Collectible Hardbacks

What are these? Why, they're beautiful clothbound editions of some of Penguin's finest works of fiction, naturally. I think they're just absolutely beautiful. As Alan Trotter puts it on his excellent design blog: "Either you want them, or else, I guess you hate things that are nice?"

All designed by the wonderful Coralie Bickford-Smith

These books are actually the second installment of hardback editions of Penguin's Classics. If you've got a big enough bank balance, you can also purchase the first set, which are designed in the same style, and are just as beautiful.

D&AD Annual

The 2009 D&AD Annual was unveiled yesterday, and I have to say I think it looks rather good. The book is designed by recent graduate Luke Sanders, and art directed by the famous Peter Saville. The book is split into four categories: Advertising, Design, Crafts and Digital. Each section is separated by a fold out cover, which gives the the appearance of having four book spines within the pages of the book itself.

Images from Creative Review

But why no D&AD Student Annual? When I found out my work had received 'In-Book' status I couldn't wait to get my hands on the book, only to be hugely disappointed when I found out that for the first time ever, there is no Student Annual this year, with it being moved entirely online instead.

With D&AD putting so much emphasis on the importance of nuturing young talent (the Annual itself was designed by a recent graduate!) why do us successful students not deserve an Annual of our own? Bring it back D&AD!

For a full read-up on the new Annual, head over to the Creative Review blog.

Books + Anniversaries (Part III: Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

So the two big publishers, Penguin and Faber, both celebrated their recent anniversaries (70th and 80th respectively) by producing special, limited edition sets of books. And following in their footsteps are the lesser known publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson. They're celebrating their 60th anniversary this year, and wanted to release a special set of books to mark the occasion.

Penguin and Faber each commissioned covers from a whole different range of contemporary designers, but Weidenfeld & Nicolson went down a somewhat different route, and commissioned the powerhouse of advertising that is Fallon, to design their special set of books.

Famous for throwing bouncy balls down hills and teaching gorillas to play the drums, Fallon are a very big name in the advertising world, but when it comes to designing books, well, they've never done it before. Despite their lack of experience in this field, Fallon were keen to show that they can do more than just advertising.

“This project was a great opportunity to showcase the department’s passion for craft and design above and beyond traditional advertising briefs.”

Mark Elwood, creative director of Fallon Design (from Creative Review, August 2009)

Apparently Fallon had the entire design department and all their art directors working on the brief, so they ended up with about 30-40 different concepts for the design of the books. From all these ideas, they settled on one, and the finished design looks a little bit like this:

The full set (image from CR)

Each cover is made from raw uncoated board which gives them a great tactile quality, and provides some visual consistency to the set, whilst still allowing each book to look individual thanks to a die-cut window in the center of each one. Through this cut out shape in the cover you can see the vibrant artwork of the front/end papers, each of which was created by a different artist.

Two of the covers with the end papers visible through the die-cut windows

The full end paper for 'The Siege of Krishnapur' created by Mikko Rantanen

The set isn't perfect, I think there are a couple of weak covers in there, such as Lolita and The Color Purple, but the rest I think are great, and as a whole the set looks brilliant. I think Fallon have done a really impressive job, with a design concept just as impressive as the ones shown by Penguin and Faber, and they have shown that they are capable of more than just advertising.



Looking at the works of Penguin, Faber, and Weidenfeld & Nicolson, I think the equation "Books + Anniversaries = Good Design" is fairly accurate. And I've only looked at publishers of prose and fiction. If we look further afield, specialist art and design publishers Thames and Hudson also turn 60 this year, and they too have done something special to celebrate. Not to mention Taschen, who have shamelessly been slapping the number 25 all over their books recently to mark their 25th anniversary.

I can't wait for the next set of publishing milestones to roll around and see what other great pieces of design crop up as a result.

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Books + Anniversaries = Good Design
Part I: Penguin
Part II: Faber & Faber
Part III: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Books + Anniversaries (Part II: Faber)

It's not just Penguin who have been celebrating a milestone anniversary recently. Faber & Faber turned 80 this year, and they too have been busy making some lovely book sets to mark the occasion. Faber Firsts is a set of brilliant debut novels from ten of their most famous authors, which includes 'Lord of the Flies' by William Goldberg, and Paul Auster's celebrated 'New York Trilogy'.

Just like Penguin did for their 70th anniversary, Faber commissioned different designers/illustrators for each of the covers (plus a few of them were done in-house). However, unlike Penguin, the brief was a bit more strict; Faber wanted each cover to represent a classic design from their past. Over the last 80 years they have had a very rich design history, incorporating many different styles and trends, and they wanted these new covers to act as a tribute to their past. Faber describe the set as "Landmark debuts with classic designs".

