Noma Bar’s beautiful 2017 hardback edition of The Handmaid's Tale with its blind embossed type.
The Testaments: probably the most eagerly anticipated book since – well, the last Harry Potter? Anyway, more about this later.
This is one of my now occasional posts on Graphic Journey. Most of the traffic has been swallowed by Twitter and Instagram these days. But there are times when I need more than 280 characters to make a point.
If you are a follower of this blog, you will know that I have a bit of a thing about book covers. It stems from a ten-year stint in publishing back in the mid-1960s to ‘70s and after that period when I ran my design consultancy. These days, I regularly comment on Instagram and Twitter about the covers I see during my slightly obsessional weekly visits to bookshops. In the process, I seem to have upset many designers with my views. Conversely, many have agreed with me. The only reason I bother is that I have enormous affection for the design discipline when they are good and respect for their creators.
So, back to The Testaments. Do I have a beef with it? I do. The recent hubbub of Margaret Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale, including the attempted cyber-attack, Amazon’s cock-up, the linking illustration with the first novel, the shortlisting for the Booker Prize, along with Atwood’s recent unveiling of the new cover design... you’d have to be living on Mars not to be aware of the media buzz.
Noma Bar’s lastest outing for Margaret Atwood's new book, with the most unnecessary typographical intervention.
Why then the need to partially obscure Noma Bar’s clever illustration with type? Was it even necessary to have Atwood’s name on the front at all? Bar’s illustration, linking with the original Handmaid’s cover, would have done the job perfectly without it.
A more sensitive approach.
Even better would have been to confine author and title to the spine – now that would have been an audacious move, especially as the cover is now in every bookshop window throughout the country. It’s all over the internet and in all the literary sections of the newspapers and magazines. To have been brave enough to run with an image-only front cover would have added to the publicity buzz.
And a more audacious approach.
But, these days, no one dares to stick their head above the parapet. Instead, they follow the predictable rules of the unadventurous publishing marketing departments, with their ‘belt and braces’ formula of unadventurousness. Their raison d’être seems to be to screw up covers during the creative process.
And just to remind you, there have been some brave exceptions...
The Beatles’ ‘White Album’ cover, designed by artist Richard Hamilton 1968.
And David Pearson’s wonderful redacted Orwell’s ‘1984’ cover for Penguin 2013.