POST TITLE

Recently I happened on this Jackson Pollack exhibition catalogue at the Smithsonian Archive. Interesting how the cover looks like a title page. Mixed with the circus/kabel type treatment, altogether it's pretty great. The functional aesthetic of the title page is underestimated, I think.

LIBRARY

An image from the Bidoun Library at the Serpentine Gallery in London, from last summer. I still love the spacial and sort of trompe l'oeil effects of this arrangement.

WRAPPED

Artist monograph designed by M/M (Paris) for Koo Jeong-A. I like how it's fully wrapped with a photograph of forest -- something hidden and exposed all at once. Even the name wraps it up.

FLAT & NOT FLAT

I've always liked this cover by Alvin Lustig. Its flat patchwork is offset by the incorporated type. Also I think it's impossible not to like vintage handwriting. Interesting how handwriting trends change, no? 

PHONE PICS

Sometimes I don't have my camera with me so take photos on my phone. I never bothered to get them onto my computer until now. I like the film still effect. Bottom from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, hardbound Penguin edition designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith, spotted at a party recently ...

GRAY AREAS

Recently on the BBC a show called Wild Swimming featured a poem from Alice Oswald's book, Dart, published by Faber & Faber in 2002. I love how these understated covers combine opposing values simultaneously.

INTO THESE

Covers from Four Corners Books

PRETTY UGLY

A draft of my book ICEBERGS will be in our Pretty--Ugly exhibition and silent auction at London's Gopher Hole Gallery April 6–7th. 

COLOR

New series of Kafka book covers designed by Peter Mendelsund at Knopf/Pantheon. The calligraphic face, called Mister K (based on Kafka's handwriting) by Julia Sysmäläine, was designed separately in 2008. Read more about it on Peter's blog, or also find more on the CR blog here.

BOXES

Recently I had the pleasure of building two clamshell boxes for a project. The first clamshell boxes I made were probably 10 years ago with Dr. Elsi Vassdal Ellis, who teaches book arts at WWU. They're sort of a pain to make, requiring a lot of steps and waiting while the glue dries, but deeply satisfying once finished. 

PYRAMID POWER

A magazine/journal favorite, Pyramid Power, from a city favorite, Vancouver BC. Designed by Sacha Hurley.

FIRST EDITIONS

Vanessa Bell, sister to Virginia Woolf, designed all her first edition dust jackets for Hogarth Press. More can be found here. 

MULTIPLICITY

 Radical face illustrations from Design as Art -- Bruno Munari, 1971.

AN EVENING WITH DUKE PRESS

Last night at Cafe Oto in Dalston, the Duke Press launch party/exhibition. Great little collection of what sort of blurs the line between book and zine. Handbound, very nice. Photo from Duke Press' flickr page.

A COUPLE OF THINGS

Cruising around the internet this evening I found a couple things I thought I'd post. Found the bottom work on graphic designer Fraser Muggeridge's website. I love painting detail and also this particular work's Fauvist palette. Overall I appreciate Muggeridge's retro aesthetic -- this work doesn't really highlight it but you will quickly see such work on his site. Recently, his studio created the poster for Art on the Underground's recent Knut Hendrik Hendriksen acquisition. When I looked online for the work featured in the poster, I instead found something I like a bit better: "Settings" on Contemporary Art Daily.

AN EVENING OF SWISS DESIGN

This evening the Helvetic Centre held an event at Cafe OTO in Dalston called "The Most Beautiful Swiss Books 2008 in London". The event included a panel discussion with four London-based designers, which started as a discussion on Swiss design and quickly became a heated debate on the merits and downfalls of design competitions.