Dust Jacket : Schild's Ladder

Schild's Ladder
Designed by: Emma Wallace

A star field. Motes of dust in a shaft of sunlight. Sugar on a table top. Aside from the pitch-perfection of a book about an accidental scientific catastrophe involving molecular replication, this cover by Emma Wallace serves as a void to pour your imagination into. That container for imagination is what a great cover should be. It should inform but not allow you to pre-judge what is going to happen inside.

This looks like a strange close-up and crop of the cover for Frank Bidart's Star Dust.

Which actually makes the cover even more interesting. It creates a strange connection in my brain that works for me.

I wish more cover designs were brave enough to go the no text route. The only real place the title needs to be is the spine. And even there it's only so it can sit on a shelf at a book store. A similar effect can occur with creative use of text.

This is the cover for the hard back edition of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth by Chris Ware. It is disconcerting and confusing to the eye but it sets you up for the flow of the art to come inside, where the reader is asked to follow pages of art and story that look like this:

The paper back edition is similar:

It references the original cover but also manages to clarify the elements.

The art inside Ware's book also reminds me of the Wallace cover. The small dots of ink used to print comics, the multitude of panels on one page that make up the whole. They are like those little spots of white in the field of black.

It's a bit of a reach, but feels right.


Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

Guest Post : Uncovering Lolita

- By Hayley Heaton

Lolita, since I read it in my very early twenties, has been one of my absolute favorite books. The language is so masterfully and exquisitely manipulative! I read it at least once a year, sometimes more than once. I've found that the more I experience this story, my courtship with it changes. I don't think that this is an uncommon phenomenon. It's one of those books that makes you heartbroken no matter which character you're siding with--Lo, Charlotte, or Humself.

The first copy I purchased, now incredibly worn and wrinkled, features an ankle in a folded sock slid inside a saddle shoe. It’s an evocative image to be sure, but certainly not the most successful cover. In my opinion, the ankle-sock-shoe-skirt image is a little too easy and it simplifies the book’s contents. This book broods and swings moods. It breaks hearts and commits murder. It’s not just a story about a little girl and a pedophile; it’s a tragic and broken love story and the image of an ankle sock somehow just doesn’t do it justice. This is something I find common when it comes to covering it. As readers we should remember that Lolita is a dangerous book and the cover should reflect love, danger, heartbreak, sex and innocence. It’s a tall order.

Perhaps it’s easy to talk about my first cover selection, because I believe it’s the most iconic. But icons are icons for a reason. This image of Lolita with her heart-shaped sunglasses first appeared as a movie poster for the Stanley Kubrick version of the film that was made in 1962. It has since been the cover of the book for multiple editions in several languages.

Here we see Lo peering over a pair of red, heart-shaped sunglasses. The look in her eyes suggests that she is just about to cross the cusp of innocence into something entirely more dangerous. She is definitely giving off a curious vibe. And let us not forget that lovely lollipop. Lo’s lips are absorbing both its color and flavor. She’s not chewing on it like a greedy child; she’s tasting and teasing. Collectively, this image works because it is showing rather than telling readers what to think. And what does it show us? Lolita, suspended in her world, yet peering curiously into Hum’s.

If there were ever two things that should be united it’s the work of Balthus and the text of Lolita; they’re a perfect match. Nabokov was a genius and Balthus was some painter!

The image that chosen for the 1995, Penguin edition of the book was a work by Balthus titled Girl and Cat. It was painted in 1937 before the book existed, but seems to fit the text perfectly. It’s as if the two were just waiting to hold hands with each other. Although, many of his paintings show young girls in erotic contexts (please see The Guitar Lesson…whoa), Balthus often claimed that his paintings were not erotic, but rather exhibited the uncomfortable fact of children’s sexuality.

Exhibit A!

Here we see a girl who, in the context of the book cover, we can safely assume is Lolita. This is a different Lolita than the one with candy and glasses, though (remember the mood swings I mentioned earlier?). This Lolita looks disheveled; one of her sleeves is pushed up, as well as her skirt. Her body language does not match the look on her face. Her legs are splayed open and inviting, but her face is not. She looks sad, a little weary, and if she’s preparing herself for what’s to come; enter Humbert. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, look at this tangle…indeed.

Last, but not least…In 2009, John Bertram's Venus Febriculosa held a contest to redesign the cover of Lolita. The idea behind the contest was to see what artists and designers would come up with when they were free of editors’ and publishers’ constraints. Many of the newly designed covers use text as image and many of them play with some of the iconic images we’ve seen previously, like the heart-shaped glasses and the lollipops. A lot of them feature butterflies—Nabokov was a devoted lepidopterist. Some of the covers hit the mark precisely and others, well, they look all curlicued and sappy.

In my opinion, the most successful of these redesigned covers is that of Egor Krasnoperov. It really is quite marvelous. It combines simple lines and curves to create several different images. Dead center we see the shape of a lollipop, which also resembles a target. Veering out from this red, circular image are three strategic lines. The top two form a “V” shape, the last stems down right in the center making this image resemble a young girl’s genitalia placed between thighs. This image is simple, beautiful, and completely dangerous. It makes us look longer. It makes us uncomfortable. It makes us ask questions. All of these things make Kroasnoperov’s cover wildly successful, and dare I say it, my most favorite to date.

- Hayley Heaton is an avid flaneur, as well as a poet and playwright. She lives in the middle of nowhere and loves to eat grilled cheese sandwiches.

Dust Jacket : Women With Men

Women With Men (1997)
Designed by: Carol Devine
Photo by: Ernst Haas

The cliche of photos telling a thousand words is easy to roll your eyes at. A moment frozen in time is ripe for the projection of the viewer.

