Preeminent book designer Chip Kidd discusses the concept behind the beautifully designed cover art for Haruki Murakami’s latest novel, 1Q84 (Knopf, 944pgs), in a short video posted on the Los Angeles Times website today. To align with the book’s theme of parallel realities, Kidd printed part of the 4-color artwork on transparent vellum which overlays the artwork printed on the cover stock beneath. The occurrence of two moons in the book’s plot is also referenced in the design of the end papers. In the video, Kidd also alludes to a mystery involving the book’s page numbers, but readers will have to puzzle that one out themselves, once the book is released here in the U.S, on October 25. Read more…

Seasoned art director Charlotte Strick struggled to find right visual balance when designing "Poser" book cover.

In an article for The Atlantic, Charlotte Strick, a seasoned art director for publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux, discusses the evolution of a book cover design from initial ideas to final concept. During her 11 years working for the publisher, the designer has grown adept at taking general or amorphous direction from editors and creating innovative solutions. But when she was tasked with designing the jacket for Claire Dederer’s book Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, she faced a unique challenge. Strick’s personal interest in yoga fuel her excitement about the project, but her initial idea of photographing propped up silhouettes of people in yoga poses spelling out P-O-S-E-R did not turn out as anticipated. “In my mind’s eye the concept looked brilliant, but in reality it was all too fussy and totally unreadable. What was clear early on was that the photographs of the posing women were too literal and that illustration would not only add a playfulness (in keeping with the author’s tone) but also allow for increased (if not somewhat superhuman) flexibility in the letterforms,” she writes. Read more…

As the final days of 2010 wind down, many websites and blogs are busy compiling their “Best of” lists for the year, including line-ups for the best in book cover design. Anis Shivani at The Huffington Post has selected 21 “cool” covers and spoken with the authors and designers to get a feel for the creative process that goes into designing a successful cover. Many of the titles selected are by lesser-known authors, but the design quality of several of the selections is top-notch. The cover created for The Line by Olga Grushin plays on the contrast of color and gray scale, positive and negative space, the austere and the lyrical to create a simple, yet intriguing cover. “Everyone immediately loved this one…A perfect cover should capture the feel of the book, and this one does so wonderfully: there is the contrast between the grim reality and the world of fantasy, hope and beauty; there are individual stories, each one unique; and I read a Nabokov reference into the butterflies, which makes me even happier,” comments Grushin. Read more…

Several blogs have published their lists of the best book cover designs of 2009. Here is a round-up of the standouts: This year, The Book Design Review asked employees of three independent book stores to contribute to their Favorite Covers list. The three part post showcases the selections of staff from WORD in Brooklyn, NY, RiverRun Bookstore in Portsmouth, NH, and The Book Table in Oak Park, IL. The design styles, like the books’ subject matter, vary greatly. But there are some stellar examples of good design, particularly The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa and Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. Readers can vote for their own favorite design in the on-line polls. The Book Cover Archive takes the list one step further with their Top Ten of Covers of the ’00s post. Two covers were chosen to represent each year in the decade, among them, memorable designs for A Shortcut Through Time by George Johnson and The Murder by John Steinbeck.

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New York Public Library logos old (left) and new (right).

The New York Public Library has updated its brand identity for the digital age. The new logo, a bolder more streamlined version of a lion profile inside a circle, is designed to work both on-line and in print. The simple shapes and smooth curves, along with a new color pallet, allow the mark to be used in a variety of sizes and resolutions without losing any detail. Kievit, a new sans-serif typeface, was chosen to compliment the logo with its contemporary look. The re-design, the first in over 25 years, was done in-house by the library’s creative team, and is based on the stone lions that adorn the main library steps. “It’s primarily based on Fortitude [the northern lion], but it’s a combination of both,” explains Marc Blaustein, art director for the library system. “The angle is Fortitude, but some of the features are inspired by Patience.”

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Concept cover (left) and final cover (right). ©2009 Scribner

Almost everyone judges a book by its cover. A compelling cover design helps cut through the media clutter; even book covers for today’s best selling authors have become more creative and elaborate. When designing the cover art for Jeannette Walls’ latest novel Half Broke Horses (Scribner, 270pgs), designers at Scribner explored several different cover concepts before finding the right fit. Walls’ family memoir The Glass Castle topped the best sellers list in 2005, and Half Broke Horses is a follow up of sorts. The “true-life novel” recounts the experiences of her larger-than-life grandmother, Lily Casey Smith.

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