DesignYak

The art of book cover design

A really good article by Jonathan Gibbs on the Independent website today, about how book design has never been so good...

Doomsayers predict its death in the age of Kindle but as Faber & Faber celebrates 80 years of artwork and independent imprints flourish, the book has never looked more beautiful, says Jonathan Gibbs

Wherever you stand on the future of the book – doomed to oblivion by the Kindle, or an indestructible part of our cultural life – there's no doubt that recent years have seen a golden age of book design. There are of course whole bookshop shelves full of cheap, dull, generic products, but for those who know where to look, books have rarely been more interesting to look at, hold and open.

Partly this is a case of big publishers relying on brilliant design to make their goods stand out in an increasingly difficult market; but partly, too, it's a case of small, independent publishers springing up to provide a certain kind of reader with what they want, more than ever: the book as beautiful, covetable, keep-able object.

You could argue that the current renaissance in book design came about thanks to Penguin, always the most design-savvy of publishers. In 2004 they produced their first series of Great Ideas – small paperback editions of classic, mostly philosophical texts. They had highly tactile covers and used bold period typography to give a sense of when and where each book was coming from. 

The following year we got Penguin by Design, an illustrated history of 70 years of Penguin covers, and then, in 2007, Seven Hundred Penguins, a two-inch-thick collection of the best covers, shown life-size, one to a page. For seasoned haunters of second-hand bookshops, this particular item was as thrilling as a similar-sized brick of Class A drugs.

Now that other venerable British publisher, Faber & Faber, has stepped up to the plate. Eighty Years of Book Cover Design seems very much a retort to Penguin, as if to say, 'Hey, we were putting out distinctive books six years before you ever came on the scene'. Looking through this beautifully presented book, however, it's clear that Faber's design only really came into its own in the 1940s, with the arrival of the German designer Berthold Wolpe. Wolpe designed the Albertus font, immediately evocative of Faber, and also supplied many of the bold, colourful designs that adorned books by writers like Lawrence Durrell, William Golding and Ted Hughes.

Also as part of their 80th birthday celebrations, Faber have reissued some classic first novels as Faber Firsts, with new covers harking back to their original era (check out particularly The Bell Jar and Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy), and a collection of poetry hardbacks, with wood- and lino-cut illustrations on their jacketless covers and endpapers.

It's no surprise that good book design often comes with reissues, not least of classics. After all, anything out of copyright leaves more money for the presentation. Persephone Books, Hesperus Press, Pushkin Press and Capuchin Classics are four British independent publishers that specialise in bringing back into print often long-neglected works, helped along by some beautiful design. Persephone are distinctive for their uniform grey jackets – it's only when you open them that you find the bright-coloured endpapers, sourced from fabrics dating from the time of the book's setting or writing.

Capuchin Classics, by contrast, hark back to the classic Penguin "grid format", with bands of signature mint-green and original illustrations by Angela Landels. For Capuchin's editor-in-chief, Emma Howard, this aspect of the cover design was crucial. "We thought that using line drawings would be a refreshing antidote to the ghastly photographic covers that you see everywhere," she says.

While these four publishers all work in paperback, White's Books is one that is taking on the hardback – at a time when these are fast disappearing from our shelves. They're not quite an endangered species yet: literary imprint Picador announced that they were doing away with hardbacks altogether last year, before quietly backing down. White's stick resolutely to the classics – their list runs to six titles so far, including Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and Treasure Island – but go all out in design terms, from the thickness of the paper to the exquisite covers.

White's art director, David Pearson, has commissioned illustrations from such people as textile designer Celia Birtwell and Stanley Donwood, better known for his work with Radiohead. The results stand out a mile in your average bookshop, thanks to the books' use of what Pearson calls "non-repeating narrative pattern" – images that look like a simple pattern from a distance, but which open up when seen at close quarters.

It's not all classics and rediscoveries, though. Some of the most eye-catching design in recent years has been in paperback originals – the pricier paperbacks that have increasingly replaced hardbacks for first-run printings of literary fiction. These can be jacketed, with cut-outs or flaps, and appeal to a young, stylish readership that expects the same degree of sophistication from their books as they do from their music or clothing. "Books are like small posters for themselves," says Suzanne Dean, creative director at Random House. "We have roughly a two-minute window to seduce the reader and bookshop browser."

