Books, Design and Culture
I feel like I’ve posting a lot about to-read piles recently. It’s mostly because I feel guilty for not reading more.
Comic by Errant Science.
Leave a CommentHello! I hope you’re safe and well wherever you are.
Before we get to the covers, a couple of brief admin things. First up, there have been a couple of behind-the-scenes changes at the CO this past month. They’ve solved a few tech issues for me and hopefully no one else has noticed. Secondly, I’ve been tinkering with the RSS. I’m not sure that’s quite right yet, so apologies if it’s not been working as expected. Let me know if you’re experiencing any weirdness.
I also wanted quickly mention that the deadline for the DPI mentorship scheme has been extended to April 12th. I’m not involved with the DPI, but some really great people are so if you are a designer from an under represented background living in the UK or Ireland, you should think about applying!
Anyway, it’s a really big post this month! The are lots of great covers with the UK, Australia and Canada all represented, as well as the usual folks from US. There are some compare-and-contrasts, a couple of covers from indie presses, a couple of covers for translations, and a couple of poetry covers too. There’s even a meandering digression in the middle (sorry). Enjoy!
Anxiety by Samir Chopra; design by Karl Spurzem (Princeton University Press / March 2024)
Candy Darling by Cynthia Carr; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / March 2024)
Crisis Actor by Declan Ryan; design by Stephanie Cui (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2024)
Fourteen Days edited by Margaret Atwood & Douglas Preston; design by Nathan Burton (Harper / February 2024)
Free Therapy by Rebecca Ivory; design by Luke Bird (Vintage / March 2024)
Fruit of the Dead by Rachel Lyon; design by Math Monahan (Scribner / March 2024)
So this cover sent me down a bit of a rabbit hole. It reminded me of a cover design from a few years ago. It didn’t really look the same but, in my mind at least, this other cover featured a blue-red capsule shape (possibly a stretched illustration of a planet and its core) centred on a white background with black Swiss-style sans serif type. It was not exactly minimalist, but clean and precise. I think I saw it on Twitter back in the day. I thought it was maybe literary sci-fi or pop science, and published by one of the big American imprints. I was also pretty convinced that it was designed by Alex Merto or possibly John Gall. One of the dudes.
This is not the first time I have thought about this cover, and I can, or at least could, picture it quite clearly. The problem is that I can find no evidence of this cover ever existing, and the more I think about, the more the details shift and doubt creeps in. I don’t seem to have posted it anywhere, and I can’t find it in the usual places. It’s possible that I am getting some of the crucial details wrong, mentally combining a couple of covers into one, or it was something other than an actual book cover. But maybe this is some kind of Visual Mandela Effect thing, and this design that I’ve believed existed for years is actually a figment of my imagination.
My search has felt a bit like the online equivalent of walking into a bookstore and asking for the book with the blue cover. It has made realise that we have very few tools to find cover designs in a systematic way, especially since the Book Cover Archive stopped being a going concern. You just kind of have to browse and I hope you eventually look in the right place (or risk slowly lose your sanity).
Anyway, if this mystery cover is ringing any bells with you, please let me know and put me out of my misery. I have been going slightly crazy. (This sort of thing happens more than I care to admit by the way, but it is particularly bad this time! And, no, I do not have much of a life. Why do you ask?)
Headshot by Rita Bullwinkel; design by Lynn Buckley; photo by Jenna Garrett (Viking / March 2024)
Two boxing covers in one month…
The History of My Sexuality by Tobi Lakmaker; design by Arneaux (Granta / January 2024)
(Thanks to Jon Gray for helping me with the design credit for this and the other Granta title Three Births below. Publishers: post the design credits with your cover reveals!)
The Hive and the Honey by Paul Yoon; design by Craig Fraser (Simon & Schuster / March 2024)
The cover of the US edition of The Hive and the Honey, published by S & S in October last year, was design by Oliver Munday.