Four of the ten Faber Firsts covers which hark back to designs of the past

Each cover represents a different era of Faber's design heritage, inspired by some of their most famous and prolific dust-jacket designers such as Berthold Wolpe and Hookway Cowles. Faber's 'Eighty Years of Book Cover Design' is a treasure trove of past designs (also published this year to mark their anniversary), and just flicking through the pages of the book you can see where much of the inspiration came from for these ten Faber Firsts covers.

For example, the rough brush style of Berthold Wolpe's original Faber jackets was clearly the influence for this cover of 'Lord of the Flies', designed by Darren Wall:

Wolpe's original cover design

Darren Wall's cover as part of the Faber Firsts series

And the confident hand rendered typographic approach for the cover of Peter Carey's 'Bliss' was clearly inspired by the original cover for 'Sibelius', a music book published by Faber in the 60s:

The original

The 2009 version

Admitedly, not every single cover stands out as a brilliant piece of graphic design, but as a set I think they work really well together, and they do a great job of representing the different design eras of Faber's past. Here are the rest of the covers in the set, and a couple of comments from the designers:

	I grew up around old Faber books. In particular Bernhard Wolpe's cover designs for the books of Lawrence Durrell or the poems of Sylvia Plath. It was therefore a great honour to be asked to pay homage to part of Faber's amazing design heritage. I was given the task of designing a cover that reflects some of the very graphic, 2 colour solutions that have been produced throughout the years, particularly from the 40s through to the early 60s. My cover is a simple graphic attempt to illustrate 3 stories with 2 colours. Jonathan Gray / gray318, designer (extract from Waterstone's Books Quarterly)
	I wanted to create a very classic 1950's look inspired by the illustrations of Hookway Cowles. The style is extremely flat and the drawing almost looks as if it has been screen printed. Interestingly to recreate this flat 50's quality I turned to modern digital techniques as I could layer one image evenly on top of another without adding dimension. The presence of a Carpathian style castle on top of a mountain is intended to convey an aura of mystery and drama. The full moon heightens the sense of atmosphere and also suggests that all things can be revealed even in the black of the night. Robert Venables, Illustrator (also from WBQ)

However, Faber & Faber aren't stopping there, they're doing a lot more to celebrate their 80th anniversary. As well as Faber Firsts, they have also released a poetry collection, consisting of six books, each one featuring a selection of works by a classic poet. The works featured have all been hand picked by contemporary poets and authors, and more importantly, the covers have each been created by contemporary print makers.

The six covers of the Faber 'Poetry Classics' set

As you can see, the monochrome covers each feature some great detailed illustrations, made using traditional methods such as woodcut and linocut design. The only one I don't like is the W. H. Auden cover which lacks the detail and the charm that the others have, but in general I think this is another very nicely designed set of books. They even come sporting matching end-papers:

The matching front/end papers of the Poetry books (images from Creative Review)

And it doesn't end there. Oh no. Faber are launching yet another set of books to celebrate their 80th anniversary. This time it's the complete works of Samuel Beckett, together for the first time in one collection. They've gone for the purely typographic approach (something I usually love), typeset in a bespoke face created specially for this set of books (sounds great so far), designed by London studio a2/sw/hk (oh dear, what a ridiculous name for a design studio).

Four of Faber's covers from the Samuel Beckett collection

Unfortunately, these books simply don't excite me nearly as much as the others; I don't particularly like the bespoke typeface, nor the way that the type runs off the edges of the pages. According to a2/sw/hk:

"[Each cover] uses a bespoke cover font that comes in four weights, while the book’s title runs vertically to allow for the use of large point sizes. Parts of the titles bleed off the edges to add “tension” to the design".

From Creative Review, May 2009

Hmm, not sure about that "tension" they're on about there. There are 20 titles in total, although only five have been published so far, with the rest to follow gradually between now and Spring 2011. To see the full set of covers, head over to RobAroundBooks.

Two more the typographic Beckett covers

So that's three different sets of books specially created to celebrate Faber & Faber's 80th anniversary, two featuring some very good design, and one with some OK design. For the final part of this series I'll look at how Weidenfeld & Nicolson used a different approach to design to help commemorate their 60th birthday.

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Books + Anniversaries = Good Design
Part I: Penguin
Part II: Faber & Faber
Part III: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Books + Anniversaries (Part I: Penguin)

A small equation: Books + Anniversaries = Good Design

Everybody loves to celebrate their anniversary, and it seems that book publishers are no exception. Every Gregorian milestone is an excuse to put out a limited edition set of books to mark the occasion, and commission some great book design in the process.

For example, to mark Penguin's 70th Anniversary back in 2005, they released a limited edition set of 70 books, each book being a new text, specially selected for the occasion by one of Penguin's most popular and/or significant authors from their back catalogue spanning the last 70 years. The stories/texts themselves are interesting enough, some of them very much so, but in my opinion the best thing about the set is the design. As well as having 70 different famous authors to write the books, Penguin also asked 70 different illustrators and designers to create the front covers. The result is that almost every book has a great, and unique design.

