Welcome back in color

Without further ado, I'll just say welcome back to my visitors, after a long summer break! Autumn is a time of color and at the moment I have a slight obsession with so called gradients.

Gradients are a particular color effect known to all Adobe users, it is a way of making colors slide and melt seamlessly into each other, and create interesting, sometimes very 3D, effects. And sometimes they just look horrible, I must admit. When I started working with graphic design, particularly Adobe Illustrator, color gradients were considered in the worst possible taste, and could only be justified if you had to make natural looking glass or metal surfaces on, say, a technical/architectural illustration. Otherwise they were just no go. 

But I can't have been the only one who have loved to play with the little color swatch slider tools, forever getting lost in more and more weird looking blends and fadings.

I find it great, that they are no more on the graphic design black list!

They can be quite complicated to work with, and not only because you have to be really good at isolating certain areas in an illustration from others, to make them technically work, but also because they tend to get quite overwhelming.

I've come across Sara Andreasson on Instagram, she's a funky Swedish graphic artist, who did the popsicles above, and also does these fat, lovely slobs of pastel color that kind of pops out from the screen!

They kind of remind me of Roy Lichtenstein's brush stroke paintings, even though these paintings are the very opposite thing: three dimensionality made with flat color, quite amazing, in fact. I've always loved those!

But I've saved the most elegant use of gradients I've seen for a long time, for last.

Danish graphic designer Torsten Lindsø Andersen, have made this series of proposed designs for Jack Kerouac's novels, and they have deservedly been spotted by many book design enthusiasts. They look like nothing else I've seen, and they are quite stunning. And they add a metaphysical and yet really appealing vibe to litterature, that's probably not easy to make covers for, without rolling around in clichés. 

I really like them, and they made me want to read the books again!

You can read a bit about the designer, and see some more of his work here.

This is a student project of his, from 2012, but looks super fresh, and if I was Penguin Books, I'd certainly give him a call. 

I did actually read both On The Road and Dharma Bums (not Lonesome Traveller, though) when I was around twenty, but I didn't like them much, I remember struggling to actually finish them. I don't exactly remember why. Maybe it would be an entirely different experience now, some thirty years later?

Don't say we don't judge books by their covers.

Kafka covers by Peter Mendelsund

In Denmark book cover design is a rather underprioritized art form - lots of great books are written and published, but in my view really great Danish book covers are few and far between.

I love a great book cover (as I have mentioned before), and have several books I have purchased almost entirely because of their covers, or their overall graphic look and feel. 

I saw these fantastic covers for Kafka's classics, and immediately set about finding out more about who designed them. They are by Peter Mendelsund, who is, as I was about to discover, completely brilliant at what he does. See much more of his work here, or check out his blog.

The scope of his work is amazing, and his covers are elegant in so many different ways; somehow it is obvious that he really involves himself in the content, and puts that above having a signature style.

You can also study his work in appropriate book form, in this great looking volume: 'Cover'

He is a passionate reader himself, and has written a book about reading, about 'what we see, when we read' (but of course) - and I have to read that too, I think! 'What We See When We Read'

But back to Kafka.

Mendelsund designed this series of covers for Kafka's collected works, published by Schocken Books in 2011. I personally find Kafka almost nauseating to read, claustrophobic and odd. But maybe exactly because of that, I love these: they somehow convey some of that unease and constant, slight paranoia I feel in his work.

The Jazz Age - more Coralie Bickford-Smith

These deserve a post of their own. F. Scott Fitzgeralds novels, in a setting that really befits them, with heavy, metallic art deco style dust jackets, again by the amazing Coralie Bickford-Smith.

I should get at least The Great Gatsby, one of my very, very favorite novels since I read it first as a teenager. I have worn out a couple of cheap paperback versions, and probably mislaid at least one, but this is so beautiful. I want them all! I do miss the short stories in this edition though, they are my best F. Scott Fitzgerald read, after The Great G., I never, ever tire of them.

Penquin clothbound classics

I sometimes stumble opon a mention of these beautiful books, and then I just want to own them all. They are just irresistible, and I love the work of British book designer Coralie Bickford-Smith. The idea here is so simple, and it is so well done. The book is bound in one color fabric, the print is in another single, contrasting color, there is one, simple graphic statement, and just one font. That's it. And it looks SO good. See how gorgeous the spines are - and spines are really hard to do.

They make me want to be a literary lady of leisure (and a book designer!), sipping tea in a salon, catching up on my classics. And not - as the case is with me, who is actually a compulsive reader - slouching somewhere with a paperback with unidentified stains and lots of smudgy pencilmarks (Ahem, yep, I make notes in the back of my books) and something called 'donkeys ears' in Danish. You know, when you fold the corner of the page you're at?

These I would wash my hands for, and sit upright to read in.

You can see them all here - and see more work from the brilliant Coralie here.