How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone by Cameron Russell; design by Arsh Raziuddin (Random House / March 2024)
I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall; design by Jack Smyth (Soft Skull / February 2024)
Lobster by Hollie McNish; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / March 2024)
The two Jacks
The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu; design by Juliana Lee; art by Justin Metz (Celadon Books / March 2024)
While looking for the other, possibly imaginary, book cover, I came across the cover for the New Directions edition of The Musical Brain by César Aira designed by Rodrigo Corral and Zak Tebbal a few times. It was on one or two best of 2015 lists, including mine.
Is neon-style lettering on covers a bit of thing? (see also Candy Darling above)
No Judgment by Lauren Oyler; design by Tree Abraham (HarperOne / March 2024)
Those curvy “u”s are fun.
The Observable Universe by Heather McCalden; design by Arsh Raziuddin and Gaby Pesqueira Ortiz (Hogarth / March 2024)
Two very nice, poster-like covers from Arsh Raziuddin this month:
Pelican Girls by Julia Malye; design by Joanne O’Neill (Harper / March 2024)
Piglet by Lottie Hazell; design by Jenni Oughton; art by Noah Verrier (Henry Holt / February 2024)
Beci Kelly designed the covers of the UK (left) and Australian (right) editions of Piglet:
Rainbow Black by Maggie Thrash; design by Joanne O’Neill (Harper Perennial / March 2024)
And two contrasting covers from Joanne O’Neill too this month:
Sorry for the Inconvenience But This Is an Emergency by Lynne Jones; design by Steve Leard (Hurst / March 2024)
There’s Always This Year by Hanif Abdurraqib; design by Tyler Comrie; photograph by Matt Eich (Random House / March 2024)
Thirst by Marina Yuszczuk; design by Kaitlin Kall (Dutton / March 2024)
The slightly more gothic cover of the Australia and UK editions of Thirst was designed by Luke Bird. Scribe are publishing it in October.
Three Births by K Patrick; design by David Pearson (Granta / March 2024)
The Understory by Saneh Sangsuk; design by Emily Mahon (Deep Vellum / March 2024)
The cover of the UK edition of The Understory, published by Peirene Press in October last year, was designed by Orlando Lloyd. The illustration is by Miki Lowe.
Your Absence is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson; design by Jason Arias (Biblioasis / March 2024)
Comments closed
I love this illustration by Klaas Verplancke for the recent ‘Style Issue’ of the New Yorker (which has a fun animated version of the cover on its website).
It works on lots of levels, but it also feels like a bit of nostalgic throwback. People look at their phones these days (although I did see someone with a word search book on the Toronto subway this morning, so some people are keeping it old school at least).
Grid patterns suit the cover of the New Yorker so well though. They work as a representation of Manhattan’s city grid and its skyline, as well as magazine layouts and puzzles. I was reminded me of Sergio García Sánchez’s “Modern Life” cover from a couple of years ago (itself a riff on Piet Mondrian’s New York-inspired painting “Broadway Boogie Woogie“). Chris Ware divided the cover into a comic book (ish) grid during the pandemic too. I’m sure there are more examples. (Grids are good!)
Drew Dernavich for the New Yorker. My to-read pile probably isn’t structurally important, but I wouldn’t pull a book out of the bottom of the stack that’s for sure.
Comments closedI enjoyed Joshua Hunt’s recent New York Times article on the Criterion Collection:
Always in awe of auteurs but never in their thrall, Criterion producers have never been afraid to look beyond the biggest and most marketable names. When Criterion released “Peeping Tom,” a ’60s psychosexual thriller by the English director Michael Powell, the company chose not to ask Scorsese to record the audio commentary, though he would have been the obvious candidate, having done them for other Criterion editions of Powell films. The job instead went to a feminist scholar, Laura Mulvey, the author of the influential essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” which brought forward the concept of “the male gaze.” Over the years, such decisions added up to an editorial voice that became influential, even authoritative, transforming a mere distributor of films into a creator of film culture.
