Covers I'm Not Fond of Today
Joe writes,
A friend was reading this. I wasn’t crazy about the
cover, and was curious about who designed it.
This is a John Gall. I was sorta suprised.
Wow. I’m trying to avoid the word “hate” of late, but.… What does everyone else think?
Comments:
I had noticed that cover, too. It got my attention, but looking at it makes me exhausted. Too many colours. And the colours are icky. I wouldn’t say hate.…. I would say.…. eeewwww.
Excellent avoidance of “hate,” Patricia! Thanks.
I think this design suggests a business decision more than a true design decision. I think the publisher is trying to differentiate itself from the Houghton “Best American” series. I can’t think of any other reason to put the names of 29 authors on the cover.
Let’s ask John Gall. I’ll e-mail him now.
Hey there, folks,
I’m a long-time reader of your very interesting and thoughtful blog, and I just have to weigh in here: I think this cover is extraordinary, brilliant, insert addt’l superlatives here. Personally, I think it’s one of the best book covers I’ve seen in years, second only to a jacket John did for Knopf, ‘Project X’ by Jim Shepard, which is also kinetic, also not pretty, but fresh, exhilarating and wonderful.
I would start with the obvious, which is, I’ve never seen anything like it. That in and of itself doesn’t make it ‘good’, but in a field (book jacket design) where you’re constantly compelled by editors and marketing departments to knock-off someone else’s success story, it’s a damn good start. Trust me: every editor and every marketing head asks that their anthology mimic the Houghton series; this cover is a coup for designers, not marketers or sales people. And yet, I’m sure it’s a god-send for marketing, sales, et al: Who could forget this? It’s certainly seared into my memory, and I’m sure I’ll be trying not to copy it for years to come.
Secondly, this is a contemporary anthology with a very schizophrenic editorial direction; tasteful and attractive shouldn’t come into play when you’re talking about Vikings, male strippers, and prose poems dedicated to the fast-food restaurant Wendy’s. The palate seems like it was lifted directly from a Howard Johnson’s restroom, and that’s exactly as it should be.
And he does it all with NOTHING. There’s no photograph, there’s no scanned-in paper texture, there’s no fancy typography. How many designers could create something so compelling from two-dozen Quark boxes and one single typeface? As a counter-example, check out ‘The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry’ and also ‘The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry’. Both are contemporary anthologies, with covers by Chip Kidd, who I have an extraordinary amount of respect for, but there is no question that these are far more conventional covers, with the crumpled paper being a design trope I’ve seen ad nauseum. Even Rodrigo Corral’s cover for ‘The Art of the Essay 1999’ is conventional by comparison. Sure, all of the above are more classically ‘attractive’ than John’s cover; but attractive is easy, everyone is ‘tasteful’ these days. This cover doesn’t try to be a prettier version of what’s already out on the shelf; it has the self-assurance to step out on its own terms. Truly, I think this cover is a new classic; I guess time will tell.
Best regards,
Mark
I’d agree with Mark. I think it’s wonderful for all those reasons. I’d also be curious to know if the size of the boxes correlates to the number of pages in the short stories. That would make it even more unique.
I think it’s great as well. John does amazing things with the simplest of elements, and his typographic solutions are always thought-out and appropriate.
Big, big fan of his work (and he’s a great guy to boot)!
Are you kidding me? I Gotta side with Mark on this one, I think this cover’s freakin’ brilliant. Trust me here: whatever John Gall is doing today, everyone else will be doing in a couple of months. Hey Mark! Long time no see!
The cover reminds me of the Google Newsmap
http://www.marumushi.com/apps/newsmap/newsmap.cfm
where the graphic elements (size, color, etc) do have meaning, intending to “reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.”
I wouldn’t say I hate it, but I find it Galling…
I hate doing this, but let me slip in a word or two.
When I give one of my infrequent slideshow/boring lecture/here’s my stuff-a-thons, I always present a small section about anthologies and the problems inherent in designing these covers.
