| April 21, 2008
Well, after finishing "The Road" I'd be remorse if I didn't post a cover for Cormac McCarthy.
When talking about these designs Chip Kidd states that he knew the books would eventually be in a series and he really wanted to move from a minimal color pallet and build to a visual climax. He moved from a grayscale (this took a lot of convincing) to a duotone to a full color. The "divided-through-the-horizon-line" design approach is Chip's way to state his "great belief in separation of type and image...". Not only does this approach promote Chip's belief in design, but it also complements the theme throughout the series, "In each [book], the characters cross the border from Texas into Mexico... And so, the eye starts at the top and reads the type and then crosses the border south to find the image."
I have found that I tend to agree with Chip that type is type and it is meant to not only visually complement the design, but (more importantly) to take on a more pragmatic role, in which it conveys the book's information to it's reader. However, I see Chip working against his own "great belief" there are several times such as on "dry" and "ice" where the image and type are inseparable.
Tags: book cover, chip kidd, cormac mccarthy, series
Topic: Book Cover Design
Creative Dialogue
2 Comments |[ Add Comment ]
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Kellner Design
on April 21, 2008 “"Great belief in separation of type and image"?! Maybe he was thinking of "separation of church and State," because otherwise, not only on many of his own covers, but on nearly every book cover ever designed, type and image are, successfully or not, present... and integrated in one way or another, separate or not.
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Jason Gabbert
on April 21, 2008 “My interpretation of his phrase "Great belief in separation of type and image" was meant to convey that he believed type is type and image is image, he does not want to make the type look as if it were a part of the image (ie. a book about tats where a man on the front cover has "book about tattoos" actually inked into his back). i could be wrong, that is simply my assumption and generally it seems that he sticks to this conviction of his.” |