Yet it's still the familiar names that are most likely to have that extra care lavished upon them. Coming to bookshelves soon will be fine editions of books by Margaret Atwood, Donna Tartt, George Orwell and Michael Ondaatje. Covetable, certainly, and beautifully produced, but considering that most of the people who will buy the books will own them already, in a previous format, the terrible thought occurs: will they ever be read?

'Eighty Years of Book Cover Design' by Joseph Connolly is published by Faber & Faber, priced £40 (hardback) and £25 (paperback)

Boys 'put off' by art & design at secondary school

I just read an article on the Guardian website about how boys in particular are being 'put off' by art & design at school. This is being put down to there being too much drawing and painting rather than computer design and digital photography. Ofsted have said that half of schools in their latest report show that art & craft are underdeveloped, and going further down in education, two-thirds of primary schools art & craft activities were not good enough. Is this underdevelopment the reason for many young people being turned off by art & design further on in their education? I might be naive, and I probably am, but as a child I always found that art was quite an inexpensive activity, all you need is some scrap paper and a pencil. 

I think this topic is important because school is the starting point at which all designers, artists etc began their careers. It makes me quite sad that kids are beginning to not relate to drawing and painting, this is the building blocks of discovering and developing natural talent. I understand that kids going through school now are the first to have grown up from year dot with computers and the internet, but if they are not exposed to drawing and painting, key skills for any creative, I think it will seriously harm the quality of art & design. Obviously linking this with new technology is fine, but kids should be allowed to develop talent and explore ideas. Read the full article here.

Design in Education - Shaughnessy weighs in

Really good article by Adrian Shaughnessy in this week's Design Week. He gives hopes for hundreds of design graduates in this article. If you're a design student, you've no doubt been told about Shaughnessy by your tutors, if you haven't, buy his book now now now! It's brilliant.

So here's the article...

Does the world really need more creatives? Adrian Shaughnessy weighs into the education debate by suggesting designers are well-equipped for any career...

Two unlikely bedfellows have recently chucked petrol on to the debate. In these pages Ian Cochrane has advised students to 'Get out of this business. It is inundated with graduates and there aren't the jobs, especially at this time'. And, in his recent D&AD President's Lecture, Peter Saville questioned the point of colleges producing '50 000 design graduates a year'.

Cochrane and Saville are riffing on a familiar theme. Warnings against the intensive farming of design graduates are nothing new. But is it really a problem?

Perhaps Cochrane knows something no one else knows - namely, that the current financial situation is going to last forever. I'd have thought that studying design over the next few years will allow graduates to avoid the worst of the current implosion. It could even see them emerging into a saner world where, after a decade of financial greed, fraud and ineptitude, design is valued as a force for social good rather than a lubricant of consumer indebtedness. I know of one university that's had a marked rise in applications for next year - which it attributes to a desire among students to avoid the worst of the recession.

Saville's lack of enthusiasm for the over-production of design graduates is easier to fathom. Since he is responsible for inspiring many of them to choose a career in design, he is perhaps experiencing a twinge of culpability.

But I think both are wrong. A design education - even a basic one - equips individuals with many of the skills that will prove invaluable in an information-based, digitally rooted global culture. Just as Britain produced engineers to forge the Industrial Revolution, the information revolution is being - at least partly - driven by designers. I can't think of many skills that will be more useful in the coming years than a mastery of digital tools and the presentation of information across all media.

When I first started hiring designers in the late 1980s, most had been soured by their educations, and were in retreat from a process that had encouraged them to think of themselves as service-sector fodder. Towards the end of the 1990s, a new breed of tutors, radicalised by theoretical developments within design, started to produce graduates with a disdain for the old notion of design as a problem-solving process, and saw it as a means for self-expression and creative experimentation. The notion of design as art took hold in design schools - or at least in the imagination of students - and it has been hard to dislodge. It's a question that Nick Bell is wrestling with in his new role at London's Royal College of Art.

