Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby

In August 2024, Picador started publishing a series with paperback reissues of books by Tom Wolfe (1930–2018). The cover designs are by Alex Merto, with illustrations by Seymour Chwast. In LitHub’s rundown of The 167 Best Book Covers of 2024, Linda Huang – herself an accomplished book cover designer – comments:

Of course the legendary Seymour Chwast was the perfect illustrator for these reissues, but I’d like to also call attention to Alex’s design system–from the wry typeface to the clean, horizontal rules. They feel fresh and frame the illustrations into collectable classics.

The font in use is the Condensed Light style of VC Henrietta. Kyle Benson’s revival and expansion of the phototype-era Henrietta was started in 2022. The wonky sans used for smaller text is by the same designer: it’s Nudge, which started out as a digitization of hand-cut vinyl letters spotted on a dog defecation sign at Silver Lake Reservoir in L.A. Both typefaces are available from Future Fonts and also directly from Benson’s Very Cool.

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Pump House Gang

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Painted Word

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Right Stuff

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

In Our Time

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

From Bauhaus to Our House

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Purple Decades

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

The Bonfire of the Vanities

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

Hooking Up

Source: us.macmillan.com Picador. License: All Rights Reserved.

I Am Charlotte Simmons

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.

All-caps Zipper in three lines of alternating colors for the cover of The Reason for the Darkness of the Night. Edgar Allan Poe and the Forging of American Science. This “innovative biography of Edgar Allen Poe [highlights] his fascination and feuds with science.” It was written by John Tresch, Professor of History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute in the University of London.

First issued in hardback in 2021, this is the paperback edition published in 2022 by Picador. Cover design by Alex Merto, with illustration by Jo Minor. The secondary type appears to be Helvetica, slightly stretched.

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.

From Macmillan Publishers:

In Katy Simpson Smith’s The Weeds, two women, connected across time, edge toward transgression in pursuit of their desires.

The book was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in April 2023. Picador’s paperback edition is scheduled for April 2024. The jacket design is by Grace Han, with art direction by Na Kim. Gretchen Achilles designed the book’s interior.

Mark Sinclair included Han’s work in his “Book covers designs of the year 2023” for Creative Review, and comments:

Single-colour book covers are rare and I’ve not come across one that takes the blue palette of cyanotypes and employs it across both illustration and typography. Everything is stretched, too, while the overall aesthetic feels indebted to early New Directions paperbacks. Grace Han’s intriguing cover does an awful lot with very little.

The explicit oblongness is indeed an eye-catcher. For a second I was tempted to find typographic meaning in the weeds illustration, too: the dense pattern of blue and white with an occasional diagonal is reminiscient of extremely elongated typeface designs.

I previously hadn’t paid close attention the more condensed styles of Etna. Mark Simonson’s design is inspired by the Aetna wood type style of the late nineteenth century, which also was produced in various widths. The font in use is Etna XX Condensed Light, the narrowest out of thirty styles in the family. It’s similar in feel to Joy Redick’s Willow, which is even narrower, and also based on wood type, namely a Clarendon. Etna is distinguished by its flared strokes, among other things.

Book jacket; book cover and spine with silver foil stamping

Etna is also used on the title page, paired with Fournier.

Paperback edition, Picador, scheduled for April 2024. It looks like the designer of the adaptation wanted to match the typeface used for “Author of The Everlasting” for the added blurb, but only came close: it’s ITC American Typewriter, not FF Elementa.

Thomas Brussig’s 2001 German-language novel Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee is described as “a moving and miraculously comic story of life in East Berlin before the fall of the Wall.” For the first English translation, published by Picador as The Short End of the Sonnenallee, Cecilia Zhang designed a cover she describes as being influenced by the work of Paul Bacon. The strikingly sparse cover pairs strong use of Ballast with Zhang’s hand-drawn illustration and handwritten treatment for “A Novel.” Art direction by Alex Merto.

