— Mina Bach

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Book Covers

Another month, another book for The Book Cover Club.

We chose The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald and I will admit it’s been quite the challenge.

The story is so rich with symbols and double entendres that I felt I had to incorporate them in the design. I looked at Man Ray’s many surrealist experiments with photography from around the same time Fitzgerald was writing the novel and played around with my design for a couple of weeks, adding layers as I went along.

This is my first effort:

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I was happy with it but at that point I was too obsessed with the book to let go. I wanted to try another approach with the all-seeing eye using Fitzgerald’s style and the over use of subordinating and complex sentences in his writing applied to the visuals. Not sure I’m making much sense here but I wanted all the elements to relate to each other combining and elongating the composition in the way words would in a long sentence.

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Way out of my comfort zone but I really enjoyed working on this!

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Talking about books one day (this is something we do a lot of ha) we were saying how interesting and exciting Book Clubs are so we decided to start our own. With a twist. Being book designers, each month we would pick up a book to read, discuss and design the cover of!.

And so the Book Cover Club was born. The first book we picked is Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and the challenge was to avoid featuring the cockroach in any way, shape or form.

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Every book cover is a visual analysis of the narrative, an invitation to read but should never reveal too much. I read The Metamorphosis as a metaphor and for me the room and the door were only a prison in his mind. I tried to recreate this idea in my design and used bold type and a shade of red (carmine) that is extracted from a type of cockroach and widely used as a dye for fabrics, cosmetics and as a natural food colouring. Ideally ‘The Metamorphosis’ would be red metallic foil.

Have you read the book? Do you like my cover?

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This is my entry for the Penguin Design Awards 2011. The brief was to design the book cover for One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It follows the rise and fall of a Latin American family that parallels the continent’s recent history. I don’t want to reveal too much but beyond the suffocating heat and the banana plantation the story is frozen cold, from the ice (almost a character in its own right) to Garcia Marquez’ writing style that alienates as much as it drags you in. I struggled with the book, hating and loving it at the same time but incapable of letting go.

I wanted to reflect that in the design. Icy colours and clinical type at first sight with mirror and circular elements (key to the story) eventually revealing a play with the main narrative: codes. People speaking in codes, codes that reveal themselves, premonitions and manuscripts that seem impossible to decipher. The front cover gives (hopefully obvious) hints to decipher the message at the back that encapsulates the whole 580 pages without giving anything away as you only fully understand what it means on the very last page. Can you crack the code?

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The shortlist will be announced on 18 May 2011, wish me luck!

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One of my favourite things to do is Book Spotting, I love going into book shops to make mental wish lists, take note of book cover designers to look up (you’d be surprised how often they are forgotten in the credits!) and have a jolly good time! It could never be compared to browsing Amazon online. Barcelona is no exception and whenever I’m in the city I always pay a visit to La Central, Freaks Books, Documenta, Casa del Llibre, Laie, Fnac… Spending small fortunes in every one of them as Book Spotting tends to result in Book Shopping!.

Here’s a round-up of my favourite book covers from last Christmas:

’201 Contes Corrents’ by Joan Barril, Amsterdam Llibres. Love, love love the palette and the bold blocks of colour, instantly reminded me of a lino cut print. Very intriguing cover as well, makes you want to start reading straight away. doesn’t it? :

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I’m always looking forward to Blackie Books (actually bought this one, told you book spotting is dangerous on a student budget!), the best young spanish publishing house in my humble opinion. Always daring and exciting. Their covers have become their brand, look it’s ITC Grouch! :

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One of the big boys, Alianza Editorial‘s paperback re-design by Manuel Estrada. I fell in love with these two, wood blocks and letterpress inspiration for Salinger’s classics, genius. Have a look at the rest of the covers here.

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This cut-out silhouette caught my eye, very clever and reminiscent of the author Virginia Woolf. It turned out to be one of Capitán Swing books, the new (to me) publishers:

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Another Capitán Swing book! Brilliant!

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I couldn’t find the credits for the cover designs so naturally, I had to email them. Dani and Gabriel were so nice and lovely explaining they designed the covers themselves and were planning a massive re-vamp in the coming weeks. Capitán Swing, ones to watch!

