Lewis Carroll in Numberland: His Fantastical Mathematical Logical Life

by Robin Wilson

Art Director: Chin-Yee Lai // W. W. Norton & Co.

While doing research for this book, I came across a medical condition called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome:

also known as micropsia and macropsia, is a brain condition affecting the way objects are perceived by the mind. For example, an afflicted person may look at a larger object, like a basketball, and perceive it as if it were the size of a mouse. The condition manifests itself in connection with various other conditions, such as epilepsy, anxiety, and migraines. The disease is named after Lewis Carroll's novel due to the size changes Alice experiences. Carroll documented cases of classic migraines, so scholars have speculated that he may have experienced symptoms of macropsia or micropsia.

Since the emphasis of this book was on Lewis Carroll's forgotten achievements in the world of mathematics, I thought it was a a good idea to refer to Alice in Wonderland on the cover, but drastically de-emphasize her scale to frame it in this book's context to numbers.


Jacket illustration: Alice and the Cheshire Cat, illustration from Alice in the Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (Color Litho) by John Tenniel, Private Collection / The Bridgeman Art Library.

Alternate comps:


Lewis Carroll's "The Mouse's Tale" is one of my favorite example of a typeset book interior from 1865.

Voices: A Reykjavík Thriller

by Arnaldur Indridason // Picador

Cover photograph by Laura Hanifin

Whatever It Takes

by Paul Tough

Photograph by Jeff Riedel for The New York Times
Art Director: Michaela Sullivan // Houghton Mifflin Company

The Art Director Michaela Sullivan gave me a selection of photographs to work with. Mostly images of young students in their classrooms engaged and learning. But this pied piper shot of Geoffrey Canada amongst the multitude of children filling up a Harlem street said it all. Showing us all what is at stake.

What would it take?

That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children — not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children's Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new and sometimes controversial ideas about poverty in America. His conclusion: if you want poor kids to be able to compete with their middle-class peers, you need to change everything in the lives — their schools, their neighborhoods, even the child-rearing practices of their parents.

Whatever It Takes is a tour de force of reporting, an inspired portrait not only of Geoffrey Canada but also of the parents and children in Harlem who are struggling to better their lives, often against great odds. Carefully researched and deeply affecting, this is a dispatch from inside the most daring and potentially transformative social experiment of our time.

Breakfast with Buddha

by Roland Merullo

Art Director: Anne Winslow // Algonquin Books

Photograph by Jon Shireman

A spiritual road-trip novel.
The idea was to show Buddha or spiritual in some way on the cover. I thought of sunny side up eggs, or an enlightening stream of morning sunlight through a window. But thought a subtler way was Buddha shaped salt & pepper shakers in a breakfast setting with a plates of sunny side up eggs. I thought that was too much information so I changed it to a road side diner setting to suggest eating on the road.
I did a web search and was surprised that there actually were salt & pepper shakers in the shape of Buddhas from Neiman Marcus. But unfortunately they were not available. So the photographer Jon Shireman went down to the Pearl River Mart in Chinatown and found some wooden miniature Buddhas. We faked it by painting them glossy black and white to suggest ying and yang and drilling holes into it's head.

Salt & Pepper Shakers from Neiman Marcus / Not at a store near you.

The Paris Review Interviews: vol. 3

Introduction by Margaret Atwood // Edited by Philip Gourevitch
The Paris Review / Picador

• A PRINT's Regional Design Annual Selection

So I held out as long as I could from using red. I wanted to change it up and tried different background color versions. One using a purple so deep that it almost looks like black and one with a bright magenta. But good old fire engine red was what they wanted. I did try jazzing it up a little by using metallic silver and a greenish yellow and spot gloss on the large quotation marks.

Rotten

by John Lydon // Picador


by Jamie Reid. God Save the Queen (Single cover),1977. Newsprint, photocopy and paper.

I didn't realize that the band logo used on "Never Mind the Bollocks" was a photostat copy of the cut and paste type used on God Save the Queen. I still don't know what fonts were used in the original.


