Three Revolutions Per Blog

A Decade of Revolution, Crane Brinton Harper Torchbooks , New York (1963) – Cover Design by Guy Fleming

Most of the interesting book covers I find arrive via the library’s book return book-bin (which is as dull and dispiriting as it sounds; so dispiriting in fact someone has sellotaped a picture of Sisyphus next to it).

With the book-bin, you often get a rash of books on the same topic (usually thrown through the book return slot with relish or anger because  the student returning them has just finished their essay or dissertation).  Which is why I came across 3 different books about the French Revolution in one fell swoop.

I particularly like the first cover for it’s very deft, graphic styling.  Also strangely enough, it reminds me a bit of the box of Jack Straws I used to play with as a child (which I’m sure is pure accident on the part of the designer).

The design features a flat, dynamic central image: a multitude of pikes, spears and axes, mingling with two wavy Tricouleur flags.  The flags seem to ripple and flow, the spears, axes and pikes jut out at irregular angles; all of which suggests an angry, revolutionary mob marching or running to battle.

The title banding reflects the stripes of the revolutionary flags below,  subtly matching the colours used in the central image.  However, no red is used in the title which in turn emphasises the violent red of the flags below.

All in all, it is a very cartoony, very graphic image, where form and meaning are paired to their simplest silhouette.

For my M.A. I read an article by Stewart Medley ( Discerning pictures: how we look at and understand images in comics Studies in Comics, Volume 1,  No. 1,  April 2010,  p.56) which explains how the brain is more stimulated  by the unrealistic (or simplified cartoon image) than the realistic, which is all due to the way in which we evolved.

Following on from Medley’s ideas, it would seems then that the silhouette (as one of the most simplified kinds of image) has a powerful visual effect which  relates to our primitive survival instincts.  Basically, to the primitive part of our brain, a silhouette is like an object seen at distance.  At distance an object  lacks the detail we can normally see when close-up , and so is more or less a vague, shadowy outline.  The silhouette then was something our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have needed to instantly process when tracking or hunting their prey over open ground and  at long range (sort of like aircraft recognition silhouettes only for cavemen – think Bison instead of Bomber).

So essentially  the silhouette, indeed the strong or bold graphic shape (most prominently those used in logo design) is one of the most compelling forms of image.  It pushes a button in our animal mind, which whilst not necessarily saying ‘meat’ or ‘fruit’ in this case, gives us an instant sense or understanding of the term ‘revolution’.  The silhouette creates instant recognition of meaning and form.

Anyway, the first book cover appeals to me much more than the other two, which is probably due to the primitive appeal of the silhouette combined with a very affective and dynamic design (and possibly also because it looks like the box my jack-straws came in – sorry).

Also, without getting into a ‘who’s better, who’s best’ type argument, personally I think the first cover is more interesting to look at, which is not to say that the other two are not successful designs.

The success of an academic book cover obviously depends a lot more on simply looking nice.  Purchasers of academic text books are seldom likely to buy the book on the basis of how exciting or pretty the cover is (‘ooo look, a book on  Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design! I think I’ll give it a whirl because the cover has a pretty picture composed of a dynamic and primitively appealing silhouette on it’ – THIS NEVER HAPPENS!)

The World of the French Revolution, R. R. Palmer, George Allen Unwin, London (1971) – Cover designer unknown

What about the other two covers ?

Well, both have their own appeal and feature successful elements.  I particularly like the font the designer has used on the second cover .  It seems pleasingly outdated and quaint to a modern audience which of course chimes with the historical period the book discusses.  The font has a fat, wavy, hand-drawn appeal which for me chimes with the idea of luxury and decadence as displayed by the aristocrats on the cover (who are about to lose their fat, wavy and luxurious heads).

However, for all its quaintness today, the font must have been contemporary with it’s publishing date (1971), perhaps a deliberate attempt to revive an old fashioned style (I managed to track down the font in an old edition of Rookledge’s International Type-Finder; which identifies the font as ‘Pretorian’, a modified Serif, decorative font which has 18 / 19th Century overtones).  The recycling of old forms as both mockery and celebration  was of course a key factor in so much of the sixties and seventies pop-culture (hence all the resurgence of Edwardian and Victorian elements in art, music, fashion and design).