There are also some nice details about the look of the collection:
Criterion’s distinctive visual language began to emerge in the early ’90s when [Rebekah] Audic, the former head of design, started building up its art staff with an aim “to really show the power of these films through the cover designs,” she told me. To do that it was sometimes necessary to go through every frame of film in search of the perfect image. Other times, images alone were not enough. “For the cover of ‘RoboCop,’ we had an actual aluminum-cast letterpress plate made and then photographed the plate with a 4-by-5 camera,” Audic says. It took days, she told me, but “using a physical piece of metal gave it a feeling of aesthetic truth.”
I don’t know if the Criterion Designs book, written and edited by Criterion art director Eric Skillman, is still available. It must be 10 years old now (dies) — I didn’t see it on the Criterion website — but there’s a nice piece about it on AIGA’s Eye on Design blog from around the time it came out. There is also a Criterion Designs blog, but it hasn’t been updated for a little while (am I imagining that Eric Skillman had a blog himself once upon a time?).
Oh and as an aside, the illustration for the NYT article is by Ben Denzer, who also designs book covers, and is the creator of Ice Cream Books should you ever need to pair great literature with frozen desserts (and who doesn’t?).
Comments closedAlex Abramovich has a nice piece at London Review of Books on the late Tom Verlaine and the sale of his massive book collection:
Verlaine, who formed and fronted the band Television, died on 28 January 2023. Over the years he had acquired fifty thousand books – twenty tons or more – on any number of subjects: art, acoustics, astrological signs, UFOs. The sale of those books – a two-day affair in August, run out of adjacent garages in Brooklyn – was a serious draw. Arto Lindsay, the avant-pop musician, walked by. Tony Oursler made a short video and posted it on Instagram. Old friends, some of whom looked as if they hadn’t seen daylight in decades, found each other in the long line.
Dealing with that many books was quite an undertaking:
Verlaine had been a regular at the Strand, where he’d once worked in the shipping department – you’d see him on the sidewalk in front, where the dollar carts were. On tour, he used the space between soundcheck and showtime to visit local booksellers. In Brooklyn, he had packed his storage units so tightly that Patrick Derivaz, the friend charged with handling his estate, had to rent another unit just to have space to move boxes around. Jimmy Rip, a guitarist in Television’s most recent incarnation, had flown in from Argentina in January; seven months later he was still in New York, helping out. Dave Morse and Matty D’Angelo, of the Bushwick bookstore Better Read than Dead, had come aboard too.
‘Usually,’ Morse told me, ‘people call and say: “We have fifty thousand books.” You get there and it’s more like five hundred. In this case, we counted the boxes.
My books are not in storage units but having also helped some relatives downsize recently, this is a reminder that I need to take a long hard look at what I want to keep.
Comments closedHey. I hope you’re keeping safe and well wherever you are. I’m going to keep this very short as there’s lots going on, but there some great covers, and a couple of tenuous comparisons this month (hey, I can’t help how my brain works!) . Enjoy!
Alphabetical Diaries by Sheila Heti; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2024)
Na Kim also designed the cover of Sheila Heti’s novel Pure Colour.
American Mother by Column McCann with Diane Foley; design by Greg Heinimann (Bloomsbury / February 2024)
Antiquity by Hanna Johansson; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / February 2024)
This reminded me of Akiko Stehrenberger‘s poster for the movie Funny Games. They don’t really look alike, and the tone is very different, but I think it was the close crop and the hair that brought it to mind.
The Blueprint by Rae Giana Rashad; design by Robin Bilardello (Harper / February 2024)
Corey Fah Does Social Mobility by Isabel Waidner; design by Kapo Ng (Graywolf / February 2024)
Dirtbag by Amber A’Lee Frost; design by Rob Grom (St. Martin’s Press / December 2023)
This brought to mind Peter Mendelsund’s cover for The Woman Destroyed by Simone Beauvoir, published by Pantheon, which in turn reminded me Gunter Rambow‘s Gitanes, Un Hommage à Max Ponty poster…
Fire So Wild by Sarah Ruiz-Grossman; design by Joanne O’Neill (Harper / Feburary 2024)
The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers by Sarah Tomlinson; design by Dave Litman (Flatiron Books / February 2024)
Love Novel by Ivana Sajko; design by Jason Arias (Biblioasis / February 2024)
The image is taken from the 17th Century painting ‘The Torture of Prometheus’ by Giovacchino Assereto (thanks for letting me know, Jason!). The tight crop (which is great!), reminded me of Peter Hujar’s 1969 photograph ‘Orgasmic Man’, which was used on the cover of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara designed by Cardon Webb a few years ago. Art imitating art, kind of?
