The designers have gone to town on this one, as have the production team.
The result is a glorious, unique and quite beautiful piece of cover design.
OR…
This is a self-indulgent and completely illegible waste of time and money.
In fact, it is so hard to work out the title and the author name that the publisher has been forced to spend extra money on adding a sticker to explain who has written the thing.
You don’t even want to imagine what this looks like as a thumbnail.
Sure, the publishers will argue that John Sayles’ loyal audience will know what this is all about and will rejoice in having a book that oozes beauty and production values. Especially in an era when the hardback has to fight tooth and nail to add value
But can any author afford to turn their back on conquering new readers?
And does it have to be this extreme?
Does interesting design have to mean terrible communication?
We think not — so although we appreciate the intent behind this cover — ultimately this is design shooting itself in the foot by wilfully ignoring common sense and commercial reality.
10:40 am
Maybe perversely, but in the acreage of the land of the bland, I enjoy it. And I wish it well!
1:44 pm
It has come down to this. All book jacket design is now measured by if or not the title can be clearly read on a phone.Smart thinking?
The cover type is indeed slightly hard to read. But anyone with perhaps 5 seconds on their hands should be able to decipher it.
This cover communicates on many levels, it’s reference points have probably been well researched and lovingly re-constructed (to suit the history contained within the book). I think it’s uniqueness will appeal to a certain part of the book-buying market, and it will generate a buzz due to this.
Interesting production values are perhaps the way printed books will survive and endure. Mcsweenys are one of the companies who have picked up on this early on.
9:21 am
You are both right and of course, as lovers of design and fans of McSweeneys we also want this book to do very well.
Our only fear is that when you talk about someone having 5 seconds on their hands to decipher a cover, actually you are asking a hell of a lot of the consumer.
It might sound crazy — but almost all ‘Buyer Observation Studies’ in bookshops reveal just how little time people devote to ‘decoding’ individual titles that are outside of their favourite genres.
This cover makes buying the book ‘hard work’ for people who don’t know about it, and that will work against it.
2:35 pm
It’s true that this jacket once translated into a thumbnail is hard to understand. However, in a brick & mortar book store, seeing 10 of this book displayed side by side must be absolutely spectacular.
I have seen more and more of these book collections where the designer is clearly thinking ahead of the thumbnail in order to end up with a coherent collection once displayed on a presentation shelf. There is life after the thumbnail.