This photo by Ernst Haas is no different. And also is an example of the cliche being proven true.

Look at the face of the woman. Really look at her expression. The man is kissing her cheek? Whispering in her ear? She grasps his jacket tightly. Behind them is a train. Which explains everything and nothing. Is she leaving him? Him leaving her?

The simple title and author treatments put center focus on the image. This is a book about relationships. Complicated relationships. Ones that may need more than a thousand words to explain.

Haas' photos are strange. There is always a mystery. His most well-known works are purposefully left out of focus and blurry. He used dye-transfer to create saturated colors and enhance the moods. He was all about the question behind the image. About that story that isn't being told. If a picture says a thousand words, his speak only riddles. Beautiful riddles.

On the set of The Misfits 1960.

Within 12 years of becoming a photographer, Haas had a solo show at MoMA. In 1964 he created the opening sequence for John Huston's epic film The Bible. He also worked on the sets of The Misfits, Hello Dolly!, Little Big Man, and Heaven's Gate.

I love photography on book jackets. There is something visceral about a photo. Great paintings or text or illustrations are fine, beautiful even, but a photo gives you real people to deal with. Emotionally. Those people exist. You must deal with them in relation to the book in your hands. That woman and man in a train station felt things. And now I am looking at them.

Photography implicates us in our viewership. It points a finger back at us and says, You are witness to this. The Haas photo on Ford's book reminds me of the cover of Antony and the Johnsons' album The Crying Light:

The photo is of Kazuo Ohno in mid-dance. Ohno was a seminal modern dance artist in post-WWII Japan. He is most well-known for his butoh choreography. Butoh is a dance form that rose in the 50s to  deal with taboo or grotesque subject matter. You can see it as a reaction to the devastation of war, to cultural upheaval, to life itself.

They are actions that say a thousand words. Actions that the viewer must fill in. With emotion, with themselves.

Dust Jacket is a sometime article about the design and art of book covers. The idea is to shine a spotlight on the work of the designer separate from the author. Literally judging a book by its cover.

Dust Jacket : The Thirty Years War, Pt. 2

The Thirty Years War(2009)

Designed by: Jill Breitbarth
Painting by: Feodor Dietz

Read part one HERE.

I went over the history of the war and the players in part one. There I touched on the image. How it plays with the central figure in black. Now I want to focus on the image and how it draws me in.

In Breitbarth's crop of the Dietz painting, the man in black takes center sage. The sky is shortened and what we see is a man about to hit a horse. Behind him are faces, watching intently. Are they an audience? Is the man in black the good guy or are they? The ambiguity alludes to the strange politics of the war itself, but the image is one that fascinates.

A lone warrior against unbeatable odds. No matter who is the 'good' and 'bad' one man against what appears to be an army are not favorable odds.

And this scenario crops up in dozens of films. Each time in almost identical ways:

The idea of the lone avenger. The ultimate underdog situation is hard to resist. Oldboy and Kill Bill are examples that are numerous. Look at most action films and this situation will come up at least once. Of course war would look more like this:

Without Orcs.

The David versus Goliath ideal is a natural draw. We want a savior, a sentry, someone who against all odds will come through. It doesn't matter who is good or bad really, we want the thrill of what will happen. The suspense. The idea that someday that lone warrior may be us.

That man in black will attack the man on the horse. The crowd of faces will stand for a moment in disbelief. Depending on the outcome of that initial face-off, that man in black may face that crowd. And it will be epic.

Dust Jacket : The Tin Drum

The Tin Drum (1959)
Designer: Günter Grass


The dust jacket is an ephemeral thing. It is really only there as a means of keeping the hard cover of a book from wear. The dust jacket design is mostly a marketing ploy to get our eyes to stop on a particular book and open our wallets in response.

This is the first of what I hope to be regular posts on dust jackets that I find beautiful, or interesting, or important. I will probably veer off into general book design when it applies, so don't quibble. This is meant to be about beauty.

The iconic image on the cover of Günter Grass' The Tin Drum appeared on the first edition in 1959. It has since been on most editions of the book. The young drummer was drawn by Grass himself. He has drawn the covers for all of his books, including Cat and Mouse (1963) and Dog Years (1965).

He has a distinct artistic style that compliments his magical-realist writing style. There is a whimsy that also contains something ominous.

Grass's illustration style calls to mind wood block prints, finger painting, tribal art. There is a connection to medieval art as well. Look at the eyes and nose on this Coptic icon from the 6th or 7th century. Simple lines that are decidedly not to scale or reality. Shortened forms that are more about impressions then anything else.

The scale-like features across the figures resemble armor. They recall Egyptian and Medieval illuminated texts. Grass manages to call to mind a lot of history with a simple drawing of a boy and drum.

There are also recalls to primitive arts. The notches on the boy's body are like the nails on this Congolese power figure.


The notches also resemble Coptic writing and other early scripts such as Cuneiform, tying the artwork to the foundations of language itself.

While I am certain that Grass probably just liked this style, there is a chain that leads from him back to these images. I also understand the dangers of reading into something. Know that I say all of this with heavy grains of salt.

Many artists enact their aesthetic without an eye to all that fed into it initially. Take a little Coptic here, a tad Byzantium there, and you get a Nobel winner who managed to design and execute his own covers for most of his career. A rarity in any art-form. Especially in today's market-minded publishing world. Today Grass would not get to put his drummer boy on his book without a fight and a strong agent.

If you have a favorite cover, or story about a dust jacket, share in the comments.

I would love some feedback on this post. Let me know if this was awesome or not. I'm thinking of expanding the blog to include more pots like this and the Reading List 2011.