Design Geekery As Applied To Some Book Covers By One Author

I think I sort of alluded in one of the comments a while back to being a bit of a design geek, especially digging the work of Chopping Block and Shawn Wolfe's Beatkit-Era Stuff (his newer stuff seems to just be Beatkit-Retreads, only minus the... spark or something). I've even gone so far as to write a fan letter to Chopping Block -- never heard back; my guess is that they thought I was looking for an internship or something. I wasn't -- I just wanted to say "hey, your stuff is awesome!"

I've never actually taken any design courses; mostly because I am terrible at drawing. I've done some home-made design type stuff. I've designed almost all of the TODCRA Productions record covers, some of which I'm actually relatively proud of, and I've done a bit of other stuff, too, mainly for other things of mine. I think I'm relatively decent for an amateur who can't draw, but most professional stuff, not-surprisingly, blows me out of the water. I tend to think of good designs, it's just a matter of putting them down. (The closest to any training I've had, though, is in a Newspaper Production class, we had a typographic design project. It was pretty simple, but I did pretty well on it.)

So, basically, I'm a complete Armchair-Designer, here. I'm sort of the equivalent of those guys who sit and watch football games and yell at the TV about who the coach should have put in and whatnot. Since I can't stomach most sports that aren't bowling, that's pretty much out for me, so I just go and yell at books about what font should have been put in. Anyway, though, aside from design type stuff, I'm also a big readin' type guy. I have way too many books. And, well, books typically have covers on them -- covers that have been designed by someone (I think people might see where I'm going with this bitchen segue)...

Anyway, not too long ago, Haruki Murakami's new book came out in an English translation -- Kafka on the Shore. Murakami's one of my favorite authors (though I infinitely prefer the Alfred Birnbaum translations over Philip Gabriel's translation work, which I find clumsy and kind of awful -- who unfortunately has been doing the newest translations, but that's a subject for another post.), and I ended up ordering the book before the release date, as I could hardly wait. It's a pretty good book, actually -- my favorite is still Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and Kafka on the Shore is a strange book in that it sort of reads more like commentary on Hard-Boiled than as a new novel -- lots of repeated and similar themes; not really a retread or anything, though, but definitely a strange animal.

Anyway, though, that's also getting off topic; the main thing I want to talk about here is the cover. Which is, well, pretty awful, I think. And it's even worse in person. (Although when I took it with me to a doctor's appointment, the receptionist commented on the interesting cover, so it could just be me -- though she didn't specify "interesting" as in "Intriguing" or "Amazing someone would put that on their book", so....) Compare it, however, to the UK edition -- it's not great, but it's got sort of a simple elegance going on.

However, here's the problem, while Chip Kidd is continuing to do the Hardback designs (who is normally excellent, actually -- my guess is that he merely got hit in the head for this one, and perhaps Sputnik Sweetheart as well), his publisher got a new designer for the US paperback editions. Which is even worse that it'd normally be, since the older editions were actually pretty decent. But yes, let's take a look: Here's a list of the redesigns:

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End Of The World | The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle | A Wild Sheep Chase | After the Quake | Dance Dance Dance | Sputnik Sweetheart | South of the Border, West of The Sun | The Elephant Vanishes

If you notice, there seems to be a recurring theme. Especially in covers like Hard-Boiled, Dance, Sputnik and South. Mainly "THIS DUDE IS LIKE JAPANESE SO WE GOTTA PUT JAPANESE PEOPLE ON THE COVER SO THEY WILL KNOW THAT THIS DUDE IS LIKE JAPANESE!!!111111". I suppose that shouldn't annoy me, and, to be honest, it wouldn't if it weren't so ineptly done. Especially the cover for South of the Border; the hardback (also by Chip Kidd -- see what I mean? Kafka is clearly the fluke.) cover was actually simplistic and somewhat pretty in its simplicity, but the new cover is just... terrible. Although, this is easily Murakami's worst book, so perhaps they wanted a lousy cover for a mediocre book?

What does kind of amuse me, though, is that one of these is actually an improvement; witness, the original Sputnik Sweetheart hardback cover. The spine of it is the same image, only flipped vertically as well. It's... pretty terrible really. This is another Chip Kidd, but the only other one of his Murakami covers I dislike; though if I had to choose, I'd much rather have this jacket than the Kafka one.

Another terrible design -- look at the new Wild Sheep Chase again, and answer me this -- what is the deal with the star? I don't mean "How does it work in the story?" because it comes up in the novel; so I suppose the designer does get points for either actually having read the book or knowing someone who did[1]. However, they don't get credit for, what appears to be just half-assedly cutting out a star and pasting it over a photograph of a sheep. The version I have (sorry for the small image) isn't too terribly much better, but at least it's got a different sort of mediocre design. The UK edition seems to be a bit better at what the new US designer was going for, although I tend to wonder if this novel is just destined to have a mediocre-at-best cover.

The cover for After the Quake isn't actually TOO awful... until you compare it with the original hardback issue (though, it's another that's more impressive in person; again, this is what Chip Kidd is typically capable of). The photo is a little busy, but it's very interesting; lots of stuff for your eye to absorb. And I really like the way they arranged the text on this one -- I find it very elegant, especially when combined with the small physical size of the book; it's a very good job all around. Similarly, the new cover of Elephant Vanishes is probably the best it's gotten, but that's more because the other editions aren't very good, either. (I couldn't find the other US ones at B&N or Amazon, so here's a german translation with another awful cover wholly unlike the awful US editions; strangely, it looks like the UK designer took a hint from his American Cousin and went the "Why bother doing anything about the title story? Whoa, JAPANESE GUY!!!!" route.)

