times being echoed in the designs and a list of eminent designers and artists working on these small canvases: Picasso, Matisse, Edward McKnight Kauffer, Stanley Morison, Barnett Freeman, Vanessa Bell and Taylor Lee-Elliott, to mention just a few, and their names often featured on the front of the jacket designs.
Classic repeat pattern covers
Covers for The Curwen Press News Letter. (top) by Edward Bawden (bottom) Barnett Freeman from the 1930s.
Many think that Jan Tschichold's wonderful King Penguin series from 1939 was unique, but actually, the whole look and feel was a direct copy of a series from Insel-Bücherei the Leipzig based publisher, who stated their high-quality series in 1912.
As you can see, very little is really new in the design world. Here is another iteration of the Insel-Bücherei style from the French publishing house Editions Bourrelier for their children's list.
The above 3 landscape formate covers, for the Chatto & Windus, Zodiac imprint, feature line block repeat patterns, designed by Enid Marx in 1950.
And another designed by Nicholas Thirkell at CDT Design for the V&A Colour books in 1986 (below) and won him a D&AD Gold Award. This well-trodden approach has become the standard formula for many publishing houses to pretty up their backlists for the gift market.
And now the style is even applied to luxury packaging and below that Ridley's games packaging. If only Insel-Bücherei had copyrighted their creation.
As the book jacket evolved, it became the norm, and both publishers and authors began to take more interest; some of the larger houses even hired art editors. But in the UK hardback world of the post-WW2 period, there were very few individuals filling this position. They were mostly corduroy-jacketed editors, who would be given the task of commissioning jackets in-between editing books. The book jackets of that period had a handmade, often naive, commercial art, drawing on the board immediacy that hadn’t change much since the 1930s, like some of these...
Typographical and hand-lettered covers were the staple diet, with publishers Faber & Faber, where Berthold Wolpe made it their house style. And over at The Bodley Head. Michael Harvey was doing much the same there. But there were many covers with the addition of minimal illustration.
Above both covers designed by Berthold Wolpe. Arial 1965 and For The Union Dead 1964.
Designed and hand lettered by Michael Harvey 1964 The Bodley Head
As with most things at the time, the US was ahead of the game, and designers like Alvin Lustig, Paul Rand, Bradbury Thompson and Saul Bass were beginning to influence designers in the UK.
Above: It was two fine artists, Henri Matisse and Saul Steinberg who had a profound effect on the handmade, hand lettered approach to design, taken up by many US designers in the 1950s.
Above: 4 Covers by the influential Alvin Lustig
Above: 4 covers by the great Paul Rand
Above: 2 covers by the prolific Ivan Chermayeff
In the mid-1950s a number of young British designers moved from the Central School, having been taught there by the influential typographer Antony Froshaug, on to the post graduate course at the Royal College of Art (RAC) with a different expectation of the work actually being taught there. They were disappointed and one way or another they were set on changing it.
Above: Two examples of the RCA's Ark magazine, prior to young graphic designers like, Alan Fletcher who rebelled by producing his stripped back modernised cover for issue 13 (below) void of any Victorian revivalism, much to the horror of some of the RCA tutors.
An earlier student, who entered the RCA in 1948, was David Gentlemen. Unlike the later students he was very happy under the guiding eye of his tutors, Edward Bawden and Abram Games. The two examples of Gentleman's work (above) from the mid-1950s, showing clear inspiration from both Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden and the Victorian revival typographic styling popular in the 1950s. But as Gentleman developed he to was swept into the modernist arena and went on to transform the design of British postage stamps and create many Penguin covers. He became one of Britain's all time great designers.
The source of changing the status quo. at the RCA was brought about some of the young Turks, like Derek Birdsall, Alan Fletcher, Len Deighton and Raymond Hawkey, who had experienced design in the US; for them, the work there exuded far more professionalism, wit and punch. The other great inspiration was from the refined modernist work of the graphic designers in Switzerland, principally Josef Müller-Brockmann and Max Huber, with their ordered, clinical structure.
Above: Josef Müller-Brockmann's classic 'der Film poster. And below his seminal book on the Swiss design discipline. I consumed that book, hook line and sinker in the 1960s.
Above the work of Max Huber
Britain was perfectly placed to blend these two design philosophies, resulting in a wealth of wonderful work being unleashed on the publishing world, eventually establishing the creative explosion of ‘Swinging London’, as defined by Time magazine in 1966.
The very first official D&AD annual (above) in 1964 was a slim, 148-page, black-and-white paperback affair. It featured 20 book covers on its pages. I recall buying a copy at the time and being transfixed by the work. That book, along with the collection of book jackets that I had, how can I put this, ‘liberated’ from my local library, was the catalyst propelling me into the world of book cover design and, in the late 1960s, a decade in the publishing world. And although I left that world some 40 years ago, my interest in and passion for cover design have never abated. I find it a compulsive area to reflect on the various stylistic shifts in design over the decades. And it was an area where the designer/illustrator had relative freedom. For that amount of elbow room, they were paid very little, but at least their work could shine.
Above 4 treasured 1960s book covers from my 'liberated' collection. (top) Keith Cunningham 1962, followed by three covers by Jack Larkin from 1963/4. Larkin is a personal design hero.
A related post on classic repeat pattern covers and nostalgia here
In part 2: Swinging London / The transition of Penguin Books into a carefully orchestrated identity under the brilliant Germano Facetti, only to have it systematically decimated with the arrival of Alan Aldridge.