Stock Photo of the Day

This one is for Miss Jennifer Fiore. Thanks, SuperStock!

Archie Ferguson: Plague of Doves

I love the combination of images here. Plus, I think this does a great job of featuring big type without ruining the design. Beautiful!

Mary Schuck: The Bell Jar

I absolutely love this cover. I have a thing for geometrical shapes paired with photos, the way Paul Rand, Saul Bass and the other designers of that time did things. Since this book takes place in the 50s, this design convention is perfect, and the broken collection of shapes and colors may also signify the author/protagonist's deteriorating sanity. And.....it's letterpressed!

Helen Mirra: Cloud, the, 3

I saw this book late at night in the window of Books 192, a Chelsea bookstore near the galleries. After some hunting around, I uncovered the title and author. Helen Mirra is an artist who works in a variety of media, including the writing of books in the form of indexes - this one "tracks words and ideas through John Dewey's Reconstruction in Philosophy (1920)." I don't know what that means, but I had some fun finding the title in that aesthetically pleasing jumble of letters.

Rodrigo Corral: Man Walks Into A Room

This is the story of a man who loses all his memory beyond the age of 12. Much of the novel takes place in the desert, where the man participates in a research experiment where other people's memories are grafted to his. I think the blank slate of lost memory fits nicely with this spare treatment. This is Nicole Krauss's first novel. She is the author of The History of Love.

Old School and School's Out

It's girls vs. boys. There's a nice similarity in the classic containment devices for both titles, while the girls punk it out and the boys keep it serious.

Old School is about a New England prep school in the 60s, where the boys compete in a writing competitions to grant them an audience with the great writers of the day.

School's Out is a retelling of Lord of the Flies where the island is actually the classroom of a middle school. After a teacher commits suicide, the substitute teacher slowly comes to realize his class is a creepy gang that all the other teachers are terrified of.

Unknown: The Society of Others

I really dig the juxtaposition of type, and that funky torn geometric containment unit for the author's name. This is an existential novel by the screenwriter of Gladiator (!) about an English teenager who ends up in a totalitarian country with a small band of revolutionary poets.

Chip Kidd: Rising Sun

Another blast from the past. This really grabbed me when I was a little High School freshman. Mamma say What IS that awesome font??? I fed it through olde reliable WhatTheFont and got nothing! To those who don't know, this novel is a non sci-fi Crichton, about Japanese business intrigue (land of the rising sun, yo). The novel is a mystery, launched when the body of a beautiful model is discovered lying dead on the boardroom table. It was also a film with Sean Connery as the detective. I like that little highlight at the top of the red circle. It makes the circle look lick-able.

Allison Saltzman: Lit Life

It's an oldie but a goodie (from 2001). Photo by Tina Barney. How much do we love the typography? the colors? the whole freaking layout?

Criterion Collection: Gems of Part Deux

Hiroshima, Mon Amour: A French actress (Emmanuelle Riva) and a Japanese architect (Eiji Okada) engage in a brief, intense affair in postwar Hiroshima, their consuming fascination impelling them to exorcise their own scarred memories of love and suffering.

The Honeymoon Killers: Martha Beck (Shirley Stoler) is sullen, overweight and heartbreakingly alone. Desperate for affection, she joins Aunt Carrie’s Friendship Club and strikes up a correspondence with Ray Fernandez (Tony Lo Bianco), a suave, charismatic smooth talker who could be the man of her dreams—or a wicked con artist bound for trouble.

Criterion Collection: Gems of Part 1

How freakin gorgeous?????!!!! Not sure who designed these, anyone know? These DVD covers rock. In Divorce Italian Style, "Baron Ferdinando Cefalù (Marcello Mastroianni) longs to marry his nubile young cousin Angela (Stefania Sandrelli), but one obstacle stands in his way: his fatuous and fawning wife, Rosalia (Daniela Rocca). His solution? Since divorce is illegal, he hatches a plan to lure his spouse into the arms of another and then murder her in a justifiable effort to save his honor."

Kicking and Screaming: "Paralyzed by postgraduation ennui, a group of college friends remain on campus, patching together a community for themselves in order to deny the real-world futures awaiting them." (from the Criterion Website)

http://www.criterion.com/asp/

The Riches: Pinocchio Syndrome

OMG! It's my favorite TV show poster of the week!

Gregg Kulick: Eat This!

Amazing work from Gregg Kulick, the football player turned dj/designer extraordinaire. I love the monstrousness of this sign - it's huge, rickety, and hilarious. In the book, the author travels around the US uncovering " local treats, guilty pleasures, and some oddities that no true food lover should miss," but more importantly, answering such burning questions as "Lamb fries—eat or avoid?"

To see more of Gregg's work: http://kulickdesign.com/

Tamaye Perry and Aunt Dimity

This beautifully designed, distinctively Penguin-y series, revolves around an American woman detective living in England. She is aided in her mystery-solving by the ghost of her aunt, Dimity. The plot of the newest novel, Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter is as follows (thanks, Glamazon):

Lori Shepherd’s life in England couldn’t be more tranquil or more satisfying— except for one thing. Her five-year-old twins have started school, and Lori fears they’ll catch everything from the flu to fleas. What they do come home with, however, is worse: a report of a pale, cloaked figure with bloodstained lips lurking in the woods.