Nightwatching by Tracy Sierra; design by Dave Litman (Pamela Dorman Books / February 2024)
I swear all Dave’s covers come in pairs….
Ours by Phillip B. Williams; design by Lynn Buckley; illustration by Damilola Opedun (Viking / February 2024)
Praiseworthy by Alexis Wright; design by John Gall (New Directions / February 2024)
John also designed the cover of the New Directions edition of Carpentaria by Alexis Wright, also published this month.
Sinking Bell by Bojan Louis; design by Tom Etherington (Cinder House / February 2024)
US edition of Sinking Bell, published by Graywolf in 2022), was designed by Adam Bohannon.
Splinters by Leslie Jamison; design by Gregg Kulick (Little, Brown & Co / February 2024)
The cover of the UK edition of Splinters, published this month by Granta, was designed by Jack Smyth. It’s interesting to see to a torn author photo in both…
Tartarus by Ty Chapman; design by Zoe Norvell (Button Poetry / February 2024)
I am really starting to wonder whether yellow type is a thing. Or am I just noticing it now because I’m looking for it?
Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange; design by Linda Huang (Knopf / February 2024)
The cover of the UK edition of Wandering Stars, which is being published by Vintage next month, was designed by Suzanne Dean.
You Glow in the Dark by Liliana Colanzi; design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions / February 2024)
Comments closedI hope you’re staying healthy and optimistic about the new year. As this is the post about new 2024 covers, it inevitably includes a few from 2023 that I missed at the time. There are also a couple of indie covers, one from a university press, and, continuing a theme from last year, one from a Canadian publisher. Keep warm, friends.
The Age of Deer by Erika Howsare; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / January 2024)
Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino; design by Thom Colligan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2024)
The Bullet Swallower by Elizabeth Gonzalez James; design by Dave Litman (Simon & Schuster / January 2024)
Cold by David Hayden Taylor; design by Kelly Hill (McClelland & Steward / January 2024)
Nice to see my home town looking so… apocalyptic.
Come & Get It by Kiley Reid; design Vi-An Nguyen (G.P. Putnam’s Sons / January 2024)
Vi-An also designed the cover of Kiley Reid’s previous book, Such A Fun Age, also published by Putnam.
The End of Nightwork by Aidan Cottrell-Boyce; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / January 2024)
Filterworld by Kyle Chayka; design by Oliver Munday (Doubleday / January 2024)
I mentioned Kyle Chayka in the introduction to my post looking back at 2023. I didn’t realize that he had book coming out. I guess I will have to read it now!
The General and Julia by Jon Clinch; design Laywan Kwan (Atria / November 2023)
How We Named the Stars by Andrés N. Ordorica; design by Beth Steidle; art by Sarah Callen (Tin House / January 2024)
Font wizards correct me if I am wrong, but I *think* both of these covers use Manofa from Inhouse Type? (And I think saw it on the cover of a forthcoming book too recently. Maybe a typeface inspired by Lydian is becoming the new Lydian?)
Kindling by Kathleen Jennings; cover art by Kathleen Jennings (Small Beer Press / January 2024)
Magus by Anthony Grafton; design by Jaya Miceli (Belknap Press / December 2023(
Mountains of Fire by Clive Oppenheimer; design by Holly Ovenden (Hodder & Stoughton / August 2023)
The New Life by Tom Crewe; design by Jaya Miceli (Scribner / January 2024)
Jaya also designed the cover of the hardcover published this time last year.
(Also hat-tip to Australian bookseller and reader of the blog Bowen who noted that yellow type is very much in vogue at the moment)
Pig by Sam Sax; design by Matt Dorfman (Scribner / September 2023)
The Sun Sets in Singapore by Kehinde Fadipe; design by Sarah Congdon; pattern illustration by Yehrin Tong (Grand Central / October 2023)
It’s always great to see a Yehrin Tong pattern on a cover.
