Paul Buckley/Ken Garduno: Light Boxes

"The inhabitants of a closely-knit town are experiencing perpetual February after a vengeful god-like spirit punishes them for flying. The sun becomes a distant memory, the ground is blanketed in snow, children go missing, and more and more adults become catatonic with depression. But others find the strength to fight back..." A Penguin original coming in June. Spike Jonz has optioned the film rights, and 24-year old music video director Ray Tintori is rumored to direct. He's the director of the MGMT video "Time to Pretend."

Correx: here is the illustrator's website. Thanks, Paul!

Jaya Miceli: Short Girls

The story of two Vietnamese-American sisters visiting their father, an "...enthusiastic inventor of devices to improve the lives of short people." Jaya says: "...they were having trouble with the repackage.....went many rounds in many directions. Deadline was upon me and I found this image that simply reiterated the meaning in the title." I find this image to be hilarious and perfect. (Penguin, Summer 2010)

Rob Grom: John Dies @ the End

A wonderful treat came upon me at the bookstore last week, when I saw this book brazenly staring at me from across the room. WTF, I asked myself. Then I picked it up and turned it over. SCORE!! Here is designer Rob Grom's description of how it came to be:

"This is one of my personal favorites. This project was given to me as a rush assignment, so I knew very little about the story...it was described to me as an Evil Dead/Matrix/Big Lebowski type story. The cover is just a blatant interpretation of the
title, John Dies at the End, but the real pay off is the back cover...Finally, some real gore for once! Geoff Spear photographed and retouched the image beautifully. I kind of felt a bad for the hand/arm model, but it was well worth it : )"

Chip Kidd/Evan Gaffney: Fangland

One of our first posts at Anonymous was Evan Gaffney's wonderful hardcover of Fangland (bottom), an updating of the Dracula story about a news reporter investigating a Romanian gangster. I came across the amazing comps from Chip Kidd for a cover and spine (top) at Darren Haggar's revamped website.

Roberto de Vicq de Cumptich: The Kingdom of Ohio

In the year 1900, a laborer building New York's subway tunnels falls in love with a troubled woman who claims to have traveled seven years into the future from the Lost Kingdom of Ohio. Her mysterious story drags them into the orbits of a crusty J.P Morgan and of dueling inventors Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla (PW). Matte finish, spot gloss type, gold foil ornaments. Riverhead, Dec 31, 2009.

Darren Haggar: Leisure

It's time to fly the friendly skies.

Barbara de Wilde: The Undertaking (repackage)

A repackaging of the classic book, a collection of essays about life and death by the sole funeral director in Milford, Michigan. The original cover (bottom) might have been a scan of Barbara de Wilde's hand. Twelve years later, Barbara and photographer John Broomfield reshot the cover to update it. (WW Norton, Summer 2009)

correction (?) An anonymous tipster has informed us that "The hand on the original cover was Archie Ferguson's, and was made on an ordinary office scanner the good old low-budget way...For Norton's repackaging there was actually a production budget, and so the image was made by photographer Stephen Lewis."

Will Staehle: Manhood for Amateurs

Will Staehle designs this new collection of autobiographical essays in the style of Chabon's previous novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union. The jacket comes off to reveal further art printed on the case...however I don't think the spinner actually spins. Fab!

Essays/Wallace Shawn

A new book of essays by the actor and playwright. The photo, interestingly, seems about 20 years old, from his Princess Bride days, even though the essays are current. I love the simplicity of the design, which appears to be an homage to Paul Rand.

Christopher Sergio: The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

I love this cover, and Sergio provided me with a great breakdown of what went into creating it:

The "Mystic Arts...." is a noir crime-novel.

The book's protagonist works for a company called "Clean Team", on the
janitorial job from hell. These are the guys who come and clean up the blood
and guts of crime scenes after the CSI techs all head back to their posh
labs. Inevitably, due to his unique skill set, our hero gets drawn into the
drama of a crime/mystery in progress, and the horses are off.

I began my sketching and design process by focusing on the tools of the
trade: Rubber gloves, mops, buckets, sponges, spray bottles, etc. I tried to
find very clean shots of each, usually on stark white backgrounds, with the
intention of laying some handmade type over the whole cover to add in the
messy, crime-scene element. But in the end, this approach didn't seem
noir-ish enough. The imagery was just too bright.

