Book Cover Archive blog

Love this artist series from the Creative Superstore. Illustrations by Ed Templeton, Tim Biskup, Cleon Peterson, Marke Newton, Deedee Cheriel and Ramsey Dau.

20×200 will be selling a print by book cover designer (among other things) Stefanie Posavec later today.

A Literary Organism was first used in a project where I explored methods of visualizing the writing style of Jack Kerouac in On the Road. For this piece, I analyzed Benjamin’s essay for word count per sentence and by themes within its structure, and I did it all by hand. Some people knit, I enjoy the act of painstakingly analyzing text with a pen and a highlighter, as to me, the process of gathering the data is as equally important as the visual outcome.

The print will be available in a few hours, with a special coupon code embedded somewhere in 20×200′s mailing list.

The print:

Some more of Posavec’s work:

Have a nice weekend

An amazing student project from designer Tom Petty (best URL ever?)

…I therefore decided to hand-draw the type in a traditional style seen on signs of the period, so I had to cut all of the letters by hand with a scalpel out of 400 gsm (140 lb) board and run it through a traditional press.

See more over at For Print Only.

Thanks Alison!

To summarize a decade’s worth of brilliant design with 20 covers is little more than an exercise in futility. We can all agree, however, that the best part of passing into a new digit bracket is the lists that come with it. This collection is little more than a representation of my own tastes, but I tried to choose works which were representative of their respective years.

I beat myself up quite a bit when putting this together, but there are still a handful of notables worth mentioning:

- Any of gray318‘s covers for Safran Foer.
- Any of Kidd or Gall’s covers for Murakami
- Anything from Henry Sene Yee
- Anything from Paul Buckley or Darren Haggar over at Penguin US.

The Abomination, Chip Kidd
Art Direction by Carol Devine Carson

Runner-up
Faster, Jamie Keenan
Art Direction by John Gall

A General Theory of Love, John Gall
Photographer, Boris Schmalenberger

Runner-Up
The Darkness and The Light, Chip Kidd

The Egg Code, Evan Gaffney
Art Direction by Carol Devine Carson

Runner-up
Lullaby, Rodrigo Corral

Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth, Chris Ware

Runner-up
Oryx And Crake, John Gall

A Shortcut Through Time, Peter Buchanan-Smith

Runner-up
Killing the Buddha, Paul Sahre
Photograph by Jason Fulford

Murder, gray318
Representative of the Penguin 70th anniversary box set.

Runner-up
Book One, Mark Melnick
Art Direction by Chip Kidd

The Prisoner of Guantanamo, John Gall

Runner-up
Race Riots, David Drummond

Exile and the Kingdom, Helen Yentus
Art Direction by John Gall
Representative of the Camus Series

Runner-up
One Perfect Day, Evan Gaffney
Art direction by Darren Haggar

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, David Pearson
Representative of the Penguin Great Ideas series.

Runner-up
Obsession, Isaac Tobin
Illustration by Lauren Nassef

The Way Through Doors, Helen Yentus, Jason Booher
Art Direction by John Gall

Runner-up
The Original of Laura, Chip Kidd

- – - – - – - –

Feel free to tell me how wrong I am in the comments.

In honor of this momentous occasion, I give you two great covers:

Photograph by Mike Venables. Seen at CCC.

“..lots of great werewolf stories in here.. all documented. All true.”

Yes!

(Is his library in his pool room? What’s going on with the lighting?)

Seen at Modcult.

Eric Zelinski, aka OBNX.MUTE, redesigns the Time Life classic, Man And Space, for class. I hope his teachers at Ringling are freaking out over this.

…each box would be filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins, selected to somehow evoke the book’s content. And to make it more interesting for readers — and less daunting for me — I thought it would be fun to ask a group of talented designers to help create the boxes.

Holy moly.

Mr Wiseman, one of the stupidly talented designers at Rodrigo Corral Design, has earned himself a spot in this year’s ADC Young Guns lineup.

Check out his [excellent] submitted book covers here.

Fontshop turns 20 this year. As they are both amazing and the provider of all the font-related metadata on The Book Cover Archive, I think it’s more than appropriate that we all burst out into commemorative song.

(While youre priming the vocal chords, check out their fantastic celebratory website in honor of the occasion.)

Abcity Typo by Borja Bonaque

Absolute Sellout is my favorite new website on the internets. From the business model, to the unapologetic design, to the items therein. It seems to be as simple as a retailer for “objects & literature” procured from their local Salvation Army. I have no idea who runs it but I’d give them each a gold medal in Awesome if I could.

Nice cover for a student project from James Le Beau-Morley.