For her jacket design for Jack in the Box, Cecilia Zhang drew inspiration from the paraphernalia of vintage theatre playbills. Adding to the design’s narrative, the author’s signature gives the impression of a beloved autographed fan copy of the flyer.

Jack in the Box is a memoir by Jack O’Brien (b. 1939), winner of Tony and Drama Desk Awards and the former artistic director of San Diego’s historic Old Globe theatre. The hardback edition was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in November 2022, using Ballast for the title and author name, with all-caps Futura for the subtitle. The paperback version by Picador, which will follow later this year, uses the same basic design.

About the book:

In Jack in the Box, O’Brien’s follow-up to his memoir Jack Be Nimble, the director collects stories from the many productions he has worked on, the great talents he encountered and collaborated with (including Tom Stoppard, Mike Nichols, Jerry Lewis, Marsha Mason, and many others), and the choices he made, on the stage and off, that have come to define his career. With humor, warmth, and contagious excitement, O’Brien takes the reader by the shoulder, pulls them in, and tells them how to become a director—or, at the very least, relates an unfailingly honest story of how he did.

For the paperback edition, the author’s name was made slightly larger, and the signature moved down a little.

The novel’s title and author’s name are based on Granjon, with additional front panel text set in what appears to be Courier 10 Pitch.

Dust jacket by an unknown designer for the 1998 Picador first English hardcover edition of American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. Jacket illustration by Marshall Arisman. Author photo by Jill Krementz. The true first edition was published in the United States in 1991 as a Vintage trade paperback original, after the Simon & Schuster edition was canceled.

The novel’s title and author’s name are based on Granjon, deconstructed into some kind of abstraction by altering or removing points along the contours of the glyphs. The remaining front panel text, as well as the text featured on the front and back flaps, is set in what appears to be Courier 10 Pitch. The interior title page features additional text set in New Caledonia. Publisher’s mark on spine of jacket and hardcover is set in Albertus.

An example of how the letterforms of Granjon were modified to create the titling featured on the first English hardcover edition of the novel.

View of back panel, spine and front panel of jacket.

The front and back flaps feature text set in what appears to be Courier 10 Pitch.

Hardcover is bound in publisher’s original black cloth-affect boards with silver lettering on spine which is based on Granjon and a publisher’s mark at the base which is set in Albertus.

The interior title page features additional text set in New Caledonia.

Eckmannpsych doesn’t have an italic. Sure, one could slant it; the amorphous design would easily withstand some distortion. But that would be dull. What Thomas Colligan did in this jacket design is way better: combine it with another hot face of horizontal contrast. Temeraire Italienne echoes the modulation with heavy tops and bottoms, and also has the upward-pointing exit strokes found in Eckmannpsych’s M and N with their minuscule construction. What the italic omits in wobbliness, it makes up for in dynamism – typeface pairing at its best.

The Temeraire family is a sampler influenced by styles from the English lettering tradition of the 18th and 19th centuries. Eckmannpsych is a psychedelic rendition of a German Jugendstil typeface from the early 20th century. Here they join forces for something that may have 1970s vibes and yet is unmistakably 2020s.

First published in Spanish in 2019, Pola Oloixarac’s Mona was translated to English by Adam Morris and issued by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in March 2021.

Picador paperback edition with added blurb, scheduled for March 2022.

Source: us.macmillan.com License: All Rights Reserved.

2666 is the last novel by Roberto Bolaño. It was released in 2004, a year after Bolaño's death. […] An English-language translation by Natasha Wimmer was published in the United States in 2008, by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and in the United Kingdom in 2009, by Picador.— Wikipedia

Charlotte Strick simultaneously designed both the hardcover edition and a boxed set of paperbacks. The typography is composed from scanned wood type and Facade. This very narrow face was originally issued by the Boston Type Foundry in three styles; Facade (by John F. Cumming, c. 1882), Facade Condensed (by Julius Herriet jun.), and Facade Condensed No. 2 with added lowercase. The latter was digitally revived by Steve Matteson for Monotype. The wood type used for the wide numerals is not identified. Among digital fonts, Colt Soft comes somewhat close.