So I went to the noir source, and sought out crime scene photos themselves.
I struck upon the idea of having a crime scene photo with the body
graphically removed, cut out, as if by magic. I also liked that this
solution has a double read: is the body removed, or just hidden from view?

Turning the crime scene photo on it's side like this also helped to create a
sense a tension. The silhouette seems awkward for a standing pose, and you
may not realize what you're looking at on first glance. I liked that the
crime-scenes numbers written on the photograph (lower left hand of the
cover) give you a clue as to the original orientation of the image.

I kept my earlier idea of using messy type (now red), which still seemed
appropriate, and just filled the negative shape of the body. The yellow is a
very bright Pantone, to suggest sanitizing and queasiness at the same time.
It also seemed to add a spirit-like quality, and play up the "mystic" of the
title.

The black and white image is gloss so it feels like an actual photograph.
And the yellow silhouette is matte, to strengthen the visual cut out. (The
red type is spot glossed, so that it sits up on the page.)

Thanks, Chris!

The Angel's Game: Final Cover vs. Advanced Reader's Copy

Wait for it...

Sarah Waters UK Editions

Two books by Sarah Waters, both shortlisted for the Booker Prize. As I recall, The Little Stranger was printed directly on the case, which I saw quite a bit of in Waterstone's when I visited London. Both these novels are thrillers that take place in the 1940s. I love the quirky type treatments and pulp fiction look of these covers. They remind me of Hitchcock posters and film titles.

Lilli Carre/Paul Buckley: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Front cover and full mech of this upcoming title in the Penguin Graphics series. Cover by Lilli Carre. with design by Paul Buckley. You can view the current Penguin Graphics set here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulbuckleydesign/sets/72157621852113991/

John Gall: What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Beautiful adaptation of the hardcover running man for the paperback, which manages to keep true to the illustrated look Gall has established. Whereas Gall usually uses vintage advertising art for Murakami's novels, this book, which is a memoir, appears to be using a new style of illustration. I love the juxtaposition of the photographed runner and the fantastical world he's running in, like the dream-like thoughts inside the runner's head. Big ups to Ian for noting this cover.

Steve Snyder: Old Girlfriends

Photo by Marc Yankus. Designer to come. A new short story collection by one of John Updike's sons. I love the Mad Men feel of this cover, and the way the type shoots up with the buildings.

Chin-Yee Li: The Complete Ripley Novels Boxed Set

I love this boxed set, which works so well with the Ripley stories. Ripley "... is everything crime fiction fans love in an (anti)hero: a charmingly slick killer who can worm his way out of anything." He is faced with a problem in each novel that must be solved by the end, by any means possible. The chess board at the top of the box is a nice depiction of these games. Also, the icons on each cover represent important pieces of the stories. The oar on Talented Mr. Ripley is his first murder weapon. But my favorite is the high-heeled shoe in The Boy Who Followed Ripley, which works so humorously against the title. In that novel, Ripley comes to the aid of a wealthy teenage expat with a secret, and at one point, they travel to a seedy Berlin transvestite club. It's such a small detail, but it's a joy to see it on the cover for someone who's read the books. And lastly, I love the way Ripley gradually disappears from view across all five covers.

Guggenheim

Ummm....GORGEOUS!

"Published on the occasion of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum's fiftieth anniversary...The Guggenheim: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Making of the Modern Museum examines the history, design and construction of Wright's masterwork with preliminary drawings, models and photographs, as well as three major essays that consider the building in three important contexts." — ArtBook.com

Evan Gaffney: My Little Blue Dress

Adorable cover for a spoofy fake memoir about the life of a 100-year-old woman who goes from England to Paris to 50s America and beyond, replete with historical inaccuracies and typos. Note the reflected Penguin logo! From 2002.

Pete Garceau: The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday

Hilarious and well done! A Middle East correspondent who not only speaks Arabic but also grew up in the region offers a a broad cultural and personal investigation into the Middle East. Photo supplied by the author - and most likely features him as a boy.

