Description of the book by its author Kevin Roose:

The AGI Chronicles delivers deep, fly on the wall reporting offering a real perspective on the tech titans behind the wildly conflicted race to reach tech’s next frontier. AGI, a system that can outdo humans at almost any task, a world-changing technology that could either save humanity or destroy it.

The fonts used on the cover are Terrain Condensed Bold and Condensed Light.

Change Maker: Turn Your Passion for Health and Fitness into a Powerful Purpose and a Wildly Successful Career by John Berardi was designed by Rodrigo Corral using Garage Gothic from Frere-Jones Type.

From publisher BenBella Books:

In this definitive career guide, John Berardi—co-founder of Precision Nutrition, founder of Change Maker Academy, and one of the most successful people in the history of the health and fitness industry—shares his blueprint for becoming the ultimate change maker, one with a powerful purpose, an enthusiastic client base, and the ability to fund your own ideal lifestyle.

This chapter opening spread pairs Garage Gothic with Dom Diagonal and what appears to be handwriting / lettering.

Decoded by Maj Jia was designed by Rodrigo Corral and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, using Nobel by Frere-Jones Type.

Decoded is a 2002 spy thriller, translated from the Chinese by Olivia Milburn and Christopher Payne in 2014, about a brilliant but autistic mathematician, Rong Jinzhen, recruited by the top-secret Chinese intelligence agency Unit 701 for code-breaking during the WWII era and its aftermath.

For Michael Cunningham’s revised versions of classic fairy tales, illustrator Yuko Shimizu added a furry texture to the late 19th-century blackletter face Bradley. She also made the illustrations for the inside of the book. Cover (art direction and typography) by Rodrigo Corral.

First American edition of Edoardo Albinati’s La scuola cattolica, a novel based on the 1975 Circeo massacre. It was translated from the Italian by Antony Shugaar and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux as The Catholic School in 2019.

The type-only book jacket uses Lydia, Benjamin Critton’s digital interpretation of Lydian Bold Condensed. It was designed by Rodrigo Corral, who was also seminal in the reevaluation of (regular-wide) Lydian around 2010, see for example his design of The Barbarian Nurseries from 2011.

Lydia is also used on the title page. The interior design was done by Abby Kagan.

The paperback edition (Picador, 2020) uses the same basic design.

Hardback edition by Avid Reader Press, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The white words in Salter appear to be embossed.

Salter (2021) is the second release in Sharp Type’s ongoing series of explorations of 20th century book jacket calligraphy. Just like Ogg Display (2013, 2019), it’s informed by designs by Oscar Ogg (1909–1971). As its name suggests, it additionally takes cues from another big gun active in the same period, George Salter (1897–1967). Salter’s influence is particularly notable in the lowercase Italic construction. You can read more about the typeface design and the lettering that inspired it on Sharp Type’s website.

For Vladimir, the debut novel by Julia May Jonas, Rodrigo Corral used Salter Italic (with its oversized descending caps) for the title, and paired it with the Roman for the author’s name. Salter’s carefully crafted curves are contrasted with barely legible handwriting for “A Novel”. It’s satisfying to see a typeface with roots in book jacket calligraphy from New York come full circle on a book jacket design from New York!

Art direction by Alison Forner.

Trade paperback edition, Pan Macmillan

Advance Reader’s Edition, August 2021

Blockchain Chicken Farm: And Other Stories of Tech in China’s Countryside, by Xiaowei Wang

In April 2020, Farrar, Straus, and Girroux Originals collaborated with Logic magazine (FSGO / LOGIC) to bring four books that “are brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, inciting fresh conversations focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools reorganizing and redefining life today.” [FSGO]

Each cover in this “series” features Aperçu by Colophon Foundry, the typeface used by Logic magazine for their overall branding. The only exception is Blockchain Chicken Farm, which uses Aperçu Mono. The monospaced typeface shows off some lowercase gems like the swooping tail of the L, the wide branch of the R, the high F bar, and the geometric counter of the G.

Logic magazine published its first book Tech Against Trump in 2017. The Making of the Tech Worker Movement followed in 2020, published as a 48-page zine. Both cover designs were created by in-house designers Xiaowei Wang and Celine Nguyen, featuring Aperçu as the typeface. Chris Allen designed the four book covers for the FSGO / LOGIC editions, with art direction by Rodrigo Corral.

Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet, by Tim Hwang

What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley, by Adrian Daub

Voices from the Valley: Tech Workers Talk About What They Do–and How They Do It, edited by Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel

Tech Against Trump

The Making of the Tech Worker Movement, by Ben Tarnoff

Expanded from a 2018 article for The New York Times Magazine, Nathaniel Rich’s book Losing Earth: A Recent History tells the story of how “a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists [...] risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late.”

Rodrigo Corral’s cover conveys the urgency of the book’s content by starkly pairing Ballast with a simple image in a two-color palette.

Jacket painting: Jean-Françoise Millet, Shepherdess with Her Flock

Source: rodrigocorral.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Design: Elena Giavaldi, Rodrigo Corral Studio. Art direction: Rodrigo Corral. Art direction at Farrar, Straus and Giroux: Susan Mitchell.

Source: www.amazon.com License: All Rights Reserved.

The interior of the paperback edition (Picador, 2012) was designed by Jonathan D. Lippincott. It also uses Lydian, for the title page, chapter openings, running titles, page numbers, and initials.

Source: www.amazon.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.amazon.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.amazon.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: www.amazon.com License: All Rights Reserved.

From Book Depository:

In CoDex 1962, Sjón has woven ancient and modern material and folklore and cosmic myths into a singular masterpiece—encompassing genre fiction, theology, expressionist film, comic strips, fortean studies, genetics, and, of course, the rich tradition of Icelandic storytelling.

Translated for Icelandic by Victoria Cribb and published by MCD, a new division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, in September 2018. The cover was designed by Rodrigo Corral. It shows centered caps in a hand-rendered outline version of Neue Helvetica Condensed Black, with color gradient accentuations.

Via Dan Wagstaff’s Book Covers of Note 2018 for The Casual Optimist.

For this new cover, Rodrigo Corral picks up the typeface that he has already used for another Shteyngart book: the energetic brush caps from House Industries’ Sign Painter font kit. Super Sad True Love Story and its cover design is also cited at the side, suggesting a directory-like thumb index. From this color palette, blue is used for the large tear drop which fills the cover and holds the type.

Although the letterforms are evocative of handlettering, they all stem from fonts and are digitally arranged. In addition to House Brush, there is also a similar, bolder style for the title (unidentified; Avalanche comes close), and Signalist for the author’s name.

Our tools allow us to knead letterforms and bend them into shape, and the result here is not terrible (if you don’t look too closely at Signalist’s caps and the ‘g’). Still, this concept could have been more convincingly realized by a lettering artist, who can create a tailored solution, unencumbered by the constraints of fonts. Type generally works best when used in the way it was designed for: in straight lines, undistorted.

via Casual Optimist’s Book Covers of Note November 2014

Art & Design: Rodrigo Corral Studio
Creative Director: Paolo Pepe