Here are a few of my favourite covers:





The books come in a presentation box, (although it's a bit flimsy to be honest), and each spine is a different colour, so that when lined up on the bookshelf they form a rainbow gradient, something I usually despise, but I think in this case it works.



There were only a limited number of sets produced, and like so many books in Penguin's back catalogue, they have become quite a collectors item. Nowadays sets of the books occasionally pop up on eBay for around five times their original retail price.

So, Penguin marked their 70th anniversary with some great, not to mention highly collectable, book cover design, but then good design is something I have come to expect from Penguin, and I've blogged about their Great Ideas books on here before. For part two of my trio of articles on book cover design, I'll take a look at Faber & Faber and how they tackled the issue of designing a set of special books to mark their 80th anniversary.

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Books + Anniversaries = Good Design
Part I: Penguin
Part II: Faber & Faber
Part III: Weidenfeld & Nicolson

French Books

I have absolutely no idea what these books are all about, as they're all in French. All I do know is that they're great to look at. They've been designed by David Pearson, the clever man behind the Penguin Great Ideas series of books.

Penguin Great Ideas IV

For anybody not familiar with the Penguin Great Ideas series, it's a series which brings together some of the most influential texts ever made, from the minds of the worlds greatest thinkers; from Confucius and Plato, to Darwin, Rousseau, Woolf and Orwell, to name just a few. They're the kind of books that you would read in a public place if you wanted to try and make yourself look 'oh-so-sophisticated' in front of everybody else.

However, the books could be full of anything, complete nonsense even, I think I would still want to buy them, because of their incredible covers. The idea originally started out as one set of 20 books, and they used the colour red to tie the set together and create a visual consistency for the covers. The books were all printed using only two colours, red being the spot colour, and black being the only other they could use, printed on to white stock. It's always a challenge designing for print in just two colours, but the end results were fantastic. The different illustrations and use of type on the covers help each book to remain interesting and unique, whilst the two colour treatment really ties the books together to create a set that is visually stunning. The covers are a very tactile experience, they are printed on smooth matte paper, and feature heavy embossing. They're the kind of books you want to run your fingers over, and jpgs really don't do them much justice.

Four covers from Penguin Great Ideas Volume I

Due to the success of the first set of 20 books, Penguin decided to release another set, again featuring black and white covers, but this time using blue as the spot colour.

Penguin Great Ideas Volume II

As well as the covers, the spot colour is also used on the spines of the books, volume one all having red spines, volume two with blue ones, which means they look fantastic when they're lined up on your bookshelf. Moreover, the spines are numbered, which is brilliant from a marketing point of view, because once you've got a few, you're no longer content with just seeing the numbers 2, 3, 7, 15 and 20 on your bookshelf, you want to buy the rest so you can have the full numbers 1-20 staring back at you.

The numbered spines which are a book collectors dream come true

In September last year they released volume three, choosing to feature green as the spot colour. David Pearson, the man behind the Great Ideas series, comments on the choice of colour:

"Green’s not a selling colour. It’s much harder than finding the right red or blue. Most reds sit nicely against black or white; green doesn’t have that presence. [...] I was getting more confident as a designer, so the decisions were getting bolder. This series is more image-led – getting rid of some of the white and flooding the cover with information. Predominantly white covers (with the green) would be a bit vague."

(Creative Review, August 2008)

Penguin Great Ideas Vol III

Close up of Orwell's Books vs. Cigarettes cover

Green spines from Vol III

And now of course it's time for volume number four. Having already used red, blue and green, this time they've gone for purple, and what a great shade of purple it is. So far they've only revealed the first ten covers, out of 20 in the set, but I think they're possibly the best yet.

Penguin Great Ideas Vol IV

Talking about the latest set of books, Pearson says:

"The formula is now so familiar to us that the main struggle is really an internal one and that’s for us to move the series somewhere new each time. Across this many titles each cover has to be distinct enough to maintain interest and – I hope – the boundaries we originally set ourselves have allowed enough flexibility to do this. There will always be a part of me that feels slightly sheepish at having produced so many of these things (80 so far) but much more so, I feel incredibly lucky to be working on a project that taps into the very specific skills I do have (and not the myriad that I do not)."

(Book Cover Archive, August 13th 2009)


Personally, I believe this cover would have to be my favourite out of the whole lot:


David Pearson has also announced that there will indeed be a fifth, and final, set, scheduled for release in 2010 to coincide with Penguin's 75th birthday. I cannot wait to see what colour they choose next.

For more information, and to view the full set, check out the ever wonderful Book Cover Archive.