Chip Kidd's Advice

Of the three readings, which were all quite interesting and gave useful information when designing book covers, I found the Chip Kidd interview to be the most helpful. I'd like to bring up his answer to the last question first. When asked if one should judge a book by its cover, he replied, "Oh, go ahead." This was interesting to me because as a book jacket designer, he must have read a ton of books that he enjoyed that he thought had poor covers. However, it reveals something greater about his approach to designing a cover that he reveals earlier in the interview. He explains how he tries to 'subvert' a genre. When redesigning Minority Report he said, "I didn't want it to look like "science fiction," but it should still look appropriate for the subject matter." I'm not so sure what to think about this because as someone who thinks books can be judged by their covers, wouldn't he like someone who is looking for a science fiction novel be able to tell that Minority Report is a science fiction novel? Though he does also offer that covers should be interesting and appeal to the masses. So possibly, one trumps the other depending on the circumstances.

As for me, designing The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, this creates an interesting complex. The book is so popular, that it would sell no matter what the cover looks like. But do I take its popularity into consideration when designing the cover? Should I apply to the masses, or elude to the book's content?

Cover Inspiration

The Opposite House

The flipped image caught my eye right away. There is something inherently interesting about things that are upside down, they just beg the viewer to ask why things are reversed. Of course turning things upside down to catch an eye would be irresponsible design, but in this case I think it serves a lot of purposes. First of all it creates an area that calls attention to the text. Also, given the title of the book, one can make the assumption that the opposite house is not the house opposite the street, but maybe opposite from a characters norm. This implies a lot about the story. And like it or not, someone browsing through a book store will be more likely to read the summary on the back if the cover looks like it is a book they would enjoy. I looked up a summary and the book deals with immigration.

The Fall of the Towers

I like how clean the text is in this cover, but I disagree that it was the best choice for the project. Giving the design the benefit of the doubt, I am assuming that this book offers a factual account of the event. If so, I do like the clean type and the way it is organized, however there could be more done to draw my attention to the content. This could be as simple as using capital letters, or possibly separating the authors name from the title in some way. The image is strong, compositionally, and there is a nice void that is created by the text in place of the towers. Yet, if this book is a clean and factually based non emotional account of the fall of the towers, it would be interesting to see how a clean, vector based image representing the absence of the towers would have worked.

Lost Decades

I think that this cover is a good example of how type and image can work together to communicate important information about the book. In this case, the title is ambiguous to content. Because the content would be read in order to gain a specific set of knowledge, it is important for the title to easily suggest what information it would contain. The title is clearly legible, and works with the graphic to convey a larger understanding about the essence of the book. I agree that the Authors names and tag line should not be written in the same font as the title, but I think that right now they are a tad too distracting. This could be improved by simply adding a line to separate them from the center graphic. Also, I think that the Author's names are too close to 'LOST.' It looks like it is meant to be the same distance as the text at the bottom is from the white arrow, but I think that it is awkward because 'LOST' creates such a strong vertical that it seems cramped, whereas the arrow is just one point that happens to be the lowest.

Definitions

Sign - any object, action, event, pattern, etc., that conveys a meaning.

Index - something used or serving to point out. An indication (dark clouds are an index of rain).

Symbol - something used for or regarded as representing something else (the Jayhawk is a symbol of KU).