It's often said that if you can design a poster, you can also design a book cover. Jim Tierney's cover for the new paperback edition of Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World, invokes the look and feel of old-time country music posters (perhaps as a way of acknowledging Alan Lomax's contributions to folk music), and could easily be a poster itself -- one that I would gladly hang on my wall!

Logo Design Love has gathered images of the Penguin logo's evolution, from the first version (Edward Young, 1935) to the latest (Angus Hyland, Pentagram, 2003).

Shown above: an investigation by Hans Schmoller into the origins and usage of Penguin devices.

 

[via feedgrids]

A well-written, knowledgeable review of an exhibition at the Grolier Club in New York City (on view until February 4, 2012). All of the above photos are by David W. Dunlap/The New York Times (there are more photos in the slideshow that accompanies the article). Thanks to Teresa Lee for the link!

Hundreds of historical punches and matrices of various typefaces and dozens of books are on view at the Grolier Club in “Printing for Kingdom, Empire & Republic: Treasures From the Archives of the Imprimerie Nationale.” (It ceased being Royale in 1789, as did everything else in France.)

This is the first time these exquisite artifacts have been shown outside France, said H. George Fletcher, a club member who is the curator of the show. Their arrival could not be more timely.

They offer a reminder, in the ethereal era of bitmapping, that type was once the tangible province of engravers and metal casters who labored in unforgiving but enduring media. To make a C with a cedilla, for example, involved a lot more effort and thought than holding down the Option key on your Mac. A comma-shaped steel appendage had to be lashed with string to the bottom of the C punch to produce a new matrix.

 

The Casual Optimist picks his favorite book covers of 2011.

See also: his favorite covers of 2010.

[via: Quipsologies]

The Huffington Post is running an original article on book cover design, written by Madeleine Crum and posted last Friday (December 9, 2011). The headline is a bit hyperbolic ("How Great Design Is Turning Books Into Accessories"), but Crum speaks with Jillian Tamaki, Paul Buckley (Penguin Books USA), Dennis Johnson (Melville House), Anna Gerber (Visual Editions, UK), and Megan Wilson.

There's also a slide show featuring some of the work discussed in the article, but be warned: some of the images are low resolution, and don't look good in Huffington Post's default fullscreen view.

I saw this on a copywriter's desk a couple of years ago and had to look it up on Google. It's by Monsieur Cabinet, a UK illustrator, copywriter, and designer. It's part of his Word Play series, and he also has an A2-size screen print of it for sale.

(Top row, left to right: Viktor Koen, cover design for Penguin's U.S. edition of the book, 2003; Peter Chmela, Slovakia, competition entry; Karoly Kele, Hungary, competition entry. Bottom row, left to right: Dean Owen, U.K., competition entry; Jamie Keenan, U.K., commissioned by John Bertram; David Gee, Canada, commissioned by John Bertram.)

Rick Poynor's latest post on Design Observer is about one of the cover design competitions organized by John Bertram, of Venus febriculosa. Poynor writes:

There is no right or final answer with a book cover. (...) Over time a much-reprinted novel or short story collection will generate scores of different cover designs around the world. While the visual interpretation of any book's contents can be taxing, with some books the stakes are especially high."

He then mentions Tadeusz Borowski's This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen as being that kind of publication. This was the book Bertram chose for his competition in May 2010. Poynor analyzes a few of the entries, plus other covers that Bertram commissioned afterwards.