The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson

This dust jacket was created for the first edition of The Stars at Noon by Denis Johnson (1949–2017), published by Alfred A. Knopf in September 1986 as a Borzoi book:

The novel follows an unnamed American woman during the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1984. It was adapted into the 2022 film Stars at Noon, starring Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn.

In my previous post about the Esther Phillips album cover, I wrote that Allen Stingray needs to be used in big sizes to really shine.

Prolific book designer R.D. Scudellari (1933–2022) got the message: he used the mesmerizing 3D face in appropriately giant letters. The interplay of positive and negative shapes nicely corresponds to the book’s title. Scudellari further extended its eponymous features – the fin-like boundaries and the blade-like stripes – to the design as a whole. As a finishing touch, he added contour lines to better define a few letters, compare T S R to a specimen of the unmodified Stingray.

The author’s name is added in caps from a phototype version of Binner, possibly PLINC’s Brass Band.

Via @that.covers.it, a inspirational collection of book jackets and covers maintained by Amanda Weiss.