Graphic Journey Blog

LOVED COVERS No. 25

This elegant design by US-based John Gall reinforces my view that poetry is one of the purest and most liberating areas for a cover designer to get their hands on. It's perfect. Published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2020.

LOVED COVERS No.23:

This book of 103 poems by Jill Bialosky reveals personal and historical traumas and how we search for understanding and meaning in their wake. The cover image is a perfect metaphor for time, and the cut negative space housing the title. It was designed by John Gall for Knopf in 2020.

LOVED COVERS No. 24

 

For me, a cover can be as quietly beautiful as this one from Hungarian publisher Jelenkor. Sadly, I have no idea who designed it, and you are unlikely to find it in a UK bookshop. But having looked at some of Jelenkor's publications, they don't appear to treat their readers as incapable of accepting a cover that isn't shouting and plastered in every square inch with sales copy. Kék (Blue) 2023.

LOVED COVERS No. 22:

In 1967, I worked for a few years at an American design consultancy that had arrived from Cincinnati in the early sixties to set up in "Swinging London", as it was then known. Also, by then, I was regularly getting freelance book cover design work from several London-based publishers. So, I was feeling chipper, having just married and purchased my first house. While browsing covers in Hatchards, my go-to bookshop, just five minutes away from the consultancy, I became transfixed by the cover shown with its enlarged rail ticket and punched hole revealing the die-stamped author and title on the black binding case. Nicholas Thirkell designed it, and I knew he was working at Macmillan as their art director. I have never been backwards about approaching designers whose work I admired, so I made a b-line for Thirkell, a quinicental public school gentleman, tall, quietly spoken, modest and difficult to fathom. He became another publishing client, and just a year later, in 1968, I left the American design consultancy and became the art director of William Heinemann based in Queens Street Mayfair and later on to William Collins (Fontana). It became a wonderful decade in the publishing world. Nineteen years after that original meeting with Nicholas in the 1960s, he became a partner in my consultancy, Carroll, Dempsey & Thirkell (CDT), in 1986. He sadly died in 2022.

LOVED COVERS No.21

I walked into my local bookshop yesterday and was struck by this book on the table amid the multitude of screaming covers surrounding it. It shone like a beacon. There's no book jacket, just tiny black typography blocked onto a cloth binding case. How can this be, I thought. It turned out Rubin hooked up with Pentagram's Paula Scher Hon RDI. He said, "Paula's gravitas as a designer helped keep the corporate representatives at bay and willing to take risks...' and went on ...' no quotes, descriptions or any other marketing material printed in the book or on the cover. You'll be hard-pressed to find another book by a mainstream publisher for a general audience with these allowances made". It has been a great success. There you go. Canongate Books 2023.

LOVED COVERS No 20

I'm sure you have all seen the so-called branding for the courier service EVRI that uses a different font for each letter, and over the last half-decade, this style became a design thing that appeared on design festivals, book covers, posters and more. However, 64 years back, the great US designer Ivan Chermayeff Hon RDI created this beautiful cover for a book on the artist Lee Gatch for The American Foundation of Arts (1960). I interviewed Ivan in 2007 about his life and work. To hear it, use this Link.

LOVED COVERS No.19

Covers can sometimes be a total surprise. In 1997, I commissioned Fernando Gutiérrez RDI to design the book and cover for, 'The Commercials Book'. My only stipulation was not to use any of the director's work featured. He unearthed this fantastic photograph by Oliviero Toscani and presented it as the cover. It's all about looking and seeing the potential. Published by D&AD.

LOVED COVERS No.18

With a nod to Martin Creed, designer Jamie Keenan produced this brilliant cover in 2020. It shows the bravery of publishers Granta in this age of dumbing down this historic creative discipline, especially in the UK with its bullying conglomerates.