But after recently spending time in two universities, I think the balance has been redressed. Both knocked me out with the standard of teaching on offer, and the imaginative level-headedness of the students. I think we've reached a point where a design education is a bit like a history degree. History graduates don't necessarily become historians. Instead, they use their analytically trained brains to work in business, research and education. Today, we can say the same about a good design education. Design graduates are equipped for life in the modern world.

Let's have more of them.

Read all about it

If you got your copy of The Sunday Times yesterday, you may have spotted my hairy mug (second in from the left) on page 10. Mental. Interesting article on the watering down of degrees, something I think Steve has touched upon before. It blames “two decades of relentless expansion without adequate funding”, with some of the most senior academics voicing their concerns. Alan Ryan of New College, Oxford, said, “anyone who remains awake and is tolerably well-organised can get a 2:1”.

Uni’s contacted denied there were quality problems but you can understand the need to fill places, which may mean accepting students who aren’t fully committed anyway. Higher education is now more popular than ever but it is a worrying trend, especially considering the current job market.

You may have noticed that this item was a blatant excuse to post a pic of me in the paper. Sorry.

‘Let’s get creative’ with the Guardian

Yesterday the Guardian featured a special report on the creative industries in the UK, discussing the current climate and what lies ahead. It was all pretty positive. John Hegarty from ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty points out that considering the “decline in our currency we now offer unprecedented value” to overseas companies, it is now “30% cheaper to create in the UK”.

The report goes on to say that the creative industry can help the UK “attack the recession”, with David Cameron announcing a party review of the sector. Gaynor Aaltonen, does suggest however that many creatives are not striving for world domination and the problem may be the inability of small companies to capitalise on success. Her concern is that creativity alone may not be enough.

I found Ben Terrett’s article particularly interesting. He discussed a concept called “unproduct”, which he describes as “maximum idea, minimum stuff”. Value is placed on the product, which in turn delivers a guaranteed quality. The aim isn’t necessarily to produce the goods as cheaply as possible but to produce something that can be cherished.

An example he gives is the Hand-Me-Down range by Howies, a range of jackets and bags, guaranteed to last at least 10 years. It’s a great idea, and as Ben points out it’s the result of a collision between the issue of climate change and the current economic crisis. You can read more on the Guardian’s website.

Students urged to 'avoid design'

An article in this week's Design Week by Ian Cochrane will recommend students to turn their back on design courses, as the industry does not need them during the recession. Cochrane say that there are too many design students graduating from University, something I happen to agree with. 

There aren't enough jobs to employ everyone, but I think that is connected to a wider issue regarding too many people going to University full stop, it is not just a problem for the design industry. Michael Peters also says there are too many students doing mediocre work, something else I agree with and another indicator that too many people are entering design-led courses. I believe that a lot of design students are just doing the course for the sake of it and not necessarily because they have serious aspirations to be designers. Again, I think this is because of a pressure that is felt by all young people to go to University, resulting in a lot of people choosing options that they might not really want, and coming out at the end qualified in a profession that they are neither interested in or capable of. Universities are also forced to fill places on their courses to fill budgets, and maybe sometimes the strength of a students work is not the main reasons for accepting them onto the course.

I've always wanted to be creative and be a designer, and I remember how tough it was to find that first job, so I feel sorry for young people coming out of University who have serious aspirations to be in design as the economy continues to sink. But I really feel sorry for the students who come out of University with a degree in design who are not interested in design, and who feel lost and unsure what to do next.

I truly believe though, that if you are a talented and committed young designer, you will get the break you need to get that first job, I just hope some design agencies will still seek young talent, as the industry relies on it. To read the article on Design Week's website, click here, or buy this week's edition to read his article in full.  

Typographers shift to serif typefaces

An interesting article in this week's Design Week, discussing the shift of some typographers to serif typefaces, as a reaction to the dominance of sans serif typefaces, such as Helvetica...

