New Directions’ 2018 reissue of The Blue Flowers, written by Raymond Queneau and originally published in 1965. Translation by Barbara Wright. Sara Wood write in Lit Hub’s “The 75 Best Book Covers Of 2018 According To Book Cover Designers”:

This cover further cements Peter Mendelsund’s status as a master of contemporary book cover design. From the type selection to the graphic rendering of the collaged artwork, it tells you everything that you need to know in one fell swoop: this is a bold, wacky work of 20th century surrealism (dare I say that it gives me Monty Python vibes?) that has a rightful place in any 21st century library.

The fonts in use are Milton Glaser’s Futura Stencil a.k.a. Glaser Stencil (1969) and Sackers Italian Script, designed in 1974–75 by Gary Sackers for Compugraphic.

The publisher’s website shows a less elaborate, faceless version. I hope this is a placeholder image.

The back cover is set in Windsor.

Book Depository:

A highly original history of the least understood and most intractable form of organised human aggression, from ancient Rome to our present conflict-ridden world

Via Casual Optimist’s Book Covers of Note February 2017. The typeface in use is Weiß-Lapidar mager, designed in 1931 by E.R. Weiß for Bauer, and internationally better known as Weiss Initials No.2. The font in use is Castcraft’s digitization from 1991, OPTI Weiss Initials Two.

Another book jacket by Peter Mendelsund, similar to my earlier post, also using an in-and-out relationship between type and design elements. The vertical bars are done in bronze foil. (The “dead house” was a prison.) The five main lines of type are in something stronger than white burnout — a matte foil, probably, or maybe even screenprint?

The book was designed by Soonyoung Kwon and set in Janson Text.

Peter Mendelsund uses a few fonts from Robert Slimbach’s extensive Poetica family. The five large lines are debossed.

Iris Weinstein designed the book, with the rarely-seen August for display (thanks to Stephen for the ID) and Fairfield for the text.

Peter Mendelsund:

A new jacket (just back from press) for a wonderful book about Schubert’s Winterreise by the tenor (and polymath) Ian Bostridge. The footprints on the jacket are blind debossed.

Ulysses has been included in the Best Book Covers of 2013 by the New York Times.

Humboldt is Dieter Steffmann’s slightly blurry take on a 1930s Fraktur. There are better and probably less anachronistic blackletter fonts available, but Humboldt is ok, and the simple arrangement referencing the opening notes of the 5th Symphony is a nice touch. Too bad about the straight quote.

For the upcoming Schocken/Pantheon Kafka library, cover designer Peter Mendelsund turned to a typeface derived from the handwriting of Franz Kafka himself. FF Mister K is not a facsimile of Kafka’s pen, but Julia Sysmäläinen studied the writer’s manuscripts closely to develop a font family that could be readable and useful in modern design. The result is a script with a sense of timelessness, a rare trait among handwriting faces — most are either antique or contemporary.

The FF Mister K family has three members: Standard, Crossout, and Onstage, a more decorative alternative.

Mendelsund uses the fonts well. My only suggestion would be to substitute an alternate ‘k’ on this title to avoid any ambiguity between “America” and “Amerika”.

The choice of Times for the author name is not as straightforward. It’s based on Mendelsund’s personal view on Kafka and how he sees the writer connecting to Times’ modern day image:

My associations with Times are two-fold, and contradictory. On the one hand, Times puts me in mind of Microsoft, MS Windows, Word (with which Times is distributed and is most people’s intro to the font), which in turn makes me think of nefarious organizations and the powerlessness of the individual in the face of the large, uncaring, politico-corporate entity. On the other hand, as the universal default face, it has an everyman-like humility to it. Kafka, I think, would approve.

On the smallish “F. Kafka”, Mendelsund adds:

There are authors who cry out for a big treatment for their name, Like, you know, TOLSTOY, or NIETZSCHE. Or even some that want prettifying, like a Proust, say. But Kafka, he seems, weirdly, best treated with as little grandiosity as possible.

And the eyes?

… not the first or last time I will use an eye as a device on a jacket — book covers are, after all, faces, both literally and figuratively, of the books they wrap. I find eyes, taken in the singular, create intimacy, and in the plural instill paranoia. This seemed a good combo for Kafka, who is so very adept at the portrayal of the individual, as well as the portrayal of the persecution of the individual.

By the way, any book lover will love Mendelsund’s portfolio site. The breadth of his work is represented by each book spine, sitting on the page like a bookshelf. It’s impressive way to show how much he’s done, worthy of a desktop background or printed poster.

Mendelsund’s book design work. So wide I had to split it into two “shelves”.