While doing research, I found this great article uncovering the background story behind the rock band logos.
The Top 10 Rock Band Logos by Koldo Barroso

coltrane

by Ben Ratliff // Picador

Cover photograph by © Rolf Ambor / ctsimages.com

Other Concepts:

The idea here was to depict John Coltrane as a sound wave. I thought these images were well-known enough to weather the abstraction. But for the final, we went with a stunning portrait that put the focus on his hand on the saxophone keys.

On the back cover, I printed Coltrane's Selmer Mark VI saxophone bell pattern as a subtle black on black background pattern:


Here's a collection of Blue Note: Over 1000 great jazz album covers.

Here's an awesome video of Miles Davis and John Coltrane performing
"So What" Live-New York, April 2, 1959:

I love observing the other musicians. When they're not busy performing, they're busy smoking.

Living Autobiographically: How We Create Identity in Narrative

by Paul John Eakin

Art director: Scott Levine // Cornell University Press

Hand-lettering by LeeAnn Falciani

The theme of the author is that (we create a sense of ourselves by the stories we tell) but with a new twist: he argues that narrative is not merely something we invent; it is an essential part of our sense of who we are. In fact, so close is the connection between narrative and identity that we should speak of “narrative identity”—a term he hopes will become part of the life writing lexicon.

I tried to convey these two co-exisiting states visually by using the idea of handwritten drafts/thoughts and typeset published finals overlaying each other. The simplicity of this solution reminded me of The Catcher in the Rye, from which I borrowed the color palette. Sorry J.D., But you didn't like these colors anyway.

My personal copy:


If you really want to hear about it, my beat up copy of The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite books. And this plain, all Times Roman typeface, solid Maroon and Yellow type paperback is one of my favorite cover designs. A perfect marriage of content, form and memories. The cover demands that you fill in the rest yourself. Compared to the simplicity of this, all other designs are just plain phony.

Forgotten Patriots

by Edwin G. Burrows

Art Director: Nicole Caputo // Basic Books

Jacket painting:
The Nation Makers, 1903 (oil on canvas) by Howard Pyle (1853-1911) © American Illustrators Gallery, NYC / The Bridgeman Art Library




Listen to this audio clip to learn more about Howard Pyle and the background story of the painting.

Alternate idea:

The Painted Word

by Tom Wolfe // Picador

Painting by Norman Rockwell

Cover painting: The Connoisseur by Norman Rockwell, printed by permission of the Norman Rockwell Family Agency Inc. © 1962, Norman Rockwell Family Entities. Photograph courtesy of the Archives of the American Illustrators Gallery, NYC © 2008 National Museum of American Illustration, Newport, RI
www.americanillustration.org

How often do you get the chance to work with a classic Norman Rockwell painting on a book cover? And when you do, you absolutely can not crop, alter or print type over it. Which is fine by me. Nice.

Initial idea:

A Plea for Eros

by Siri Hustvedt // A Picador Paperback Original

Painting by Alan Baker

Here's a video of what became of the original painting:

One More Year

by Sana Krasikov

Art Director: Emily Mahon // Spiegel & Grau / Doubleday

Photography by Henry Sene Yee

The brilliant Emily Mahon was my former assistant and in this role reversal, for the first time EVER, she is Art Directing me. She did a great job.

A short story collection centering around the lives of immigrant families, many from Soviet Georgia. Emily thought it would be great to use one of my photographs on the cover to show the lives of these characters stuck in a rut. I decided to create still frames of my time-lapse movies. Showing the mundane but still beautiful, calming passage of time.



This time lapse clip was captured outside my window on a hazy, humid night on July 30, 2007.

Alternate Comps:

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

FINAL APPROVED DESIGN:

by Tom Wolfe // Picador

Hand-lettering & Illustration by Phil Pascuzzo. Based on a visual developed by Laura Hanifin

MY ORIGINAL IDEA:

Hand-lettering by Phil Pascuzzo

This book was about the rustic/Grateful Dead proto-Psychedelia movement and I didn't want to evoke the urban and developed Haight-Ashbury Psychedelia look or the Peter Max / Milton Glaser take on the '60s. This cover was inspired by the original 1965 Muir Beach Acid Test poster created by Norman Hartweg that was later hand-colored by Ken Kesey's daughter, Sunshine Kesey:



But this design was considered too hippie-dippie, crunchy-granola and a cleaner, more psychedelic redesign was requested.