OK. What's with the vampire novels this year???

Peter Mendelsund vs. Hollywood

From Ignition Print come these new posters for the movie due April 5. Mendelsund's original logo for the hardcover remains, though altered. Ignition made the posters for 30 Days of Night, 3:10 to Yuma, and 27 Dresses. Surprisingly, the posters have JUST come out, only a month before the movie. That is mighty odd, says I.

Ignition website: http://www.ignitionprint.com/main-new.html
Movie website: http://www.ruinsmovie.com/

Peter Mendelsund: Peace

Is this gloriously beautiful or wha? Dropping April 15. From Glamazon:

"Italy, near Cassino. The terrible winter of 1944. A dismal icy rain, continuing unabated for days. Guided by a seventy-year-old Italian man in rope-soled shoes, three American soldiers are sent on a reconnaissance mission up the side of a steep hill that they discover, before very long, to be a mountain. And the old man’s indeterminate loyalties only add to the terror and confusion that engulf them on that mountain, where they are confronted with the horror of their own time—and then set upon by a sniper."

Chip Kidd: Divided Kingdom

I'm kinda lovin this cover. From the New Yorker:

"In this dystopian novel, the population of the United Kingdom has been divvied up into color-coded sectors determined by humor: the phlegmatic, the melancholic, the choleric, and the sanguine. Under this system, temperament trumps kinship—in a neat twist, the family unit is now considered responsible for "society's disintegration"—and separation is enforced by border guards and government informers."

Vintage Classics

This is a an interesting series of classic reprints at budget prices. I think they're designed in the UK. You can check out a bunch of them here:

http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/vintage/vintageclassics/catalogue.htm?id=new&from=1

Chip Kidd Promotional Video

Who knew he did impressions?

Gray 318: The Lodger Shakespeare

I love the image and font choice on this one - it totally reminds me of the rickety drawings in the shakespeare books I read in high school. It's like a 60s English look that I suppose borrows from the 1600s. I'm a little unsure about the letters being so tight inside the boxes, but as a whole, this cover stands out and looks entirely different than the others around it.

The book "...re-creates the physical and cultural circumstances of the two-year period of 1603–1605 when Shakespeare, around 40 and at the peak of his profession, was a lodger in the home of a sexually lax Huguenot family who provided raw material for All's Well That Ends Well and other works" (Amazon)

Roberto de Vicq vs. Brooke Shields

Wow. When I saw the book (top) at the bookstore, I thought I'd ask Ali who designed it. Little did I realize it was a reprint of the novel originally published in 1981 (?) that was the basis of the Brooke Shields film. OMG! Needless to say, we've come a long way since the 80s. Still, I totally LOVE the movie poster. Thing is, the book is about two teenagers in love. The guy is OBSESSED with the girl, to the point where his love is a disease and causes him to commit crimes. I love the way he's totally lost in fantasy, while Brooke's eyes are open, as if she's thinkinig "something's weird here...". Or maybe she's thinking "I wonder if I'll ever work with Kathy Griffin..."

What I love most about the cover is the endless kerning of the title.

Paul Buckley: Blood Kin

This scan sux - it looks better if you click on it. I believe this is case bound, and that the red is metallic. But I may be wrong. This is a well-received first novel about a military coup in an unnamed country, told from the POV of the president's barber, chef, and portraitist. I suppose the three heads on the throne represent these characters.

Rodrigo Corral: Ravens in the Storm

This is totally attention-grabbing at the bookstore. Interesting mesh of paintbrush font with newspaper-font. The dots in the background are a great touch - they make it feel newspaper-y and are cooler that a plain solid background. And who doesn't love a great-looking capital "R"?!

Evan Gaffney/Darren Haggar Fangland!!

Two wonderful covers for a gentle children's book about a little boy's teething experience. Actually, it's a modern re-telling of the Dracula story, where a news reporter goes to Transylvania and meets you-know-who! The reviews are great.

Top is hardcover designed by Evan Gaffney, bottom is paperback by Darren Haggar.

http://www.amazon.com/Fangland-Novel-John-Marks/dp/B00127SHRS/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203043325&sr=1-1

Stock Photo of the Day

Snuff by Chuck Palahniuk

Drop date is 5/20/08.

Blackboard Jungle

Me Talk Pretty One Day - Michael Ian Kaye & Melissa Hayden
Abstinence Teacher - Steve Snyder

Pet Shop Boys

Pet Shop Boys have been cranking out some amazing modernist CD packages for as long as they've been around. Here are some relatively new ones I haven't seen.

Check out their website for more visual stimulation AND lots and lots of free PSB music:

http://www.petshopboys.co.uk/

From Darren Haggar

Found these lovelies on Darren Haggar's revamped website, under "Points of Reference".

http://www.dhaggar.com/