Source: archive.org License: Public Domain.

Facade Condensed No. 2 is handy for very short lines. Specimen detail, Central Type Foundry and Boston Type Foundry, 1892

On Faceout Books, Strick has shared some insights into the process:

Roberto Bolaño has a very literary, underground fan base that appears to be growing. It’s a designer's dream to have a mysterious, numerical title to work with. I was a big fan of Rodrigo Corral’s jacket design solution for The Savage Detectives (FSG, 2007), so that made it an even greater challenge to take on what is considered by many to be the late author’s “magnum opus”.

Source: faceoutbooks.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: faceoutbooks.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Source: faceoutbooks.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Jacket of the hardcover edition.

[…] My process began with considering the numbers and how to create them. An early exploration used a spray painted technique that felt cold. I also played around with the idea of using three different typefaces for each “6” to reflect the multi-layered plot line and three paperbacks in the special slipcase edition, but that looked overly complicated and hard to read. Ideally, I didn’t want to use a digital typeface, so I was pleased to discover the woodcut face that eventually made its way onto the final designs. The numbers appear in different ways, vertical, horizontal, and stacked in two columns on the various surfaces of the designs. On the three paperbacks the horizontal numerals move down the stack as you move through the volumes. The title is both monumental and meaningless; Bolaño seems to be having fun with us.

Source: faceoutbooks.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Inner flap of the jacket.

The cardboard slipcase again features Facade (for the author name) and the wood type numerals. The blurbs on the back appear to be in Akzidenz-Grotesk breit halbfett, or Bold Extended. Strick comments:

The box […] is stripped quite bare and aside from the barcode, the type only prints in red. I wanted it to feel like you were pulling these books out of a generic-sort of brown paper bag. I love how the texture of the cardboard shows through all of the red type. The slipcase is foil stamped, and we simulated that effect on the paperbacks and hardcover edition by spot glossing the author name and title type.

Source: charlottestrick.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Paperback edition with three volumes in slip case.

Source: faceoutbooks.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Back and spine of the slipcase.

Source: charlottestrick.com License: All Rights Reserved.

The type runs across the spines of the three volumes.

Source: charlottestrick.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 1 with Jupiter and Semele by French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, who is mentioned in the text. This painting is also used for the hardcover edition.

Source: charlottestrick.com License: All Rights Reserved.

Vol. 2 with a detail from a work by Cy Twombly.

Source: charlottestrick.com License: All Rights Reserved.

“The 3rd volume uses early 18th century hand-colored illustrations from Albertus Seba’s Cabinet of Natural Curiosities, inspired by one of the character’s obsession with seaweed.” — Strick

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

Back of vol. 1 of the paperback edition. The blurbs are set in various styles from Akzidenz-Grotesk.

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.

Hardcover edition (2013) from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Cover design by Charlotte Strick, interior by Jonathan D. Lippincott.

Trade paperback edition (2014) from Picador.

Henry Sene Yee:

One of England’s finest and most loved writers explores the uncomfortable and tragicomic gap between people’s public appearance and their private desires in two tender and surprising stories.

Originally I wanted him to depict just one set of teacups caught in a sexual position rendered with plenty of details, as in the photographic approach. But when I saw all of illustrator Christopher Silas Neal’s great "cupping" sketch ideas I laughed. I couldn't choose just one. So I decided to include several of them in the design and kept them as simply drawn silhouettes. I'm surprised we didn't try any ideas with a tea bag. Next time.

Archer is the perfect type for the topic — outwardly quiet and proper but with an unexpected dash of whimsy.

Early comp.

Early comp.

Tiffany Gibert of Books Matter Blog used our cover to pick out her outfit.

Early comp.