Tuesday, February 24, 2009

The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse


by Richard Thompson Ford // Picador
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

What do hurricane Katrina victims, millionaire rappers buying vintage champagne, and Ivy League professors waiting for taxis have in common? All have claimed to be victims of racism. But these days almost no one openly defends bigoted motives, so either a lot of people are lying about their true beliefs, or a lot of people are jumping to unwarranted conclusions--or just playing the race card. Daring, entertaining, and incisive, The Race Card brings sophisticated legal analysis, eye-popping anecdotes, and plain old common sense to this heated topic.

Not the GREATEST idea in the world but I liked the simplicity of this design. I desaturated the image to make it monochromatic and relate a little bit more to the subject.
An interesting thing I learned while designing this came about when I was determining the representational sizes of the cards on the cover. If I reduced the cards slightly smaller that actual size, it somehow looked wrong. I realized that if you have an object on the cover that's near to actual size and it's not, you spend too much time wondering why it looks off. So if it's near, make it actual or make it much bigger.

3 comments:

Ian Koviak said...

love it. Simple execution and idea, but very memorable and pointed. Are those real cards?

Gould said...

It's self evident, true, but very very efficient.

Aden said...

I guess the Uncanny Valley isn't just relegated to human likenesses, then.