Old Covers and New Covers From Old Covers

I've wanted to post a couple great archives of book cover work since giving my spiel at The Show n' Tell Show's book design talk and am just now getting around to it:

The first is Thomas Allen's book art photography. His manipulations of these covers coupled with creative use of focus is perfect... and gives the impression that their construction was simultaneously painstaking and ridiculously fun.

(To give proper credit: before coming across the archive, I was first exposed to Allen's work via Chip Kidd's design of James Ellroy's novels, and had always meant to look into his work more. I'm glad I finally had the opportunity to stumble into other examples.)



The second archive is a collection of Penguin science fiction covers from 1935 to 1977. These are absolutely mouthwatering. And it's great to see Kurt Vonnegut's books looking less ashamed to be housed in that world. Cat's Cradle is science fiction after all (as is my favorite Vonnegut book The Sirens of Titan), but for the bulk of the last several decades, with genre fiction being a sort of pariah in literature proper, these covers and their amazing art have mostly gone the way of the decoder ring.

(And I have to note another great feature of the archive: the side by side comparison of each edition of the different books.)

Rosenberg and The Big Big Little Book Book

Yesterday, one of the major surprises – and a pleasant one at that – was a gift from one Mr. Scott Rosenberg of The Washington Post (who I was fortunate enough to meet in person after being interviewed by him last week). Scott stopped by my table and in the ensuing conversation I mentioned that one of the great positives of a convention like HeroesCon is the overlooked treasures that have fallen from "mint condition" favor. And among those treasures some of my favorites are Big Little Books, those always charming hardbound books from earlier in the century.

A short while after we ended our initial conversation, Scott dropped back by with his gift, culled from a bargain bin: The Big Big Little Book Book. This map to all things Big Little features full color shots of the spines, covers, and back covers of a good many of the books, spreads from Big Little pop up books, and a history of the publishing line. It's quite extensive and, in receiving it, it was difficult to keep my composure. A salute to Mr. Rosenberg!

If time allows, I'll have to post some of the oddities I picked up on my own, but for now, I'll leave you with the recommendation of The Big Big Little Book Book. It's a bibliophile's pornography.