You’ve most likely seen Coralie Bickford-Smith’s lovely Penguin clothbound classics. And while they are beautiful, I think Ms. Bickford-Smith has outdone herself with the new covers for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books. Spend some time at her site looking around at some more of her work; she has a real knack for creating covers that [...]]]>

You’ve most likely seen Coralie Bickford-Smith’s lovely Penguin clothbound classics. And while they are beautiful, I think Ms. Bickford-Smith has outdone herself with the new covers for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books. Spend some time at her site looking around at some more of her work; she has a real knack for creating covers that work really well in a series and are desirable art objects individually. Hers are the sort of book covers that make you want to own the book regardless of the content.

via Ace Jet 170

I always love seeing how designers interpret a simple set of design restrictions. For this redesign of eight classics from Penguin Classics in collaboration with (Red), a group of designers was asked to create covers using a quote from the text and a red band at the bottom. For the most part, I think the [...]]]>

I always love seeing how designers interpret a simple set of design restrictions. For this redesign of eight classics from Penguin Classics in collaboration with (Red), a group of designers was asked to create covers using a quote from the text and a red band at the bottom. For the most part, I think the results are fantastic. I particularly like the ones where the design breaks out of the top of the cover and crosses into the red band. The books will be published in early May.

Designers shown:
Therese Raquin — Jim Stoddart (Penguin Press art director)
The Secret Agent — Coralie Bickford-Smith (Penguin Press art department)
Dracula — Non-Format

via Creative Review

I meant to post about these new Nabokov covers from Vintage Books a while ago, but the post somehow got lost in the shuffle. Over the holidays, I went into City Lights and saw the covers in person — they are even more lovely than these images let on.

John Gall, the art director [...]]]>

I meant to post about these new Nabokov covers from Vintage Books a while ago, but the post somehow got lost in the shuffle. Over the holidays, I went into City Lights and saw the covers in person — they are even more lovely than these images let on.

John Gall, the art director at Vintage Books, was asked to redesign all of Nabokov’s covers. Here is what he had to say about the project in his post on Design Observer:

Nabokov was a passionate butterfly collector, a theme that has cropped up on some of his past covers. My idea was also a play on this concept. Each cover consists of a photograph of a specimen box, the kind used by collectors like Nabokov to display insects. Each box would be filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins, selected to somehow evoke the book’s content. And to make it more interesting for readers — and less daunting for me — I thought it would be fun to ask a group of talented designers to help create the boxes.

Here’s who I asked: Chip Kidd, Carol Carson, Jason Fulford and Tamara Shopsin, Megan Wilson and Duncan Hannah, Rodrigo Corral, Martin Venezky, Charles Wilkin, Helen Yentus and Jason Booher, Peter Mendelsund, Sam Potts, Dave Eggers, Paul Sahre, Stephen Doyle, Carin Goldberg, Michael Bierut, Barbara de Wilde, and Marian Bantjes. They were then photographed by Alison Gootee. The results are shown here. I hope you enjoy them.

You can view all the covers, vote for your favorite and possibly win a copy on Vintage Books’ blog.

A number of people in the Design Observer comments mentioned the omission of Lolita from the set. In case you too are missing Lolita, here is a collection of the many iterations of that cover as well as a contest to redesign Lolita’s cover from Venus febriculosa.

The new covers for Penguin’s reprints of the James Bond book—designed by Michael Gillette—are really pretty fantastic. I think he did a great job capturing the 60s Bond look. Read more about Gillette’s experience with the redesign here, and buy the books here.

See a few more of the covers after the jump.

via [...]]]>

The new covers for Penguin’s reprints of the James Bond book—designed by Michael Gillette—are really pretty fantastic. I think he did a great job capturing the 60s Bond look. Read more about Gillette’s experience with the redesign here, and buy the books here.

See a few more of the covers after the jump.

via Blanket Magazine