Witchcraft by Marion Gibson; design by Sarah Bibel (Scribner / January 2024)
Comments closedHappy New Year! I hope you’re safe and well. As is now the tradition, the first post of the year is a look back at some of the young adult covers of last year. The usual caveats apply of course. Not much YA crosses my desk at work, which is mostly indie publishing, and it is not a category I follow closely apart from what my kids are reading, so my insight here is limited. Still, I think at some of the stuff I wrote about the industry in my 2023 post on adult covers probably holds true for YA too. The toll of the past few years has led to a certain amount of risk aversion from both publishers and designers (albeit for different reasons), and my sense is that folks are bracing for more of the same in 2024. I would guess that genre expectations within the broader YA category have limited the room for experimentation too. Some things need to look the same it seems. But even if there is some conservatism in the current design approaches (if it ain’t broke…), and things in general feel pretty grim, there is a remarkable amount of diversity and representation on the covers of YA books — and perhaps even among the designers and illustrators themselves — and that feels like something that should be celebrated. I’ve tried my best to get all the credits for the covers, but please let me know if I missed anyone out — I’ll be happy to update the post where necessary.
All That’s Left To Say by Emery Lord; art direction by Jeanette Levy; illustration by Adele Leyris (Bloomsbury YA / July 2023)
All the Fighting Parts by Hannah V. Sawyer; design by Micah Fleming; illustration by Rachelle Baker (Harry N. Abrams / September 2023)
Ander & Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa; design by Kerri Resnick; illustration by Max Reed (Wednesday Books / May 2023)
Champion of Fate by Kendare Blake; design by David Curtis; art by Tomasz Majewski (Quill Tree Books / September 2023)
Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle; design by Greg Stadnyk; illustration by Signum Noir (Margaret K. McElderry Books / October 2023)
Daughters of Oduma by Moses Ose Utomi; design by Greg Stadnik; illustration by Laylie Frazier (Atheneum Books for Young Readers / February 2023)
A Door in the Dark by Scott Reintgen; design by Greg Stadnik; illustration by Bose Collins (Margaret K. McElderry Books / March 2023)
Ever Since by Alena Bruzas; design by Kristie Radwilowicz; art by Suzanne Dias (Rocky Pond Books / May 2023)
Everyone’s Thinking It by Aleema Omotoni; design by Corina Lupp; illustration by Otesanya (Balzer & Bray / September 2023)
Flowerheart by Catherine Bakewell; design by Catherine Lee; illustration by Yejin Park (Harperteen / March 2023)
The Girl Next Door by Cecilia Vinesse; design by Erin Fitzsimmons; art by Tomasz Majewski (Quill Tree Books / May 2023)
Goddess Crown by Shade Lapite; design by Maria T. Middleton; art by Jeff Manning (Walker Books / September 2023)
Her Radiant Curse by Elizabeth Lim; art direction by Angela Carlino; art by Tran Nguyen; lettering by Alix Northrup (Alfred A. Knopf Books for Young Readers / August 2023)
Tran Nguyen and Alix Northrup also worked on the covers for Elizabeth Lim’s previous books Six Crimson Cranes and The Dragon’s Promise, which appeared on the 2021 and 2022 lists respectively.
A Hundred Vicious Turns by Lee Page O’Brien; design by Micah Fleming; illustration by Corey Brickley (Harry N. Abrams / September 2023)
This is the first of many covers featuring Corey Brickley’s lovely work on the list!
I feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea; design by Kathleen Breitenfeld; art by Rich Deas; lettering by Jordan Metcalf (Henry Holt BYR / August 2023)
I Will Find You Again by Sarah Lyu; design by Laura Eckes (Simon & Schuster BYR / March 2023)
Immortality by Dana Schwartz; design by Kerri Resnick; illustration by Zach Meyer (Wednesday Books / February 2023)
The cover for Anatomy by Dana Schwartz was on last year’s list. I wonder what vital organ shaped dress we will get next?