My new idea was to focus on the Merry Prankster Bus, "Further," render it as a black and white pen and ink drawing ala The Beatles' REVOLVER album cover and project a psychedelic multi-color lava lamp effect over it.



Laura Hanifin's photographic interpretation of this was a toy bus painted white and dripping with colored paint.

Photograph by Laura Hanifin

Tom loved the idea but didn't want a photograph of a generic bus. He asked if we could instead, have an illustration of the actual Merry Prankster bus FURTHER and brighter. Ugh! This has to go to the printers yesterday.

So in a rare and unusual move, I took Laura's interpretation and put it back in Phil Pascuzzo's hand and he re-illustrated her approach using a photograph of the "FURTHUR" bus as reference which became the final cover.

Whew, approved. Just made the printer's deadline.
The final will be separated as 4/C process but with the cyan, magenta, and yellow inks replaced with their fluorescent equivalents for a brighter psychedelic look. Hopefully.

Big thanks to Laura and Phil-Dog for putting their egos aside, getting the job done and saving my ass.

TIME Interviews Tom Wolfe

Violence: BIG IDEAS // small books

by Slavoj Žižek
BIG IDEAS // small books / A Picador Paperback Original

Photograph by Jon Shireman

Philosopher, cultural critic, and agent provocateur Slavoj Žižek, constructs a fascinating new framework to look at the forces of violence in our world.

Using history, philosophy, books, movies, Lacanian psychiatry, and jokes, Slavoj Žižek examines the ways we perceive and misperceive violence. Drawing from his completely unique cultural vision, Žižek brings new light to the Paris riots of 2005; he questions the permissiveness of violence in philanthropy; in daring terms, he reflects on the powerful image and determination of contemporary terrorists.



From TimeOut Chicago book review // Issue 183 : Aug 28–Sep 3, 2008:

"Picador has more of these books lined up, and we hope they continue to be both as engaging and relevant as these two first salvos. And we hope they keep designer Henry Sene Yee churning out the tiny, beautiful packages." —Jonathan Messinger

Authors@Google Presents Slavoj Žižek // September 12, 2008


Slavoj Žižek - A debate with Steven Lukes // Barnes & Noble Union Square, NYC

Moral Relativism: BIG IDEAS // small books

by Steven Lukes
BIG IDEAS // small books / A Picador Paperback Original

Photograph by Jon Shireman

Moral relativism attracts and repels. What is defensible in it and what is to be rejected? Do we as human beings have no shared standards by which we can understand one another? Can we abstain from judging one another's practices? Do we truly have divergent views about what constitutes good and evil, virtue and vice, harm and welfare, dignity and humiliation, or is there some underlying commonality that trumps it all?



Slavoj Žižek - A debate with Steven Lukes // Barnes & Noble Union Square, NYC

James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon

by Julie Phillips // Picador

James Tiptree, Jr., burst onto the science fiction scene in the late 1960s with a series of hard-edged, provocative stories. He redefined the genre with such classics as Houston, Houston, Do You Read? and The Women Men Don't See. For nearly ten years he wrote and carried on intimate correspondences with other writers—Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, and Ursula K. Le Guin, though none of them knew his true identity. Then the cover was blown on his alter ego: "he" was actually a sixty-one-year-old woman named Alice Bradley Sheldon. A feminist, she took a male name as a joke—and found the voice to write her stories.

Jenny & the Jaws of Life

by Jincy Willett // Picador

Jincy Willett is the high priestess of dark comedy. The classic stories in this collection cut through every convention, every idea of normalcy, with empathy and fearless wit, undermining all the old ideas about the happy family, the good son, the dutiful mother. In Willett's world, perversity and tenderness walk hand in hand; there's laughter and funerals, ambivalence in the nursery, and redemption for the wicked. As David Sedaris writes in his foreword, "I'm prepared to wear a sandwich board for this book. I can't help myself. It' just too good."



Alternate approaches:

The Good Temp

by Vicki Smith and Esther B. Neuwirth

Art director: Scott Levine // Cornell University Press