Typographers shift to serif typefaces
In 2007's Helvetica, a feature film daringly organised around the sheer preponderance of one typeface, director Gary Hustwit pointed his lens at an urban landscape that has become dominated by the clean, open shapes of the eponymous sans serif. Among other things, the film showed how Helvetica's clear, balanced form has become a typographic synonym for the spirit of the times, particularly for global business, confidently expressing modernity, approachability and reliability. As designer Neville Brody explains in the film, 'Helvetica is a mark of membership; it's a badge that says we're part of modern society, we share the same ideals.'

Helvetica (the typeface) may be the standard-bearer, but the qualities of a number of sans serifs have been beloved by many designers (and their clients) for similar reasons/ they are seen as contemporary and clean, and are often boldly graphical. Geometric Futura and humanist Frutiger abound; Verdana and Arial are all over the Web.

'Some design consultancies - which will remain nameless - are probably at fault for an entire generation of designers going through a phase of using Helvetica for everything - me included. Maybe what designers are starting to consider is the idea of creating something more bespoke and fit for a purpose,' says Dwayne Lewars, director at design consultancy Blacklabs. He recently found inspiration in local architectural flourishes when designing letterforms for a poster celebrating the character of Blacklabs' neighbourhood in London's Soho. Perhaps tiring of the serif-free scenery, some designers are turning more to serif fonts and reframing what a contemporary typeface might look like. 'I think there is a tendency for designers to start working with serifs again. People eventually get a bit bored - we've had Frutiger and Helvetica and so on everywhere; it creates a barren visual landscape,' says Bruno Maag, director of type design consultancy Dalton Maag

Like all elements of visual culture, type is subject to the whims of fashion. Not month-to-month (or even season-to-season) fashion, granted, but a rider on the waves of alternating trends and styles nonetheless. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, serif typefaces such as Didot and Bodoni were perceived (and categorised) as 'modern', thanks to the high contrast between the thick and thin elements of their letters. Vogue magazine uses a version of Didot on its masthead, although to contemporary eyes this arguably looks more classic than modern.

In fact, it is in magazine design especially, that typographic elements can be seen denoting and reflecting what's in fashion, says Freda Sack, director of Foundry Types and president of the International Society of Typographic Designers. 'I saw serifs coming as a trend about 18 months ago. You're starting to see it more in magazines and newspapers, particularly the use of slab serifs and modern serifs,' she says.

Encapsulating this shift nicely is The Guardian's 2005 repackaging in the Berliner format, which saw the iconic Helvetica headers removed in favour of slab serif font Guardian Egyptian, created especially by Paul Barnes and Christian Schwartz. Sack also cites fashion weekly Grazia as an example of serif fonts being used in a contemporary, bold way (incidentally, Grazia's editorial design was trumped in the 2006 D&AD Awards by The Guardian's). 'People are using serifs now in a much bolder and in-your-face way, even though they are still traditional in some ways,' she says.

Anticipating more demand for flexible, contemporary serif faces, both Dalton Maag and Foundry Types have just released new designs, Cordale and Foundry Origin, respectively. 'Our Foundry Form typeface is a sans serif and serif that work together, but we noticed that people were starting to want the serif version more. We've also found that, over the past year, people have started asking for Foundry Wilson - which is more classical, like Baskerville - after a period in the wilderness. So Foundry Origin has really come out of a sixth sense that this is a coming thing,' says Sack.

According to Maag, most contemporary serifs are softer and more humanist in style than their forebears, with slab serifs now being used much more frequently in display and advertising. Sack agrees, saying, 'Most serif typefaces that are being designed or redesigned now need to be used in different environments and contexts than earlier serifs.'

In a rebranding exercise last year, building society Norwich Union began using the slab serif Clarendon in advertising created by ad agency AMV BBDO. But imminent integration with the Aviva insurance group will see a return to Frutiger, considered a more globally suitable corporate font. 'People see everything that is geometric and squeezed to a grid as contemporary, and everything with curves as old-fashioned,' says Maag. 'But harmonious proportions in shapes are also dead contemporary, depending on how you treat them.'

It should also be said that Adrian Frutiger himself recently worked on a serif version of the classic sans serif Frutiger, released as Frutiger Serif by Linotype only six months ago - further evidence of the return of the serif, perhaps.