Book Designs of the Year, 2008

Happy New Year all. Officially I am finished, but there is one last thing I promised to post.

After the many lists of our favourite books of 2008 and tips for 2009, we asked people in the Penguin Art Department for their favourite book designs of last year. Actually, we asked three questions – the book they worked on of which they were proudest, their favourite other Penguin design and their favourite design from another publisher. So those are the rules, this is the final end-of-year-list and what follows is what they said.

Alan
ex-Copywriter

Oh, and Sam and Catherine, just so you don't worry:

Book design you worked on

Jim Stoddart, Art Director:

My favourite design I’ve worked on is a new edition of The Complete Novels of George Orwell due out in June ’09. I just did it yesterday and it’s an evolution of the new Modern Classics design for a larger format paperback (it's a great chunk of a book).

Coralie Bickford-Smith, Senior Designer:

The Horrors. When I undertook this brief I was also working on a cover design project with students at London College of Communication. I started to look at how I was approaching my own work and recorded my creative process to understand more about what I was asking them to do. I learnt a lot about me as a designer and how to push the work I do and enjoy the process of creating. I was really happy with the final outcome.

Stefanie Posavec, Designer:

The Third Reich Trilogy by Richard J. Evans! I chose this one because I found it challenging to design a beautiful box set whose design referenced the time period of the Third Reich, but did so in a sensitive manner. However, I like this solution: I referenced the motifs and patterns found in early German book design but did so in a more modern style. Through the three books, the designs become more less curved and more hard-edged as the history of the Third Reich moves closer to war. The three designs also subtly reference the different stages of the Third Reich as described throughout the three books, moving from traditional German folk-y floral motifs, to patterns referencing the aesthetic of the Nuremburg Rallies at the height of their power, to the hard-edged symbols used when creating battle maps for war.

Samantha Johnson, Senior Picture Researcher:

I think I have to choose a new look Modern Classic for this as I've worked on so many this year and the new template is so strong. There are many I could choose but I think I'll go for To the Lighthouse. The girl in the photograph (an early colour autochrome from 1913) is called Christina.

Isabelle De Cat, Picture Researcher:

The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1001 Nights. A different kind of picture research since Coralie really involved me in the design and its progress, and it was fun to contribute to creating something fresh with found images – in this case Persian manuscripts paintings – that would also be relevant to the book.

Penguin book design

Jim Stoddart, Art Director:

The Language of Things by Deyan Sudjic (designed by Simon Earith at YES Design), because it’s a perfect design for book about design. It’s classic, elegant and looks great in the shops. It is also exciting that Penguin are again publishing books about design.

Stefanie Posavec, Designer:

My favourite Penguin book cover is The Language of Things by Deyan Sudjic. The design and finish of the book makes it tactile and wonderful to pick up and read. In fact, I think it’s the only book that could somehow be incorporated into one’s outfit as a new type of literary fashion accessory: give it a few months and all the design students will be carrying one everywhere they go. It’s so lovely I won’t let my husband read my copy unless he promises to keep it absolutely pristine. (It’s a good read as well.)

 

Coralie Bickford-Smith, Senior Designer:

McSweeney's 28 [McSweeney's is a quarterly literary journal from the American independent publishing house, published in the UK by Penguin imprint Hamish Hamilton]. In eight illustrated books, elegantly held together in a single beribboned case and featuring work by Daniel Alarcon, Sheila Heti and Nathan Englander, McSweeney's 28 explores the state of the fable. A dream job where no production value seems to have been spared, the designer gets to tailor the form of the book to fit perfectly around the text.

Samantha Johnson, Picture Researcher:

Has to be The Spook House. I love cyanotypes – old and new – and this is a stunningly simple and inventive cover. The hardback of A Fraction of the Whole is also great.

 

Isabelle De Cat, Picture Researcher:

Captain Flinn and the Pirate Dinosaurs: Missing Treasure! by Giles Andreae and Russell Ayto. I became a fan in Brick Lane, when I was sitting near Puffin design and enjoyed peeping at their screens all the time! A Pirate-dinosaur: can you dream of a better combo? The drawings and layouts are just fantastic - such a fun book.

Non-Penguin design

Jim Stoddart, Art Director:

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. A brilliant cover, both exciting and beautiful at the same time.

Coralie Bickford-Smith, Senior Designer:

ABC 3D by Marion Bataille. I love this book it embodies the spirit and potential of the book at its best a tactile beautiful surprising object. Now although an e-reader is a different sort of experience this embodies why the book as physical, printed object should and indeed will live on.

Stefanie Posavec, Designer:

My favourite non-Penguin book covers are Faber Finds covers for Faber & Faber created by postSpectacular, Marian Bantjes, and Michael C. Place of Build. An infinite number of designs are formed from a few basic design components that are different for each genre (fiction, non-fiction, children’s, and arts). I’m interested in generative art and I think that this is one of the most exciting and innovative book cover concepts I have seen recently. I’d love to work on something like this.

Samantha Johnson, Senior Picture Researcher:

The Night Life of Trees by Bhajju Shyam - it's nice to see a commercially produced book that is so tactile and crafted

 

Isabelle De Cat, Picture Researcher:

Paintings in Proust by Eric Karpeles. In Search of Lost Time is such dense novel that it is always great to be given different angles to approach it/appreciate it. This book is a fabulous collection of the many works of art mentioned in the novel – it is like visualising it as some fabulous museum ... Might also inspire us for possible routes for the new covers when Proust gets published in its new Modern Classics livery.

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Comments

[Lisa Hill]

The cover for To the Lighthouse (which is utterly banal) is lifted from the cover of Billie's Kiss published by Vintage
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n45/n226057.jpg
And you think this is Design of the Year?????

[Alan]

Hey Lisa,

This is what Sam had to say about picking the cover:

"Hello,

I'm sorry you think it's banal. I think the image has a calm, elegiac beauty, which is why it was the cover I was happiest to have worked on.

You've raised an interesting question on using archive photographs on covers though. There is no way of restricting or monitoring the use of such photographs. I hadn't seen the Vintage cover before (the book seems to be out of print). I first saw and loved this autochrome many years ago when I worked at the Royal Photographic Society. I may have chosen a different image if I had known about the other book, maybe not.

Samantha"

Picture research is a really interesting part of publishing - and I may get to do some more blogging here despite not being an official Penguin any more - so I'll try and put together a post going into more detail about it sometime in the next week or two. "Stay tuned!" as they say. In the 50s.

[Lisa Hill]

IMO using someone else's photo (calm & elegaic or otherwise) and adding a bit of font doesn't amount to design.

[John Self]

Well they're pretty much all someone else's photos, aren't they, Lisa? Most photographic covers, particularly those for the Penguin ranges, use library images. Typically the back cover will say: Hulton Getty, AKG Images or some other picture library.

I disagree that choosing a photo which the designer thinks (a) will complement the content of the book, and (b) will work with the predetermined style of the series, does not constitute design. I think that's the very essence of design (as opposed to, say, illustration or photography, which is the creation of the cover image itself).

Very few publishers in my view use cover images as effectively and sensitively as Penguin, particularly on their Modern Classics range. Duplicates always exist - have a look at the Penguin of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and the Vintage UK edition of Roth's American Pastoral. The image works differently, but equally effectively, for both. The 'problem' of duplicate images on different covers is well exhibited here, which someone on dovegreyreader's blog also highlighted:

http://causticcovercritic.blogspot.com/search/label/One%20Image%20Many%20Covers?max-results=100

[Camilla]

Hello everyone!

could anyone tell me the name of the cover image of the proust book? I would very much appreciate it!
Thanks a lot!

Camilla