My Favourite Book Cover: Theo Inglis

This month's book cover lover is Theo Inglis: graphic designer and mid century design enthusiast. Theo's blog is one of my inspiration go- to's so I was very excited to see what he'd pick and I have not been disappointed..

"As a booklover with a design history obsession, picking a favourite book cover is a very tough ask! I'm not sure I could pick a favourite period of design or even one designer, let alone a favourite individual cover. So I'm going to dodge it slightly and pick a book for its cover, content and significance to me as a designer.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a house full of books, and even luckier that a few of them were rare graphic design classics. 'Graphic Design: Visual Comparisons' by Alan Fletcher, Colin Forbes and Bob Gill was a real revelation and introduced me to some of the most significant designers of the 20th century. It also served as a brilliant introduction to ideas focused design, and the foreword features my all time favourite quote on graphic design: "Our thesis is that any one visual problem has an infinite number of solutions; that many are valid; that solutions ought to derive from subject matter; that the designer should have no preconceived graphic style."

Despite being written fifty years a go I feel this thesis is still true today, and it helps to explain why I love book cover design so much; there are always so many valid solutions, the subject matter is very rich and cover designers get to work in a variety of different styles as appropriate to each individual book.

Now on to the cover itself! The bold sans serif, white on black gives it the quintessential 1960's serious graphic design look. But the eyes, illustrated by Alan Fletcher, in 2 different colours are much more playful and naïvely done. They do however hint at a greater meaning (the importance of seeing perhaps?) and the contents of the book, which presents two contrasting images side by side on every spread. While getting the book out to write this I noticed the nice way it peeks out at the other books on the shelf. Overall I love the covers bold and simple mix of serious and playful, but I do have a bit of a thing for book covers that look back at you. (http://theoinglis.tumblr.com/post/98803900797/something-im-writing-at-the-moment-has-reminded).

I'm a London based graphic designer, booklover and wannabe cover designer, currently working in the world of branding and packaging. Despite earlier professing to not having a favourite period of design, I have a blog on Mid-Century Modern graphics which you can find here and a website here.http://www.theoinglis.co.uk
Thank you Theo!

My Favourite Book Cover: Sian Wilson

Today the most talented and lovely book cover designer, Sian Wilson talks about her favourite book cover which is a real beauty of a 1960's Penguin Modern Classic, featuring a drawing by Duncan Grant.

"I can waste hours and hours looking for inspiration in old book covers. There seems to be so many restrictions on book cover design these days, it's great, and frustrating to see how much freedom book cover designers used to have. I've always had a massive soft spot for the art and design of The Bloomsbury Group, and this distinctive style says so much about the time in which Virginia Woolf was writing, as well as the tone of her books. But much more important than that I just think it looks absolutely gorgeous and really wish I had done it myself."

Thank you Sian, I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above.

Sian Wilson has been designing books for six years and is currently a senior designer at Little Brown Book Group. You can view some of her cover designs here.

My favourite book cover: Nico Taylor

Welcome to the next instalment of "My favourite book cover". This time I'm featuring the choice of the designer Nico Taylor who currently works at Harper Collins and is responsible for some extremely stylishly designed books being on our shelves in recent years. He has chosen a book I am very fond of "The heart is a lonely hunter" by Carson McCullers.

I always have to deal with a level of guilt and regret when thinking of this cover as one of my favourites. Having long been a fan of the book, last year I found an almost pristine copy in Portland's Powell's Book Store and foolishly decided not to take it home with me. Perhaps this personal regret will be the reason this jacket always stays with me, but I think it's more to do with the striking graphic quality it holds. For a novel that deals so subtly with the depths of humanity, it's interesting to see a cover so brash. Sadly I can't find a credit for the cover but it seems hard to believe this was created in the in the 1940's, with the dynamic script type dominating and an exaggerated drop shadow making the title seemingly jump from the cover. It could easily have been so inappropriate, but to my eyes it works marvellously. Predating the brilliant title-led jackets of the designer Paul Bacon (see original versions of Catch 22 and Portnoy's Complaint) this must have been one of the first covers to be commercially presented with the "big book" look and I think it does it fantastically.

Thank you Nico!

You can visit Nico's website here.