In Limbo by Deb JJ Lee; design by Kirk Benshoff; art by Deb JJ Lee (First Second / March 2023)
Invisible Son by Kim Johnson; art by Chuck Styles (Random House BYR / June 2023)
The Isle of the Gods by Amie Kaufman; design Angela Carlino; art by Aykut Aydoğdu (Alfred A. Knopf BYR / May 2023)
The Lake House by Sarah Beth Durst; design by Catherine Lee; illustration by Elena Masci (Harperteen / April 2023)
The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan; design by Kelley Brady; illustration by Michael Rogers (G.P. Putnam’s Sons BYR / August 2023)
Coincidentally these two covers combined would have a complete face…
Never a Hero by Vanessa Len; design by Jessie Gang; art by Eevien Tan (Harperteen / August 2023)
The cover for Only a Monster by Vanessa Len was also on last year’s list.
Nigeria Jones by Ibi Zoboi; design by Jenna Stempel-Lobell; art by Nettrice Gaskins (Balzer & Bray / May 2023)
Night’s Edge by Liz Kerin; design by Katie Klimowicz (Tor Nightfire / June 2023)
(Technically this isn’t YA, it’s categorized as “Fiction / Coming of Age,” but I figure there’s crossover here so I’m including it anyway)
The Only Girl in Town by Ally Condie; design by Theresa Evangelista (Dutton BYR / September 2023)
Painted Devils by Margaret Owen; design by Rich Deas; art by M.S. Corley (Henry Holt / May 2023)
Rook by William Ritter; design by Laura Williams; illustration by Corey Brickley (Algonquin YR / August 2023)
Algonquin also reissued the whole Jackaby series in paperback with new covers to match:
The Scarlet Alchemist by Kylie Lee Baker; design by Kathleen Oudit & Gigi Lau; photography Lillian Liu (Inkyard Press / October 2023)
She Is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran; design by Thy Bui; illustration by Elena Masci (Bloomsbury YA / Feburary 2023)
Something Like Possible by Miel Moreland; design by Julia Bianchi; illustration by Bex Glendining (Feiwel & Friends / May 2023)
The Space Between Here and Now by Sarah Suk; design by David Curtis (Quill Tree Books / October 2023)
The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White; illustration by Evangeline Gallagher (Peachtree Teen / September 2023)
Evangeline Gallagher also provided the cover illustration for Andrew Joseph White’s previous book Hell Followed With Us.
Threads That Bind by Kika Hatzopoulou; design by Kristie Radwilowicz; illustration by Corey Brickley (Razorbill / May 2023)
The Twenty-One by Elizabeth Rusch; design by Paul Zakris; illustration by Will Staehle (Greenwillow Books / September 2023)
The Voice Upstairs by Laura E. Weymouth; design by Debra Sfetsios-Conover; illustration by Marcela Bolivar (Margaret K. McElderry Books / October 2023)
Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley; design by Rich Deas; art by Michaela Goade (Henry Holt / May 2023)
Where There’s Smoke by E. B. Vickers; design by Ray Shappell (Alfred A. Knopf BYR / December 2023)
Wise Creatures by Deirdre Sullivan; design by Nick Stearn; illustration by Corey Brickley (Hot Key Books / September 2023)
Zhara by S. Jae-Jones; design by Kerri Resnick; illustration by Sija Hong (Wednesday Books / August 2023)
Comments closedAt the turn of the year, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshitification.” Although he was specifically describing the process of online services getting worse for users, it was hard not to see it everywhere in 2023.
In his annual look at the year’s best book covers for the New York Times, art director Matt Dorfman recounts a friend describing 2023 as a “year of survival”, a year of “no growth, no withering, just getting by.”
This year saw a centuries-old business contending with rounds of buyouts and layoffs, alongside an endless news cycle involving two brutal wars from which no authors, friends, enemies or strangers were immune from accountability for any unrehearsed sentiment they might voice in passing. Add to this the ongoing concern about how artificial intelligence will affect a business historically dependent upon human creativity — yet through it all, there was still the matter of making books, and their covers, to get on with.