The only one of the redesigns I actually like is Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, although the original is pretty slick, too (not shown in the... remarkably poor scan, really -- the design is, um, a real photo for one, not all.. bad like that, and also the cover's overlaid with an invisible/textured engineering schematic, designed by Chris Ware. It's really cool.) The hardback edition is far superior, but it isn't fair to expect them to reproduce that on the paperback (least of all because of the cost that would be involved), but this is an excellent cover for the paperback without the expense involved of reproducing the original cover.

Looking at the UK covers is kind of interesting too. Some of them aren't really that great, but they're way better than the recent US ones. A few interesting things: After The Quake, the new hit sequel to Infinite Jest! (Speaking of which, the UK paperback version of Infinite Jest is slightly larger than a mass-market paperback. Which is a real pain to read, as it's, you know, 1000 pages with 100 pages of footnotes. UK Folks: I really recommend you get a copy of the US edition, both because it's an awesome book, and because the US edition is much larger (the paperback's about the size of a typcial hardback; so, oddly enough, is the hardback).

I actually like the UK Dance Dance Dance cover, although I wish it were easier to see; Amazon.uk's scans are really awful; I think their maintainer figured that for "larger view", they could either have two different scans of different qualities, or they could just, you know, take the thumbnail and stretch it. The other, UK Panther edition cover is all right, but not quite as nice as the broken record cover.

Also, the UK South of the Border and Sputnik Sweetheart (questionably work-safe -- an aside; how weird is that to say in a piece about cover designs of books by a respected author?) -- just strike me as really odd. Almost more suited to, I don't know, perhaps a Terry Southern novel. (Though, erm, the recent Terry Southern covers are the subject for another post; I will say this, though -- it's kind of sad when you explicitly go to half.com to get past editions from a time when his books were more considered on the "Porn" end of the "Porn/Respectability" scale so you can have covers that are more tasteful... ecch...)

However, I have to say, that I really, really like the UK Hard-Boiled Wonderland cover. It doesn't have much to do with the book, but it might be my favorite edition of this. (The original Hardback's kind of neat, too; it's a Magritte-inspired painting of a rock hovering over a grassy plain with a purple sky. And the original US paperback is good, if a little generic.) I have to say, too, this other UK edition is kinda neat too. (And, from the same publisher, yet another mediocre Sheep, though, probably the least mediocre of them all. And a surprisingly elegant and beautiful if awfully literal Sputnik cover.

One thing I do find a little funny, though, is how most people would never redesign a record cover[2], especially recent albums, yet there's never any worry about completely throwing out old book cover designs and building a new one from scratch. Even books where the original author worked on the design himself. I suppose that's because bands are more involved in presenting the complete package of their albums (again, more so nowadays) where authors typically just turn in the manuscript, but still. I know it's about marketing and adapting to changes in design philosophy (i.e., I do find the new Godel Escher Bach cover more elegant than the original, although, no one would think of changing, say, Who's Next so it doesn't look nearly so early-1970s. I suppose it doesn't matter, though I wonder what the authors have to say; I would assume that with the possible exception of maybe the first edition, the author doesn't even get to sign off on the cover (especially in cases of, say, Haruki Murakami, where he's got tons of translated editions; if he has any control over the covers, I'd assume it'd end at the shores of Japan). I'd doubt on reissues and redesigns they'd get that luxury (for example, if that were the case, why would David Foster Wallace sign off on the paperback cover of Infinite Jest, when it's basically an unelegant version of the hardback edition. Examples like this make me think he signed off on the hardback (as it works with the novel and contains a subtle reference and basically is just really slick with the themes and whatnot), and then when it went to paperback, the publisher went "Well, he liked the hardback, so let's do the same thing... only updated, since, you know, lots of things have changed in the year or two since the original came out, so let's just, you know, fix things before we put it out!"

So, yeah, I don't know. All I do know is that Good Design makes me happy, and Bad Design makes me sad. So very, very sad. And the Haruki Murakami novels, among others, used to have Good Design. And now they don't.

[1] One of my favorite examples of this is pretty much any cover of Alexei Panshin's Rite of Passage -- the narrator/protagonist is black, yet in every cover I've seen, she's depicted as white. I suppose a copy somewhere might actually have, you know, the correct race, but... (Unfortunately, I couldn't find my edition's cover, where she's an Aryan woman flying from a spaceship, nipples on display -- especially funny, since, IIRC, in the book she's around 13...)

[2] Though it's not entirely uncommon; it seems more frequent with older albums, though; when I was interning at KPLU, one thing I did was go through and pull out some of the duplicates, and I'd get thrown sometimes because I'd have to check the tracklistings on some the designs were so drastically changed. Although those were relatively recent Jazz albums; I got the impression that in the 1970s and early 1980s, the jazz labels all said "Hey, screw this! Let's make new, hip covers!" which ended up being way less hip than the original issues, which seem to be en vogue again.