Dust Jackets : Snowball's Chance

Snowball's Chance (2012 edition)

Designed By: ???

Let's get the weird thing out of the way first. I don't know who designed this cover. Melville House has an in-house design team. As far as I know that team is Kelly Blair and Carol Hayes, but I can't find trace of this cover on either of their personal sites.

Based on the look of this cover I would guess it has more in common with Hayes' other work. But both have a minimalism aesthetic going so...

If anyone has thoughts on this, let me know.

The Neversink Library is Melville House's attempt to "champion books from around the world that have been overlooked, under appreciated, looked askance at, or foolishly ignored" and they all have this silhouette design as the starting point.

I picked this book up because it is a sequel/satire of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Here, John Reed imagines Snowball, the ousted pig from Orwell's book, returning to the farm and introducing US-style capitalism/democracy to the animals. It is really worth a read, if for no other reason than the incredible way Reed has both captured and made light of Orwell's vision. That and the take this book has on post-9/11 America.

But the cover, right?

So I bought the book because of what is inside the cover, but I was immediately taken with the cover. It captures the absurdity of the pigs in both Orwell and Reed's books. The nobility in the stance. The "visionary" quality. This is a pig as Lincoln. As Shepard Fairey's Obama poster. It's PR. And it makes so much sense.

Now, Reed wrote his book in 2002 as a response to the September 11 2001 World Trade Center attacks. So the aping of modern propaganda techniques is interesting. The lead-up to the decade+ response to the attack has been a massive lesson in PR. One that culminated in the Brexit vote and 2016 US election. It is nihilism and cynicism dressed up in logos and advertising dollars.

Fairey's Obama poster is an obvious callback to cold war propaganda. But his entire aesthetic is dependant on that referencing. What is interesting is the clear parallels to Soviet-era posters.

Lenin Lived, Lenin Is Alive, Lenin Will Live!

The 'visionary' stance is an obvious trope of political discourse. It goes back centuries. Think of any statue of someone on a horse. Think Napoleon. That many of the examples that are buried in our cultural memory are also tied to oligarchs and emperors is perhaps something to mull over.

That desire to influence memory is hugely tied to both the plot of Animal Farm and to that of regimes that use propaganda.

And we do it in small ways too.

What else does that cover remind us of?

It immediately recalls the decorative form of cameo carvings. That form, where successive layers of alternating colored stone or glass are carefully carved away to created an effect that recalls block printing or murals, is most famous for the silhouetted faces on Victorian brooches that show up in every period film ever made.

Portland Vase (c.1-25 AD)

That a cameo comes to mind isn't really that strange. The Romans heavily used the form in jewelry and containers. The famous Portland Vase is a beautifully preserved example of a glass cameo.

The form also resonates to any kid who went to a fair and had one of those black paper cutouts made of themselves. An entirely different form of PR. That of idealized childhoods.

It also echos ancient forms of shadow puppetry and the links to allegory and fable-telling that come with that. A form of cultural smoothing to spread information with ease.

And through that we come to the work of Kara Walker, which addresses historic and modern evils through the simplicity of paper cutouts. A form of reverse PR where the work emphasizes the darker things left out of these sorts of images normally.

What I'm saying is that is that this cover evokes a history of public relations. From antiquity to this very moment. And it drags a lot of baggage in its little pig head.




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 : A Little Life

A Little Life (2015)
Designed By : Cardon Webb
Photo By : Peter Hujar

Imagine pain.

What does it look like?

What do you look like in pain?

Not just physical, but psychic. We are conditioned to hide ourselves when we are feeling things greatly at either end of the spectrum.

When we are grieving, for instance, we are told that to somehow find the 'strength' to get through it is better than losing control of ourselves.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has been lauded for her ability to show up to the Emmy's this week and accept her 5th consecutive award while int he midst of grieving for her father. He died two days ago. This is not courage, it is holding it together at its most visible. And while I applaud her and her accomplishments, I don't know that I applaud her ability to 'hold it together' for a few seconds on a national stage.

