Dust Jacket : In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood (Vintage)
Designed by: Megan Wilson
Photo: William Eggleston

Megan Wilson is an associate art director at Vintage/Random House. She's been there for 20 years. She runs a blog and store called Ancient Industries that aesthetically connects to her beautiful covers.

There is a sense of the 1950s. Enameled pots and crisp aprons. Small flowers in vases. White gloves.

It is a beautified vision. A Mad Men Audrey Hepburn universe. A place that was somehow more. Before the Vietnam War, the peace/love movement. Before things went 'bad'.

It never existed, but it is nice to think it did.

In Cold Blood is about the brutal 1959 murders of the Clutter family. It is, more than anything, about the loss of the ideal of family. The end to that make-believe world of the 1950s.

The cover presents an American pastoral. The photo is by William Eggleston. Eudora Welty said of his work:

"The extraordinary, compelling, honest, beautiful and unsparing photographs all have to do with the quality of our lives in the ongoing world: they succeed in showing us the grain of the present, like the cross-section of a tree.... They focus on the mundane world. But no subject is fuller of implications than the mundane world!"

The photo, and the book, live in a strange haze. As if time is still. The world frozen in a moment. Capote's book is languid though detailed. There is a sense of drift that that gigantic cloud captures.

The cloud over the landscape. The storm on the horizon. Though not a storm. Something else. The photo, and Capote's book seem to say that this is a new normal. A fact we must face.

And what of that? Is it true?

On December 14th America was shocked by the senseless murder of 20 children and 6 adults in Newtown, Connecticut. It is the latest in a long history of senseless killings.

From the Brady Campaign: In one year, guns murdered 17 people in Finland, 35 in Australia, 39 in England and Wales, 60 in Spain, 194 in Germany, 200 in Canada, and 9,484 in the United States.

I don't have an 'answer' or a 'suggestion' on this. I don't know that Capote saw or had thoughts on the state of American crime. I don't believe Eggleston knew he was capturing a vanishing world. The world he captured was imagined in his lens. Capote's on the page.

We are left with enameled pots and pans. A hand on a stir stick. A cloud on the horizon. Ephemeral and beautiful and terrible.

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 : Louise Glück Poems 1962-2012

Louise Glück Poems 1962-2012
Designed by: Gretchen Achilles
Mezzotint by: Vija Celmins

When I first saw Gretchen Achilles' cover for Louise Glück's new collection I thought to myself how perfect the cover was. How it was mysterious. We are coming into orbit of a strange new world. With all the possibilities that that entails.

Simplicity hinting at the complex just out of our reach. This is like Glück's work. Layers are peeled away and things come into focus. Things we thought we knew. That we never could.

Achilles is the owner of Wavetrap Design. She is a freelance designer and has worked for all the major publishers.

Her choice for cover image shows her talent. This is a 1985 mezzotint by Vija Celmins. Celmins was born in Latvia but has lived in the US since she was 10. She works primarily in graphite and is known for her hyper-realistic work.

Darwin 2008-10, oil on canvas

Her space drawings are particularly interesting to me:

Star Field III 1982-83, graphite on acrylic ground on paper

They remind me of work from other artists. Chuck Close comes to mind with his highly detailed paintings and drawings. And Lory Pollina's graphite work:

Noosphere No. 3 2010, graphite on paper

In all these works it feels like something is being revealed while also being kept hidden. It feels like something we have seen before, but is totally alien. Again, this is like Glück's work.

The book covers 50 years of work. It resembles old sci-fi films of the 50s and 60s. It calls to mind great half-true representations of space.

Those half true representations are large in my mind. In the larger culture's mind as well. Below is a photo Cassini took of Saturn in 2006.

It is hard not to picture a space ship moving towards that. Sending a probe out to investigate. Finding an evil creature bent on our destruction.

It's very hard to see in the picture. On the upper left edge of the inner rings is a small blue dot...

Earth.



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 : Search Sweet Country

Search Sweet Country (1986)
Designed by: Brian McMullen

This is a 25th Anniversary edition from McSweeney's. Brian McMullen is their head artistic director. He also oversees their new children's book division.

The book is set in Ghana. This is important as a starting point for the image on the cover. It is clearly an African textile print. Almost to a generic point.

These printed fabrics are beautiful. It is an obvious reference point when dealing with a book that has been called "one of the greatest novels ever to come out of the African continent". The cover is even more important when you consider that the book follows a large cast of characters.

From McSweeney's book flap:

Bringing to life the bustling markets and bars in dizzying, lyrical prose, Laing weaves a story filled with bizarre and often melancholy characters...Their collective narratives create a portrait of a country where colonialism is dying, but democracy remains elusive.

A patchwork.

Of course McMullen chose to render the fabric in soft greens and browns. Tilted away from the viewer. Softly fading into the horizon.

Northwest Minn 9/09 - NASA Earth Observatory

It's a visual trick that makes it both cloth and farm land. A simple trick, but genius on McMullen's part.

Photos like the one above have always been mesmerizing for me. The weird perfection of our division of space. The OCDness of it. African cloth is just as oddly perfect. The little squares with their conflicting yet harmonious content.

This is the best visual metaphor for writing I have ever seen. Not just for this story, but all stories.


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.

THIS! 9/21/12

THIS! on September 21st, 2012

1) Hook & Irons

First off, it's a great logo.

Second: This new company is about fire fighters. It's about the legacy of fire fighting in America and about creating a brand that recognizes it. Think Nike swooshes for the putting out burning buildings crowd.

The store is great.


2) Sanborn

This 144 year-old map company has a terrible current logo, but once upon a time they would redesign it for every map they made. They started out making maps for fire insurance and moved into historic map making and modern cartography.

Here is a run down of 30 of those very awesome, really great, old logos.