I read Matt’s piece the same day I read an article by Kyle Chayka in the New Yorker about his search for an epochal term to “evoke the panicky incoherence of our lives of late.” The suggestions range from the bland ‘Long 2016,’ to the incredibly ominous-sounding ‘Chthulucene,’ the Lovecraftian ‘New Dark Age,’ and the frankly terrifying and plausible ‘Jackpot’ from William Gibson’s 2014 novel The Peripheral.
This was the context of life and work in 2023.
Matt notes some designers found inspiration in the zeitgeist. He’s not wrong. But, ironically perhaps, I feel less optimistic about the overall picture than he does.
At the risk of repeating what I’ve written in the past couple of years, it’s like we’re stuck in a holding pattern, circling the same design ideas. Trends have stuck around. A lot of covers feel safe. Some of this was the books themselves. I’m not sure exactly how many celebrity memoirs is too many, but I’m pretty sure we reached that point and sailed right past it in 2023. No doubt some of it is sales and marketing departments sanding down all the edges and demanding the tried and true (see Zachary Petit’s alternative best of 2023 piece on killed covers for Fast Company). But I would not be surprised if it designers were just getting caught up in the churn — too many books, too many covers, and too much other stuff to worry about.
Or maybe it’s just me.
One of the themes of the year was nostalgia, which I’m sure can also be put down to the present being pretty fucking awful. It was apparent across almost all genres, including literary fiction, but nowhere more so than in the resurgent supernatural suspense and horror categories. There were creative stylistic mashups with retro vibes, along side fastidious Stranger Things-like homages to the 1980s and Stephen King.
One genuinely pleasant surprise was the number of interesting covers from Canadian publishers this year. They’ve been quietly risk-averse in recent years, so it was nice to see a few bolder design choices getting approved. I was happy to see a Canadian cover was one of the top picks on Literary Hub’s (very, very long) list of the best covers of 2023.
There were other things to cheer this year too.
Spine continued to give space to designers to talk about their work in a way I’ve never been able to do consistently here. You can find their 2023 cover picks here.
David Pearson started the Book Cover Review, a website for short reviews of book covers.
Zoe Norvell’s I Need A Book Cover, a resource for book cover inspiration as well as place for authors and publishers to connect with designers, also went live.
Steve Leard launched Cover Meeting, a podcast series of in-depth interviews with cover designers (including David and Zoe among others). As Mark Sinclair notes in his piece on book cover design this year for Creative Review, Steve’s conversations shed light on wider concerns in the industry as well as each designer’s individual process. Have a listen if you haven’t already.
Thanks for reading.
The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer; design by Kate Sinclair (Random House Canada / May 2023)
Also designed by Kate Sinclair:
The Annual Banquet of The Gravediggers’ Guild by Mathias Énard; design by John Gall (New Directions / December 2023)
I like John’s cover for Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck, also published by New Directions, a lot too.
Bariloche by Andrés Neuman; design by Alban Fischer (Open Letter / March 2023)
The Bee Sting by Paul Murray; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2023)
Also designed by Na Kim:
Beijing Sprawl by Xu Zechen; design by Andrew Walters (Two Lines Press / June 2023)
Berlin by Bea Setton; design by Emily Mahon; cover image by Nataša Denić (Penguin Books / May 2023)
Also designed by Emily Mahon:
B.F.F. by Christie Tate; design by Ben Wiseman (Avid Reader Press / February 2023)
Blue Hunger by Viola Di Grado; design by Myunghee Kwon (Bloomsbury / March 2023)
Breaking and Entering by Don Gillmor; design by Michel Vrana; photograph by Joe Cohen (Biblioasis / August 2023)
Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll; design by Kaitlin Kall (Simon & Schuster / September 2023)
Brutes by Dizz Tate; design by Nicole Caputo (Catapult / February 2023)
Caret, Pilcrow and Cedilla by Adam Mars-Jones; design by Jonathan Pelham (Faber / August 2023)
I also really liked Jonny’s cover design for the UK edition of Tremor by Teju Cole, published by Faber.