Anthologies seem to fall into a few different loosely defined categories—at least as far as the cover goes. First there’s the title-only themed anthology such as, “You’ve Got To Know When To Texas Hold’em: Essays and Sketches on Watching Celebrities Play Cards (how come this blog won’t let me say Pok*r?) on Television” or “Please, Stick Another Pencil Through My Skull: Writers Writing About Not Being Able to Write”. These are usually resolved conceptually.
Then there’s the “collection of writings by 25 authors of which only five of them are famous, so we want to mention them on the front—and make sure Updike’s name is slightly bigger, even though contractually we can’t”. Cover solutions usually show either a pen or a typewriter or a piece of lined paper. Sometimes even a pen and a piece of lined paper.
Oh, and yeah, there’s the “Can we do something like the Houghton Best of series?” of which category the Anchor collection most closely resembles.
For this volume, and as a bit of challenge to myself, I wanted to see if I could fit ALL the contributers names on the front. You’ve got to understand, we’re always trying (begging) to get editorial to give us less copy to put on the cover.
So I needed some sort of device. Ben Marcus, the editor of the collection and the author of Notable American Woman (Great book, great cover.) has got this weird fetish thing for corporations (check out his website. its out there somewhere). So I started looking at and collecting a lot of corporate vernacular: flow charts, schedule grids, Power-Point presentations, default settings, etc. Hideous looking stuff—though stuff that I kind of like. That was the starting point.
Response to this cover has been generally (surprisingly) excellent, though, I must say, I sincerely feel honored that someone would hate it enough to take time out of their day to write about it… really, I think it’s cool.
Just trying to crack the mold a bit.
cheers,
jg
PS:There’s a really great battle going on over at designobserver.com. The pros and cons (though mostly cons) of ITC Garamond. Or was that sooo last week?
I think the ITC Garamond thing was last week.
My vote is pro-cover. Def.
I’m working on a school assignment for a series of poetry jackets and having the same problems as aforementioned… I’m trying to come up with something worth doing and ditch the lame stuff. It’s tough.
I just have to say that I love this cover, and was pleasantly surprised to see something so unusual, type-based and noisy.
Does anyone know if this is matte or gloss? I would normally assume matte, but gloss could make sense for these blinking candy coated spreadsheet boxes.
Isaac
It’s matte.
It also has a cool spine, if I remember correctly.
A quick look around at some other anthologies, just for the sake of comparison:
There’s the “American literature = American flag” design.
There’s the “foreign” fiction = “foreign” illustration approach.
And then there’s the “comtemporary fiction” = “a major figure from comtemporary painting” approach.
And there’s this, which has the same kind of simple box/text approach.
Based on what’s out there, and realizing there are challenges to designing for an anthology that might be unique, Gall’s design is growing on me a bit. I like how he hasn’t simply divided the space horizontally, with title up top and authors on the bottom (as the last example cited above does). Gall’s design would be less interesting with a strict horizontal split.
So I guess I’m flip-flopping…
I think that it’s important to remember that book designers aren’t fine artists. Our job is to help sell books. If JG’s design sell more books because of its noisiness then JG has been an strong asset to Random House.
How many of us can truly say that we are an asset to our client’s bottom line?
I find this cover quite fascinating. The colors are intentionally placed and the shapes are based on a grid system. Ultimately, I see a book cover within a book cover … certainly the unexpected.
I have the book on my desk. John Gall’s comments about ugly office collateral are borne out by the spine and the back cover. I’ll scan both tonight if anyone’s interested…
Thanks Joe!
Put me down in the “I like it” column. Reminds me of a treemap:
“Treemap is a space-constrained visualization of hierarchical structures. It is very effective in showing attributes of leaf nodes using size and color coding. Treemap enables users to compare nodes and sub-trees even at varying depth in the tree, and help them spot patterns and exceptions.”
The previously noted newsmap is an example of a treemap.
Please. It’s just copied from the old Shopsin’s menu. Enough already.