I like the series title plate as well, which again echoes the style of the era depicted.  This in turn was probably part of  a revivalist fashion in the 18th Century, borrowing as it does from the classical period.

Finally, the use of the contemporary 18th or 19th Century engraving works as a piece of documentary evidence and adds a sense of being a window into the world depicted.  This effect is further enhanced by the  black bands above and below the image, giving I think, the sense of watching a slide-show.

Using a contemporary engraving for a history book is obviously a good idea as the designer for the third and last book also used it.

The French Revolution, T. C. W. Blanning, Macmillan Press, Baisingstoke (1988) – Cover designer unknown

I really included this final cover as a contrast to the other two.  I think that it is the plainest, and in some ways the dullest of the 3.  And to some extent, shows how unimaginative modern text-book covers can be.  As if, due to the very fact that no one buys a text-book for its cover, it simply isn’t worth anyone’s time, effort or obviously more importantly, MONEY, to create something a bit more dynamic or visually appealing.

However, that is not to say that the 3rd book is entirely without merit.  For instance,  the use of the copperplate font for ‘the’ is more in-keeping with the period than that used on the 2nd cover.  This is also true of the Roman font used for the main title and author.

The branding stripe of yellow jars a little with the more sombre black band at the bottom (black for mourning, black for death), but the red wavy Macmillan logo (derived from the letter ‘m’ but also suggesting  a proud flag flying or waves carrying a flow of information – or so I presume) has that instant sense of visual identity which pushes our primitive ancestry buttons (I see a pinball machine shaped like a brain on which, ‘ping’ a picture of the Macmillan logo lights up followed by Boris Karloff’s voice from ‘Frankenstein’ saying, ‘Macmillan, gooood’).  And of course the cover tells you in no uncertain terms what the book is about, who it was written by and which edition it is .

So yes, vive la revolution but more importantly, vive la silhouette (‘silhouette, goood’)!

Layers of Meaning

Next in my intermittent look at book and magazine cover design, is this splendid and soothing, slightly hypnotic cover for Structuralist Poetics by Jonathan Culler ( Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1975 [designer uncredited]).

I’m a big fan of abstract book designs, especially for academic text-books.  There is a certain era of abstract book design that seems to me particularly effective and affective (early 1950s – late 1970s).  The  era from which the above design originates.

Perhaps the proliferation of abstract  book covers during this period was due to the fact that  abstract art was king, standing as it did for modernity and the clear, unsentimental ideology which goes with a sense of being modern.

Perhaps another explanation might be that such designs relied a lot more on the ingenuity and the intellectual rigour of the artists.  Also, because people bought and used a lot more books during that period, there was more money and care put into book production and design and thus artists and designers of quality were attracted to the job.  Or perhaps it was simply that in a less-hurried era, people were given more time to come up with ideas.

Anyway, it’s an interesting  question, but best saved for another day, and perhaps for another thesis.

As to the design itself, I chose  because it rather leaped out at me from the Library shelf.

Not knowing much about the subject matter contained within, my mind instantly went into interpretive overdrive.    My first thought was ‘radiation’; a powerful white-hot core of dynamic structural poetic dissection and analysis … But after a second look I began to think magma slowly cooling around a cold, analytical thesis … but then shouldn’t it be the other way around, the orange growing dimmer and browner to represent the molten slowly cooling crust …?

Of course the most obvious and straightforward meaning which the artist or designer was probably trying to convey, is that the abstract motif symbolises both structure (in the layers) and pattern (in the repetition of the layers).

But then again, it doesn’t have to mean anything, it’s just rather orange, groovy and slightly calming compared with the alarmingly esoteric subject matter.  Just the thing to gaze at in lectures, in order to soothe away the terrible panic which might grip you on realising you didn’t have a clue what the subject was about …

Words as scaffolds? Poems as bricks? Or an analysis and examination of the underpinning structure of a poetical text, and the relationship between recurrent patterns or motifs ….?

