Hasta La Ideas

The inaugural Book Cover Design Awards were launched this month by two of the UK’s leading book designers, Jon Gray and Jamie Keenan. Aiming to celebrate book cover design from a wide range of genres, it is now open for nominations from 2013…

The intriguingly-named Academy of British Cover Designers was initially set up by Gray and Keenan with the intention of promoting a broader range of cover design than currently features in awards schemes, magazines and blogs. Its associated Book Cover Design Awards aims to cement this further with a new competition to find the best work created in ten publishing categories:

Children’s, Young Adult, SciFi/Fantasy, Mass Market, Literary Fiction, Crime/Thriller, Non-fiction, Series Design, Classic/Reissue and Women’s Fiction.

Gray says that book cover design is quite a different beast to the bulk of graphic design – employing “unwritten rules of genre and hierarchy” – and an awards scheme dedicated to the discipline would have a better appreciation of the demands made upon individual books.

“We have to use quotes and make them large; we have to mention prizes, shortlists, author’s previous books,” he says. “There is a lot of information to be conveyed in a small space. Managing that and still creating something new is difficult. Getting that through a publishing house, an author, an agent and a supermarket, all of whom have their own ideas is even harder.

“It means that when it comes to design awards the work often just doesn’t fit. If it’s judged using the same criteria as an art book with two lines of carefully spaced, minute Helvetica, then it doesn’t really stand a chance.”

The first BCDA competition will be open to any cover produced by a British designer for a book published between January 1 and December 31 2013.

Book covers will be voted for only by fellow cover designers – “the people who know the restrictions that the work is created under,” adds Gray. “They appreciate the sometimes tiny details that make one thriller cover better than another, or a children’s cover that tries to break out of its genre. Work that generally goes unnoticed but we think deserves recognition.”

And the awards itself? “It won’t be a glitzy thing,” says Gray, “just a few designers in a pub with a projector. Which we think sort of sums up book designers nicely.”

Further details on entering work will be announced via the @abcoverD twitter and Gray’s blog at gray318.com/blog. Designers will be able to enter their own work or the work of other designers. Entry is free.

Marian Bantjes’ first monograph is a refreshingly honest visual history of the last ten years of her work as a graphic artist…

It’s a bold decision to title a collection of your life’s work to date with what could be taken as a dismissive criticism of it.

But calling her new book Pretty Pictures, as suggested by the designer Rick Valicenti, captures perfectly the character of Marian Bantjes, who has both the confidence and wit to confront the slight head on – in shiny mirrored silver cover stock.

While Bantjes’ last book, I Wonder, was a treatise on the subjects of wonderment, ornamentation and memory, via her own design philosophy, this new publication contains just about all the work she has made during 2003-2012.

It is chock-full of it – set out chronologically, covering everything from posters, magazines, installations, lettering, patterns and personal projects, even sketch work and rejected designs.

And rather than label simple captions to each project, bolstered with a brief chapter opener here and there, Bantjes has instead written in detail about each and every piece in the book; as if turning them over again to rediscover what they meant when they were first created, and what they might mean now.

Bantjes touches on her early creative years, starting out as a typesetter in 1983 before becoming a graphic designer a decade later, but it’s her most recent body of work, where she looks out for projects that she really wants to do as a graphic artist, which shows her distinctive approach to pattern, colour, lettering and wordplay really taking off.

As Rick Poynor suggests in his foreword, her career has been unique because of these two stages – and it is the later years of making work in everything from Illustrator, to pen and pencil; or ‘illuminating’ projects with gerbera petals, feathers, coral, even sugar, that gets its due here.

Just as the metallic cover reveals a surprise underneath, Bantjes’ book offers up plenty of her thinking behind how and why she does what she does. She has said the book is partly a way of explaining the processes that led to the work she is often asked about; so that she can move on.

While she does that, it would be wise to enjoy the fruits of her last ten years in the pages of this beautifully produced, highly personal book.

Pretty Pictures is published by Thames & Hudson; £42, thamesandhudson.com. More of Bantjes’ work at bantjes.com, @bantjes.

