Book Cover Archive blog

“The re-working, dealing with all the feedback (some warranted, some moronic) ‘make this bigger’, ‘make this smaller’, ‘my psychic thinks it should be blue’—that is what separates the men from the boys,”

Nice interview with a man at the top of his game. Most of it is related to the Nabokov series. If I were a famous book cover designer, I think I’d just flat out refuse to answer any questions related to e-books at this point. Nothing wrong with the topic, of course, but it must get intensely tiresome.

And for what it’s worth, having stopped by his office on a handful of occasions, I can attest to the fact that he really does dress this well.

I’m jealous of whoever winds up with this job. Working under Alex Camlin’s would be an experience. Learn more.

A bit old, but I hadn’t seen this one.
Techno Tuesday is the most scathingly wonderful series I’ve come across in a while.

Have a nice weekend.

As you’d expect, I’ve got a search column on TweetDeck for “pieratt”. One of the few advantages of having a weird surname is that most related queries are relevant to my interests in one way or another. For instance, I’ve got no relation to this store, but I plan to buy a staff shirt from them some day.

My dad’s name come up today in Twitter for the first time that I’m aware of. It was from a site which made mention of one of a handful of theological books he wrote while stationed in Sao Paulo as a missionary.

Points of interest:

1) It’s a torrent site offering it up for illegal download
2) It’s a Christian torrent site
3) I’m pretty sure my mom designed the cover for the book while on staff at the publishing house that my dad operated.

When I consider my motives for going into design or my interest in book covers, my parents don’t come up as an immediate consideration. But that can’t be right. My dad ran a publishing house for 8 years and my mom was the staff designer. I don’t remember being exposed to the company or the design work in any real sense, but the alternative would defy common sense.

1928-2010

Important stuff here, folks. Though I don’t want to jinx anything by revealing too much, I’ll probably cast my vote on option #3. The homage to Lady Liberty is well considered, and the lighting from a new dawn really drives the concept home.

I came into contact with Matthias while he was working with Gestalten, the publisher of art and design books. Friendly and accommodating with an air of efficiency, he came across as the perfect editor.

Up until the launch of his new site, I had no idea that he’d not only edited a good handful of my favorite art books, but designed them as well. What a talent! Feast your eyes on the works below, and be sure to check out the rest of his collection at his portfolio site, Bordfunk.

A brief presentation that includes a children’s book, some reference stuff, and one piece of fiction (a Twilight knock-off) at 1:30 (courtesy of Engadget).

Pretty but reminiscent of mid-nineties multimedia CD-ROMs — a world of over-wrought animation and mystery-meat navigation. The web succeeded where “multimedia” failed; I’d prefer that Penguin’s efforts more closely resembled HTML than Shockwave and Flash.

But regardless, I think these efforts do indicate that there is a future for book cover designers, especially those who have some interest in crossing over into interactive design.

We’re considering taking on an intern. Anyone interested?

Tasks and responsibilities would include: helping organize the queue of covers, helping find and post work to the site, helping respond to the flood of submissions we get, a bit of basic spreadsheet maintenance that isn’t as boring as it sounds.

In exchange, you get:
- To make a valued contribution to an awesome project.
- A portion of the money the site makes (barely qualifies as beer money).
- Depending on your level of interest, we might rope you in to help out with some of our other stuff that we’re working on. Some of which is actually interesting.

An upper-level college student makes the most sense, but we’re open to all types. You don’t need to be local (Boston), though getting some coffee or a beer on occasion would be fun. If interested, send your cover letter and resume to info@generalprojects.com.

A handful of exceptionally odd and interesting work in Erin Ikeler’s Flickr stream. Can’t always tell what’s original collage and what’s a found object, which adds to the appeal.

More book-art, courtesy of Collider for the Surry Hills Library in Sydney:

More pictures and a hat tip to Nerdski.

Life:Size is an art project by Roland Tiangco wherein he is reproducing “everything in our world” at 100% scale. The first volume is an anthropology bookshelf. It includes folds and perforations so that the owner may reproduce the bookshelf in his own space.

Love this simple book graphic featured in the latest issue of Matériel. Graphic by Steven Reimuth (I’d link to his site but there’s nothing on it.)

I’ve just posted a few thoughts on whether or not it is legitimate to feature advertising the Book Cover Archive.

If this topic is of interest to you, head over there and let me know what you think.