Cat Prince by Michael Pedersen; design by Gray318 (Little, Brown / July 2023)
The Circle by Katherena Vermette; design by Jennifer Griffiths; art by KC Adams (Hamish Hamilton Canada / September 2023)
Chrysalis by Anna Metcalfe; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / May 2023)
The Complete Works of Álvaro de Campos by Fernando Pessoa; design by Peter Mendelsund (New Directions / July 2023)
The Details by Ia Genberg translated by Kira Josefsson; design Stephen Brayda; illustration Najeebah Al-Ghadban (Harpervia / August 2023)
A Dictator Calls by Ismail Kadare; design by Matt Broughton (Vintage / August 2023)
The Employees by Olga Ravn; design by Paul Sahre (New Directions / February 2023)
Excavations by Hannah Michell; design by Arsh Raziuddin (One World / July 2023)
The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank; design by Annie Atkins (Penguin / May 2023)
Glaciers by Alexis M. Smith; design by Beth Steidle (Tin House / July 2023)
Good Men by Arnon Grunberg; design by Anna Jordan (Open Letter / May 2023)
Greek Lessons by Han Kang; design by Anna Kochman (Hogarth / April 2023)
Hangman by Maya Binyam; design by Alex Merto; art by Belkis Ayón (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2023)
Also designed by Alex Merto:
Hope by Andrew Ridker; design by Tyler Comrie; photograph by Melissa Ann Pinney (Viking / July 2023)
Tyler Comrie’s cover for Time Without Keys by Ida Vitale, published by New Directions, is also very nice.
House Woman by Adorah Nworah; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / June 2023)
I have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Viking / February 2023)
The Illiterate by Ágota Kristóf; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / April 2023)
Also designed by Oliver Munday:
Island City by Laura Adamczyk; design by Jennifer Heuer (FSG Originals / March 2023)
The Joy of Consent by Manon Garcia; design by Jaya Miceli (Belknap Press / October 2023)
Also designed by Jaya Miceli:
Julia by Sandra Newman; design by Luke Bird (Mariner / October 2023)
Also designed by Luke Bird:
The Last Bookseller by Gary Goodman; design by Kimberly Glyder (University of Minnesota Press / October 2023)
The Librarianist by Patrick DeWitt; design by Allison Saltzman (Ecco / July 2023)
The Love of Singular Men by Victor Heringer; design by Pablo Delcan (New Directions / September 2023)
Lucky Dogs by Helen Schulman; design by Janet Hansen; photograph by Christopher Brand (Knopf / June 2023)
Also designed by Janet Hansen:
Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar; design by Rodrigo Corral (MCD / May 2023)
Poverty by Matthew Desmond; design by Christopher Brand (Crown / March 2023)
Prophet by Helen MacDonald and Sin Blache; design by Dan Mogford; lettering by Martin Naumann (Vintage / August 2023)
Really Good, Actually by Monica Heisey; design by Mumtaz Mustafa; art by Sari Shryack (William Morrow & Co / January 2023)
Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter; design by Natalia Olbinski; art by Angela Faustina (Scribner / July 2023)
The Sea Elephants by Shastri Akella; design by Dave Litman (Flatiron Books / July 2023)
Shy by Max Porter; design by Carlos Esparza (Graywolf / May 2023)
Someone Who Isn’t Me by Geoff Rickly; design by Jesse Reed; art by Jesse Draxler (Rose Books / July 2023)
Sublunar by Harald Voetmann; design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions / August 2023)
Also designed by Jamie Keenan:
The Sullivanians by Alexander Stille; design by June Park (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2023)
Also designed by June Park:
To Battersea Park by Philip Hensher; design by Jo Thomson (Fourth Estate / March 2023)
Tunnel 29 by Helena Merriman; design by Pete Garceau (PublicAffairs / January 2023)
Also designed by Pete Garceau:
The Vunerables by Sigrid Nunez; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / November 2023)
Also designed by Lauren Peter-Collaer:
While Supplies Last by Anita Lahey; design by David Drummond (Signal Editions / April 2023)
Comments closed