Rodrigo Corral/Ben Wiseman/Mark Stutzman: Fordlandia

Truly one of my favorite covers right now, and very unique in the bookstore. The spine, which I think is a dark pink, features the the title printed vertically with the car on top of the F. The illustration is, amazingly, an original by Mark Stutzman. Mark also illustrated the art printed on the case of Stephen King's Lisey's Story, the Elvis stamp, and the Annie Get Your Gun Broadway poster:

http://www.liljas-library.com/img/other/lisey_mark.jpg
http://museumofglass.org/blogs/docents/wp-content/uploads/articles_10.jpg
http://www.spotnyc.com/docs/key_annie.php

The book itself sounds fascinating:
In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself, along with its golf courses, ice-cream shops, bandstands, indoor plumbing, and Model Ts rolling down broad streets. (new from Henry Holt)

Alain de Botton

Two books of essays published by Vintage. Their simple beauty speaks for itself. I love the way the cloud is framed in Art of Travel, with a man-made cloud-like ornament superimposed on the natural cloud. Designer names to come.

Mark Abrams: Vie Francaise

I've loved this cover for a long time. The title type looks fantastic against the tile wall. The story, incidentally,involves a middle-aged French house-husband who cheats on his high-powered wife, the CEO of a jacuzzi company.

Helen Yentus: The Implacable Order of Things

Fascinating cover to a fantastical tale of a poor Portuguese town where the devil walks among the townsfolk and the characters include a pair of twins joined at the pinky. Trying to figure out the meaning of the cover may be difficult without reading the book, but I did come across this passage from Publisher's Weekly that might help: "Peixoto aims to manifest a subtle connection between the townspeople, a kind of superconsciousness". Maybe that explains the string. In any case, this is gorgeous. I wonder who designed it...

Roseanne Serra/Ruben Toledo: Couture Classics

Roseanne Serra commissioned illustrator Ruben Toledo to create these unexpected fashiony takes on well-known classics. All are Penguin Classic Deluxe editions in paperback with French flaps, and there are nice special effects to enhance the cool illustrations - like a red foil thread that runs through the large A of Scarlet Letter.

Stock Photo of the Day

Happy Friday, people! (and thank you, Corbis, for making our day)

Keenan: Things Fall Apart

This trade paperback cover is printed on thick stock with a semi-gloss finish , with all the crack lines debossed. It's the story of "Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism... Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture." (Penguin UK)

Adam Simpson: Sunnyside

The amazing UK cover, illustrated by Adam Simpson. The novel "opens on a winter day in 1916 during which Charlie Chaplin is spotted in more than eight hundred places simultaneously, an extraordinary delusion that forever binds the overlapping fortunes of three men: Leland Wheeler, son of the world’s last (and worst) Wild West star, as he finds unexpected love on the battlefields of France; Hugo Black, drafted to fight under the towering General Edmund Ironside in America’s doomed expedition against the Bolsheviks; and Chaplin himself, as he faces a tightening vise of complications—studio moguls, questions about his patriotism, his unchecked heart, and, most menacing of all, his mother." - from the Knopf description

Richard Bravery: Michael Chabon UK Covers

Great paperback series design for Harper Collins UK. Going by the Kavalier and Clay cover, there is a lot of gold foil going on, I'm assuming on all of these, which are printed on non-finish paper. The Wonder Boys cover is hilarious - the typewriter keys in the upper half spell out a review of the book. And the top reads "Every writer has an ideal reader. I thought, and it was just my good luck, that mine wanted to sleep with me." Please click on images to enlarge.

London Calling: The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

I just came back from a great trip to London, where I spent three hours one day at Waterstone's, the UK equivalent of Barnes & Noble (they do have Borders, though). It was fascinating to see all the alternate covers to books we're familiar with here in the US, as well as see the fabulous work of Keenan and Gray318 that doesn't grace our stores. Those guys must be sleeping for half an hour a day. Top shows Jon Gray's Dream Eaters - the circle is actually gold foil. Second is the American paperback version (I think Shasti O'Leary Soudant designed it). Third is a new book in this series, and I'm not sure who designed it, although it appears Gray-like. And fourth is Shasti's US design. More UK designes coming up this week.

Ervin Serrano: The Strain

This book seems to be huge right now, and I really like the funky type treatment which solves several problems at once. Guillermo's name justifiably hits you first, but it's treated in a quirky way that immediately reminds me of Hellboy and Pan's Labyrinth. I believe that originally the slash was supposed to be die-cut. The type seems to be printed on foil or with Metal FX inks and is embossed. There are designs for the upcoming two books in the trilogy inside the back flap. The book tells of a "battle of epic proportions as a vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out" into the world!!!!!