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One of my New Years resolutions was to enter more competitions. It is always a challenge, interesting work for a portfolio and a bit of a thrill. The first of the year is the House of Illustration and The Folio SocietyGetting Inside The Outsider’ illustrating a binding and three scenes from The Outsider by Albert Camus. I started re-reading the book and trying to really ‘get inside’ the story of Meursault, not thinking of the scenes I was going to illustrate but rather the book as a whole and the experience of reading it. Written in the first person The Outsider is a detailed account of the everyday life of an individual, in other words, it is a personal Journal, a diary of sorts. It certainly felt as if I was reading a real diary and I wanted to recreate the experience for my design.

The story is set in 1930s/40s so I felt the illustrations had to reflect that and be as period accurate as possible.

The name of the author and title only had to go on the spine of the book which worked nicely for my idea. This is a rough sketch with the blue of the Mediterranean sea the protagonist loves so much and the lines of the leather as the waves:

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Part One, Chapter I ‘Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can’t be sure. The telegram from the Home says: ‘YOUR MOTHER PASSED AWAY. FUNERAL TOMORROW. DEEP SYMPATHY.’ Which leaves the matter doubtful; it could have been yesterday.’

Inside cover, clippings and bits of paper including a telegram and a cinema ticket which will be important in the story later on.

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Part One, Chapter I Pag 15 ‘A bit later, for want of anything better to do, I picked up an old newspaper that was lying on the floor and read it. There was an advertisement of Kruschen Salts and I cut it out and pasted in into an album where I keep things that amuse me in the papers.’

Researching Kruschen Salts ads from the time, I came across ‘The Smile’ campaign featuring a smiley bearded man and a very long text. I thought the idea of an open display of emotion such as an honest smile would have interested and intrigued Meursault enough to keep it, the way people collect exotic butterflies so I went with that idea for my illustration.

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Part Two Chapter II ‘One day, when inspecting my straw mattress, I found a bit of newspaper stuck to its underside. The paper was yellow with age, almost transparent, but I could still make out the letter print. It was the story of a crime.

The first part was missing, but I gathered that its scene was some village in Czechoslovakia. One of the villagers had left his home to try his luck abroad. After twenty-five years, having made a fortune, he returned to his country with his wife and child. Meanwhile his mother and sister had been running a small hotel in the village where he was born. He decided to give them a surprise and, leaving his wife and child in another inn, he went to stay at his mother’s place, booking a room under an assumed name. His mother and sister completely failed to recognize him. At dinner that evening he showed them a large sum of money he had on him, and in the course of the night they slaughtered him with a hammer. After taking the money they flung the body into the river. Next morning his wife came and, without thinking, betrayed the guest’s identity. His mother hanged herself. His sister threw herself into a well. I must have read that story thousands of times. In one way it sounded most unlikely; in another, it was plausible enough. Anyhow, to my mind, the man was asking for trouble; one shouldn’t play fool tricks of that sort.’

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Over 4,000 people (professionals and students) have entered the competition, the winning entry will form part of a Folio Society commission for a book which will be published in August 2011, for which the winner will receive £4,000. Five runners up will each receive a cash prize of £500.

I really enjoyed the whole process and will definitely develop this idea into a book with more illustrations and maybe hand writting for the whole text instead of type setting. Quentin Blake is one of the judges, I used to love his illustrations as a child, just the thought of him seeing my work is very very exciting!.

Also a few weeks ago I entered the V&A 2011 Student Ilustrator Award with my book illustration project ‘Tattoo’ here’s my entry.

Wish me luck!

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These are the final cover designs for my Typography class booklet. We were given a typeface at random and had to produce a type chart and a cover, I was really hoping for Futura but got Palatino instead. You can’t always get what you want, I suppose.

I still used both for the covers – one and two ink variations:

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Of course I ended up loving Palatino more than I thought possible and started to appreciate its own quirkiness and calligraphic details. I developed an alphabet around them both, Futura vs Palatino or even Want vs Have. I want to screen print a poster with it but for the time being here’s A and g:

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