In great happiness we can also be viewed as crazy. Remember Howard Dean?

This is a ridiculous duality. And while this one incident is not what ended his Presidential run, it certainly painted him in a way that, over a decade later, is still hard to erase.

So. Let's talk about the cover to this book.

Renee Falconetti in Carl Theodor Dreyer's
The Passion of Joan of Arc (1929)

Cardon Webb is playing a game with us that I will get to in a second, but first I want to ask how we react to this image.

My first thoughts are of St. Teresa, Joan of Arc, the Pieta. They are images of women in religious distress, but also in the midst of religious ecstasy.

Webb picked a photo by Peter Hujar called Orgasmic Man. It was taken in 1969. Based on the title alone I think you can tell where this is going.

Religious ecstasy is sexual ecstasy. One only need to spend a little time looking at paintings and sculpture depicting people in the midst of such a state to see this.

The Ecstasy of St. Teresa (1647-1652Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Take a moment to think of these kinds of images.

Who is filled with the power in these religious ways?

I'm guessing that you thought of an image like the one of Joan of Arc from the Dreyer movie. Culturally, we are conditioned to think of women in the throes of passion. They are to be 'taken'.

St Teresa is shot through with the power of god's 'arrow' of love and as a result she collapses into a state of grace that few could know.

Orgasm.

The genius of the Hujar photo is that it twists the concept. We see pain because we don't think that an image of a male could possibly be of the weird between pain/ecstasy that is at times seen as religious. Hujar refuses to show the moment after this, the one where the subject relaxes.

The only male figures who are popularly known for their moments of religious ecstasy are St Francis and St Sebastian. These images are less sexual in their depictions. They are quieter. St Francis usually looks asleep.

St Sebastian (1651)Jusepe de Ribera

St Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (1627-1632)Anton van Dyck

St Sebastian also manages to look very languid despite being shot through with arrows.

Amazingly the two saints look more like the moment Hujar doesn't show. The moment after. The one of release. Women are shown being taken. Men are shown after the taking. After they have probably taken.

You could argue that these are just as sexual. And I agree. St Sebastian is overtly erotic in presentation. But his eroticism is one of nudity. It is one of gaze. St Francis is perhaps erotic as well, though his robes are not twisting in desire and his face is not out of control. He is sighing. He is taken, but not out of control.

At the top I asked you to imagine what pain looked like. In reality I'm more interested in the next moment. After the initial pain/pleasure sensing. What does that look like? I would argue that the visions of men in ecstasy tend to show that moment. That we are culturally not going to show male figures in the throes.

A little life indeed.



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 : When Women Were Birds

When Women Were Birds
Designed by: Abby Kagan
Art by: Adly Elewa

Empty journals are frightening.

All those blank pages.

That silence.

From Terry Tempest Williams book:

"They were exactly where she said they would be: three shelves of beautiful cloth-bound books . . . I opened the first journal. It was empty. I opened the second journal. It was empty. I opened the third. It too was empty . . . Shelf after shelf after shelf, all of my mother’s journals were blank.”

A blank journal becomes a sigil of unshared personal histories. And that is where the fear comes in.

What are we if we leave only blankness behind?

You could look at a blank journal another way. As hope. A future untold. And a new journal is that. A soft bed for thoughts, hopes, life.

This cover is both comforting and menacing.

A bed of feathers. A pillow. Nature. Birds in flight.

But these are the feathers of a bird of prey.

A peregrine falcon.

The most widely spread of the raptors. It has been clocked flying up to 200+ mph. It is the fastest animal.

How are blank journals like a peregrine falcon?

Peregrine means 'to wander'. As a mind. As the possibility in a blank page.

The artist, Adley Elewa, designs for Penguin Press. The photo also resembles a flock of birds in flight. Again. The mind let loose.

Sky Chase by  Manuel Presti

Again. That silence is both soft and beautiful. And also deeply troubling.

