In the first of a new design series, Jessica Au from Readings St Kilda previews the best new covers to keep an eye out for.
In a world where authors are the superstars, the work of book designers (like editors) can sometimes take a backseat. You could easily argue that this is rightly so but, regardless, it's undeniable that there are some truly awesome book covers out there that deserve a bit of highlighting too, along with the brilliant minds that engineered them. To that end, we're introducing the Covers Spotlight, an irregular post of design appreciation.
Hope: A Tragedy by Shalom Auslander / Designed by John
Gall
Top of the list this month is John Gall's design for Shalom Auslander's Hope: A Tragedy - the perfect combination of sweetness and optimism (the image of a deer in almost electrically-green grass) and crushed expectations (typographical strike-throughs).
Pulphead: Essays by John Jeremiah Sullivan / Designed by
Rodrigo Corral,
photography by Samantha
Casolari
The Third Reich by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the
Spanish by Natasha Wimmer / Designed by Rodrigo Corral and Charlotte
Strick, photography by Fred
Schmitt
Am also a fan of the wonderful cover for Roberto Bolaño's The Third Reich, with its light colour tones and the minuscule details on the light switch (the words 'A Novel', the image of seaside and the couple in the corner). I love that it makes you look closer, and then closer again.
The New Granta Book of Travel / Designed by Jenny Grigg
A Tiger in Eden by Chris Flynn (forthcoming) / Designed by
W.H. Chong
A riot of colour, culture and symbolism from the wonderful W.H. Chong. Read the book and you'll understand why this cover can be read on so many levels.
Lightning Rods by Helen DeWitt / Designed by Steve Attardo for Rodrigo Corral
Design
Finally, there's Helen DeWitt's Lightning Rods, which also sits in nicely with Peter Mendelsund's excellent Schocken Books Kafka backlist.
