Tom Wolfe paperback series, Picador

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.