A quiet mind is a home to infinity. And to nothing.

Finding a room full of journals. That were your dead mother's. Then finding them empty.

Nothing left but that blankness. All that blankness.



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 : Every Day

Every Day
Jacket art by: Adam Abernathy

I love me some black and white photography. Even more so if the tone of the print is icy cold.

The cover to this really great young adult novel takes those loves and adds another - off-white paper.

In these covers posts I don't usually read the book I'm talking about. It's meant to be about the design only.

BUT. Read this book.

David Levithan is a great author. Every Day is about a person who wakes up a different teenager each day. Different sex, different race, different everything. The main character falls in love and must overcome the weirdness of the relationship. It manages to be a perfect metaphor for general teen angst, transgender issues, gay issues, etc. So so so so good. Read now.

Now that I got my infomercial out of the way.

This cover immediately reminds me of:

Garnet Lake (2010) - Peter Essick

And:

 Person Floating - Jens Sage

The sense of wonder in it. Of drifting. It is beautiful.

Outside of the photo work, the use of a window motif makes the whole thing feel like we, the reader holding the book, are watching this scene from inside our own home. Do we open the window or not?

It's a nice visual nod to the role of reader and author. That promise that something awesome may lie inside. If you open the cover.


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 Last Policeman

The Last Policeman

Designed by: Doogie Horner

First thing's first. This cover was designed by a stand-up comedian. Who was on America's Got Talent. The same man who designed the cover for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

So that is a thing.

More importantly the cover is a simplistic act of beauty. The sort of newspaper feel of it, the letters being burned away as the comet glides across it. It communicates the story without giving anything away.

This will be an apocalyptic novel. Things will burn.
It will be about that.

There is an almost comic book feeling to the work. The drawing of the letters, reminds me of The Human Torch. His fire always represented by a bunch of wavy lines rendered in reds and oranges.


The sheer simplicity of the cover catches the eye. I love a good text-based cover and this one manages to be one of the most simplistic and also most evocative.

Sadly this cover no longer exists. The author, Ben H. Winters and Quirk books recently announced that this was the first book in a trilogy. With the announcement came a new cover.


The new cover was also done by Doogie Horner. I couldn't locate information on who took the photos.

This new cover is also really good. It communicates that the book is about something weird. That there is a comet, that the world will not be the same because of it. And a good photo-based cover is welcome. Too often they are silly or used only for bargain books.

But this cover looses something of the original. It starts to look like an ad for a TV show.

The second book comes out this summer, and the new cover treatment carries through. Which is good.

I feel like there is a missed opportunity to utilize the simplicity of the first book. They could have carried that idea through just as well. A different color scheme or a closer drawing of the comet. Or any other number of ideas.

The photos on the cover evoke the work of Gregory Crewdson, specifically this one. The sort of surreal suburban magic realism of it makes sense. This is not a bad thing, in fact it's the best part of the cover. It also calls to mind the Chris Van Allsburg illustration, "The House on Maple Street".

I assume that Doogie Horner knows his illustration history. The Van Allsburg image appears in a book about a mysterious illustrator who drops off his work then goes missing. The book attempts to piece together the 'mystery'. Stephen King used the same image of Maple Street to write a short story with the same title.

That Horner would pull from these places to create a cover is not surprising. The surprise is that I like the less referential cover more.

EDIT:
On Thursday the New York Times ran a short slide show on the book design process. There is a gallery of rejected vs. final covers. Definitely worth a look.


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 : A Guide To Being Born

A Guide to Being Born
Designed by: Alex Murto
Illustration by: Lou Beach

Alex Murto designed that typeface, called Effing, that was meant to be sexual that floated around the internet a few months ago. His covers tend to be the 'take a nice illustration or typeface and put it together' type.

There is nothing wrong with this. It makes good covers. This is one of them.

But it has zero to do with Murto. As far as I can tell, he added flowers to the original illustration by Lou Beach and softened the colors to make it look more three dimensional.