Today’s release of Autobiography by Morrissey on Penguin Classics, normally the home of Chaucer and Milton, is a marketing move comparable to that of another master of pop branding – David Bowie…

There’s an intriguing contest developing this year for best male solo marketer in the pop world. Both contenders are known not just for their musical output, but also their instinctive grasp of image and personal myth-making. While they won’t feature in any awards schemes, they may be the two outstanding examples of creative marketing this year.

The first, and less controversial, of the two entries is the launch campaign for David Bowie’s comeback single Where Are We Now on January 8 this year – the first single from his subsequent album The Next Day.

There are no images to illustrate the launch campaign for the single, because no campaign existed. The idea was not to do one – just quietly put the song out on iTunes and let people discover it. Of course, people did, Twitter went crazy and the press were soon all over it. No 48-sheets, no TV ads, no interviews, no promoted tweets, no social media ‘seeding’ – but wall-to-wall press coverage for days and a rapid rise to the top of the downloads chart.

The fact that it didn’t exist shouldn’t stop this being recognised as one of the marketing campaigns of the year. And the ‘execution’ of this non-existent campaign was a lot harder and more complex than the execution of many existing campaigns. Keeping a secret on that scale for that length of time is a remarkable feat. And it was in keeping with the album that followed, with its anti-album-cover designed by Barnbrook.

Sleeve design of David Bowie’s The Next Day by Barnbrook

Then there’s Morrissey. This is the more controversial of the two contenders because, unlike the Bowie idea, it will antagonise as many people as it impresses. Morrissey reportedly agreed to publish with Penguin on the condition that the book went straight into its Classics range – not even the Modern Classics range, but the hallowed imprint normally associated with translations and reissues of literary giants from Homer to Wordsworth, and more recently Morrissey’s hero Oscar Wilde.

Several commentators have criticised Penguin for debasing its hard-earned reputation for the sake of a cheap PR stunt by a self-obsessed pop star. And it’s not an unreasonable view. Just like his music, the Penguin Classics move will divide people into those who think Morrissey’s demands are childish and vain, and those who see something clever and interesting going on. That’s what makes this such an archetypically Morrissey idea. Whether you admire it or hate it, there’s no denying it’s 100% on brand.

Like the Bowie idea, it’s also one thing to think of it and another to follow it through. Any writer should get a certain sense of satisfaction from seeing an author wielding such power over a publisher. The sheer amount of ego it must have taken to hold those discussions is a thing of wonder. And an incidental point: a side-effect of the Penguin Classics release is that the book has gone straight into relatively cheap paperback – a refreshingly non-commercial move that ought to be supported.

But what if the book is rubbish?

It may well be, but a ‘classic’ book isn’t necessarily a good one – it is one that survives and is read for generations, at the very least on a cult level. For better or worse, we can say that with 99% certainty about Morrissey, who has already achieved in his lifetime the iconic status of a Wilde or indie Elvis – and whose myth, like all myths, is likely to grow after he’s gone.

And it’s worth bearing in mind another possibility – the book may be great. A writer many of whose turns of phrase have already entered the language has at least earned the benefit of the doubt.

Either way, the satisfying thing about this idea is that only Morrissey could have done it. Put Sting on the cover and the idea is simply vain. Put Noel Gallagher on the cover and it’s just a cocky joke. With Morrissey, it’s both and neither. It carries a complex cultural meaning.

The same point could be made about the Bowie idea. In anyone else’s hands, it wouldn’t have the same power. The anti-marketing approach resonates more because it comes from the inventor of Ziggy Stardust. From that brilliantly complex, colourful media creation, Bowie has moved to the opposite end of the scale – a complete blank. Yet both ideas spring from the same postmodern spirit.

Morrissey and Bowie share one last thing in common – their ideas are at once simple and richly subversive. Both challenge the norms of the music and publishing industries – the former run on hype and soulless commodification, the latter run on complacent hierarchies reinforced by cultural prejudice. Both ideas are artistic statements, because they come from the artist themselves – no marketing departments or PR agencies were involved. Despite the jokey title of this post, this is not about marketing the art – it is the art.