I dunno …

The Return of Nowhere Man

This is a rough sketch which I originally intended to use on the cover of my M.A. Literature Review.  In the end, I left it unfinished and used something that was more uniform with the rest of my work.

The image features me (seated) typing up my review surrounded by characters from the various comic/ graphic narrative/ sequential art-works which I studied for the review.  It’s not a particularly original composition I admit.  I think the idea of surrounding an artist or writer with fictional characters is a fairly standard illustrative trope and may, as far as I know, date back to the famous portrait of Dickens surrounded by his own characters.

Dickens’ Dream – Robert W. Buss (1804-1875

Nevertheless, despite its possible unoriginality, I don’t think it’s too bad a sketch and I quite enjoyed drawing the characters and trying to match the style of their creators.

Amongst the figures in my sketch, you can see Raymond Briggs’ Gentleman Jim, Seth’s Wimbledon Green, Brian Fies’ ‘Mom’, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, Marjane Satrapi’s younger self, Herge’s Tintin and Snowy, Scott Mcloud, Nick Abadzis’ Laika, Art Spiegelman as mouse, Mills and Colquhoun’s Charley Bourne and very insubstantially at the back amongst some unfinished / unspecified characters, my own creation, Ghost Writer.

So that’s the image, but why the seemingly unrelated title of ‘The Return of Nowhere Man’?  Well …

When I dug out the sketch the other day, ready to post on my blog, and not having made a new post for well over six months, this image seemed to sum up the particular sense of futility I always get when blogging; in fact the same sense of futility I get when I write or draw anything these days.

Rather than reminding me of Charles Dickens, my sketch actually reminded me of the Nowhere Man from the Beatles song of the same name, and of course the Beatles cartoon, The Yellow Submarine.  In the movie you may remember, The Nowhere Man sits on a plain of nothingness, typing up his endless and pointless lexicon; created of course as the song suggests, ‘for nobody’.

In my sketch, I think I look a bit like the Nowhere Man sitting on his blank plain, writing a book for nobody, whose only companions are the fictional creations of far more talented and much smarter people.

Which may explain a lot about my mental state at the moment.

Sometimes, like Jeremy Boob, aka the Nowhere Man, the excitement of creating something from nothing; the challenge, the puzzle, the absorption and freedom from both time and care; take over and the fact that there is no one really waiting to see the work at the other end of the void is irrelevant …

At other times, getting to the end of a piece of work and turning round to any empty room or a blank screen as you shout ‘ta-daa’ can be very dispiriting.

At some point, between the writing of my Masters dissertation and desperately trying to get some of my work published or liked or even for that matter simply noticed; being the Nowhere Man became very dispiriting indeed and creative ventures like this blog fell away into disappointing pointlessness.

And then I had a change of heart…

And so I’m trying again, with the intent and purpose that even if the work is for nobody but myself, at least it’s out there somewhere in the ether or the internet, woven in with the infinitesimal particles that form the seemingly blank void.  And perhaps one day, posterity or a kindly alien or even a bored blog reader might … notice what I’ve done.

A Taxing Mission For Dredd?

He is the ... erm...taxman?

Ok, so I work in a library; it’s a dirty job … well actually dusty more than anything … but somebody has to do it.

It helps if you like books, which I do, in fact some of my best friends are books … which says a lot about my social life I suppose … which is all a strange and indirect way of saying that, working in a library (which I think we have firmly established by now), I often come across interesting and downright odd book and magazine designs.  So I thought I’d start sharing a few of the better ones I’ve come across.

First up is the above cover from Accountancy Age (24th February, 2011).  Although the artwork is a bit ‘sixth-form’, I can really identify with the desperate artist who must usually get the most boring accountancy-themed covers to do, but suddenly here was his chance to break free and channel his inner Brian Bolland!

Also I think its interesting to see how much Judge Dredd has been absorbed into the mainstream / cultural consciousness.  It was all a bit different when I was a lad I can tell you, but nowadays even accountants have heard of ‘old stoney face’.  What a better, more interesting world it is …

I was going to say something like ‘nowadays its not just the mutants who’ve heard of Dredd, but accountants as well … but I’m not sure that works.  It also might go to show why I still work in a Library and why most of my friends are books …