Which...I guess...

The whole point of Beach's work is that it looks like weird acid-trip versions of Victorian illustration. The flatness is part of the aesthetic. Beach is trying to reference specific things from our past.

Old advertising, medical diagrams, religious icons.

Like this ad for Maidenform from the 1950s. They did a long campaign of 'I dreamed I...' ads. The idea was that you could do ANYTHING in these bras.

Take a look at this ad though. There are women in bras wearing animal heads.

It's hard to compete with that today. If this ad showed up in Vogue next month people would go crazy over it. It is weird. And not average weird, very very very weird.

But also really kinda amazing. Like frame it on the wall amazing.

Which is why Beach does what he do.

His recent book 420 Characters (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2011) was one of my favorite odd finds of last year. It features 160 stories of only 420 characters. At one point Facebook limited the characters in posts to this number. Beach posted these as his status.

The book features his collage illustrations along side the stories:

Many are animal-headed men and women in various Victorian and mid-century costume.

If I hadn't told you the ad above was real, you would be excused for thinking it was his work.

A lot of his work, the cover illustration included, incorporates a sense of the medical drawing. Reminiscent of Gray's Anatomy.

I think of the times I have gone to the acupuncturist and stared at the charts. Thinking that they are beautiful and terrifying. The same experience occurs in doctors offices. The charts and ads on their walls a constant reminder of the ways a body can deteriorate and fall apart.

Victorian illustration of cadavers and medical equipment are striking. For their bluntness. Their shocking realism. The acute awareness that the drawing was made of a dead person, that the organs seen were exposed so the illustrator could draw them.

The viscera of it can be felt.

Which, given the oddness of Victorian society and it's prudishness is interesting. That these people would decide that they would turn their noses up at so many things as being 'crude' while demanding this incredible realism in their medicine.

These are the people that brought us the modern form of the seance after all. Modern mysticism in general really.

That mysticism comes through in Beach's work in subtle ways. The cover reminds me of icons of the Virgin Mary. Of old religious relics in general. Something about the egg with a face on it. The pose. The absolute zeal of it.

An exhibit of Frida Kahlo's clothing recently opened at Museo Frida Kahlo in Mexico City. There are corsets, braces, a prosthetic leg. Her flowing native Mexican inspired gowns bring to mind the Virgin. The country and its history.

Beach's work calls back to Kahlo's and further back to Hieronymus Bosch's nightmare-scapes.

These artists juxtapose the beautiful and terrifying to create worlds we want to look at but never want to encounter. The artistic counterpart to the stranger in the alley, the creepy side show, the dream you cannot wake from.

Frida Kahlo's brace/corset.

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 : Bye-and-Bye

Bye-and-Bye: Selected Late Poems
Designed by: Quemadura
Painting by: Piero della Francesca

Religious iconography is always fascinating. The faces glancing upward in fervor or down in reflection.

I often find myself at museums wandering aimless through the galleries of old relics. The altars that open to reveal triptych of faith, death, heaven or hell itself. All painted in fading colors on thin veneers of wood.

Each layer of paint seemingly easy to peel. The wood separating at the edges. You could imagine taking the tip of a finger and picking at the parts until some came off in your hand. What would that feel like? That ancient wood and pain sitting in your palm.

This is what I think about in these galleries.

That and the strange devotion to something that would lead to the objects being created.

One of my favorite examples is the Chapter House at Westminster Abbey. It is an octagonal room built in the 1250s. The ceiling is vaulted and very high. It looks like a circus tent. The floor is a rare complete 13th century tiled pavement. Covering the walls are murals depicting the Apocalypse. They date from the 14th century.

A lot of the panels are hard to see. There are whole sections that are just faded to white. These sit next to sections that are in beautiful condition.

The effect of standing in the room is to feel like history is arbitrary. That there is no reason for one section to carry over for generations while another fades beyond memory.

