APRIL SUPERFECTA
BY STEFAN NADELMAN | permalink | posted April 4, 2009

This week let’s celebrate those few who appear to have had some design school background. Out of the 72 upcoming releases, these were the only four that fell into my good-bookcover wheelhouse. Although these covers aren’t pioneering in any way, I will appreciate their simplicity and elegance all the same. The key to the success of these covers is the limited color palette and succinct and spare use of imagery. All hail less-is-more.

A. Crazy Love | by Leslie Morgan Steiner
Pub. Date: March 31, 2009
As a big fan of type-only designs, this cover does a lot with a little. It’s incredible what happens when you break a word in half, especially the word “CRAZY”…which leaves the gray “ZY” in the middle with the pink “L”. With the backwards “Z” and awkward bifurcation of words, it’s clearly meant to connote a bit of craziness. And with all relationships there are two players, so perhaps the two colors (gray and pink) mean to represent just that. Like many good company logos, the fact that two colors and a modern typeface can say so much is always an impressive task.

B. Shadow and Light | by Jonathan Rabb
Pub. Date: March 31, 2009
Okay, this falls more in pastiche than it does in the less-is-more category, but the elements (title, illustration, and border) fit so well together it beckons to be featured here. The main character here, as it should be, is the title, set in the juiciest of art deco typefaces. Brilliant is the way “SHADOW” is the darkest of the hues, and “LIGHT” is naturally white…very subtle. The simple gold border wonderfully frames the composition and reiterates the art deco conceit while the spotlights emanating into the title send a clear message that this story lives somewhere in the 20s or 30s. The image here is ghosted and tinted enough to be exactly what it’s meant to be: a background. No doubt if one took a magnifying glass to it you’d surely find Fritz Lang sauntering about.

C. Nobody Move | by Denis Johnson
Pub. Date: April 27, 2009
3D type will always get your attention. So will bullet holes. Now replace the “O”s with bullet holes and you, my friend, have an eye-catching cover. No doubt the publisher found some hipster with a sketchbook and had him or her draw the title with a Micron for a couple of bills. And those bullet holes, I believe, come from a set of stickers you can buy and place on your car, presumably next to the sinister Calvin taking a pee sticker. As a designer, and perhaps a designer always on a small budget, I can appreciate the wonderful results from limited, cheaply produced assets.

D. Pygmy | by Chuck Palahniuk
Pub. Date: May 05, 2009
Here’s another cover from another great author using red and yellow, but this time these colors clearly represent those crazy communists. The fantastic almost-silhouetted figure betrays a hint of the Asian persuasion while the title is set in the most obvious cold war typefaces. While inspecting the illustration closer, that crazy, communist, chinaman is holding a dismembered human arm which is holding…a book? Notice the shadow underneath the figure, is it a shadow or is it a base like that of a toy soldier? Whoah Palahniuk, once again your cover, albeit simple, compels me to wonder more about the meaning of the story within.