It’s hard to choose which of them is the outstanding achievement this year, but maybe it’s wise to reserve judgment – we’re only in October and Olly Murs has been quiet for a while.

Nick Asbury is a freelance writer and one half of creative partnership Asbury & Asbury.

Martha Stewart was joined by Bravo’s Andy Cohen last night to kick off the second annual American Made, a two-day celebration of ingenuity and craftsmanship that turns Grand Central Terminal’s Vanderbilt Hall into a lively marketplace of handpicked purveyors, crafters, and makers. Among this year’s American Made honorees are lighting designer Lindsey Adelman, Shinola’s Health Carr, and paper crafters Leo Kowal and Mary Rudakas, who took home the audience choice award for their SVGCuts creations. And for Stewart, that’s not even the icing on the cake—she’s got a new book out (about cakes!), an equally delicious PBS TV series in production (more cakes!), and big Halloween plans (Pumpkin Layer Cake…and much more!). We paused in our attempt at her Clementine-Vanilla Bean Loaf Cake to ask her seven questions.

What are some of your favorite finds among the nominees and winners of this year’s American Made awards?
The two-day event celebrates the spirit of innovation and spotlight a new generation of entrepreneurs. Everything we highlight with the American Made program, which is now in its second year, is something I’ve found in my various travels and meetings to be fascinating, unique, and worthy of recognition. This year, I have my eye on Back to the Roots, which is a ‘grow your own mushroom kit’ company out of Oakland, California, as well as Spoonflower, a custom fabric printing company in Durham, North Carolina.

Which recipe in Martha Stewart’s Cakes would you suggest for an amateur baker who wants to whip up a tasty and visually stunning cake?
The buttermilk cake with chocolate frosting is a great starting point for any amateur. It’s both visually stunning and tasteful. This book also provides a basics section specifically designed for amateurs who are looking to sharpen their baking skills. It provides essential equipment and ingredients for mixing, baking, and finishing!

Any tricks you can share about making a cake look as good as the amazingly beautiful ones featured in the pages of Martha Stewart’s Cakes?
Pairing cakes with accompaniments can be the finishing touch to a baker’s creation. They are served on the side adding richness, to simple cakes.
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Later on this evening the Man Booker Prize will be awarded to one of six shortlisted books. Going by the covers alone, Jenny Grigg’s design for Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries is the stand out for me this year…

Australian designer Grigg’s cover for Catton’s 800-plus page novel, published by Granta, is the most subtley crafted on the shortlist, but packs no less a punch for it.

If the book’s title is taken at face value, with no knowledge of the content of the novel, then the artwork seems to suggest that something once hidden is being illuminated.

In fact uncovering things is part of the storyline (gold digging in New Zealand) and, in using these four shapes, Grigg is also showing something in the ‘process’ of illumination – the moon.

These four lunar stages (from top, a full moon, waning gibbous, last quarter and waning crescent), allude both to the title and one of themes of the book. The ‘luminaries’ is an astrological term for the sun and the moon; for astrologers the two most important bodies in the heavens.

According to Tom Tivnan on We Love This Book, in writing the book Catton referred to charts from Sky & Telescope magazine and also used and the Stellarium software program “to plot the stars and planets during the course of when the narrative takes place, with characters linked to the heavenly bodies.”

Twelve “stellar” characters apparently relate to the Zodiac signs, while there another seven “planetary” characters in the novel, each revolving around a murdered character, Crosbie Wells.

In the US, The Luminaries is published by Little, Brown and the cover looks like this:

The moon’s phases are increased to 12, suggestive of those 12 ‘stellar’ characters in the novel, with much more of the portrait showing through. Yet this reveal feels far too much compared to the elegant restraint shown in Grigg’s UK edition.

Whether Catton wins or not tonight, many more readers will no doubt be drawn to her book – and its cover will continue, rather brilliantly, to give little away.

When beginning a new book, sometimes it is more fun to be kept a little in the dark.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton is out now from Granta. Details of the other five Man Booker-nominated books are at themanbookerprize.com – the winner will be announced at 9.50pm tonight. Jenny Grigg’s work can be seen at jennygrigg.com.