This is what I think about as I walk around the objects amassed in museums. The cases of Mary's with child. The gilt halos. I think about what other objects vanished. What remained and why. And I wonder what will remain from today. From me.

There are great examples of religious art. Goya. El Greco. DaVinci. Earlier works like the Chapter House murals. These things are from a time where the Christian god was very very real. Was feared. Was held at bay and worshipped through these works and others like them.

To see them held in cases. Stripped of most of their power. Left with only aesthetic.

The cover is the center panel of an altar. The full panel has a very different feeling than the close-cropped version of the book jacket.

Here what we interpret as a sad woman reflecting on life. On religion. On the poetry within. Here she is a giant, triumphant. Welcoming the masses into her cloak of protection. She is Mary, mother.

What's interesting is that I'm not sure which version I like more.

The washed out one in close from the cover is interesting because of the introspection. The larger, true painting, is interesting for the strength and the message.

This reminds me of when J and I went to see Tatzu Nishi's 'Discovering Columbus'. Nishi built a living room around Gaetano Russo’s 1892 statue of Columbus in Columbus Circle. 70 feet in the air, you came face to face with this:

Suddenly the city around me, the statue, the man from history classes - they contracted. And all I could think about was his jaunty pose. One hand on hip, smirking across space and time. The chopping of the rest of the monument, the cutting off of the noise of the intersection. It changed the work. It made it mean something else.

This is why I walk the rooms full of religious artifacts. Because those cases of things make it all mean so much more.

And so much less.

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 : 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.

Dust Jacket : The Second World War

The Second World War
Jacket Design: Steve Marking

Steve Marking is the current art director at Orion Books. He previously worked for Penguin UK as a senior designer. His credentials are on point.

This cover is pretty spectacular. If you've been reading Dust Jacket for any length of time you know that I clearly love me some text-based design. In fact, this cover is so very similar to the cover of Orphan Master's Son that I almost didn't pick it.


But it gives me the chance to discuss maps, which are a huge love of mine.

So maps.

The earliest map we have is the Babylonian Imago Mundi from 600 BCE. The clay tablet shows Babylon at the heart of a seven-pointed star of islands. The accompanying text describes three of the islands:

1-"place of the rising sun"

2-"the sun is hidden and nothing can be seen"

3-"beyond the flight of birds"

Babylonian Imago Mundi

This map is beautiful for its simplicity. An attempt to place the self in the broader world. To contextualize. This is the first reason I love maps. They take the wilds and make them feel like home. If you can know something you can be master of it.

Maps are colonialism.

This may not be beautiful when you start to project from the statement, it is a beautiful sentiment. That you can know something by laying it down.

At their base level maps are simply lines. The flowing lines of nature and the grid of man. At times they can be completely hypnotic and surreal:

Harold Fisk - Historical trace of the Mississippi  (1944)

I mean. Look at that. You want to drown in it. Cover your walls, become obsessive. I understand people who never leave their apartments and fill notebooks. They are drawing that.

And it is real!

On the other end of the spectrum are the maps where things are just crazy.

To the right is a 15th century engraving of Ptolemy's description of the world. It was printed only a few years before Columbus' first voyage. Nothing is real. It is manic, full of strange locations, and the world is a smooshed mess. But it is magical and it was the standard for 1000 years. Imagine believing that the world looked like that. What it would feel like.

The drawings around them are amazing and fun to look at. Modern maps have given way to too much realism. I want a little of that magic back. Which ties back to our cover. By simply adding the text that map becomes more than a detail of the Atlantic Ocean. Something ominous begins to hover over it. Something dark.

Carta Marina (1539)

Click the caption to see that in full size. It is amazing. You will spend hours with it. Modern satellite imaging has shown that many of the locations of the sea creatures and monsters are actually locations of weather patterns and known storm areas. So the threat was real. Imagine weather patterns represented by monsters.

Today's forecast is for dragons over the plains and serpents along the eastern seaboard.

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 : 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.