Brief
This exercise hopes to broaden your understanding of other book designersโ work by looking at their cover designs. Start to identify the kinds of book covers you are drawn to, and critically assess why you think these designs are successful.
- Undertake a combination of library and internet research into the following designers, identifying a number of book cover designs for each. Reflect on their conceptual and/or expressive approaches to design. Write a very brief description of your selected cover designs and a brief overview of the designer – try to focus on keywords rather than long descriptions. Do this in note form, using the designer and the chosen example design to visually inform how the information appears in your learning log.
โ Phil Baines
โ Coralie Bickford-Smith
โ Derek Birdsall
โ Kelly Blair
โ Irma Boom
โ Suzanne Dean
โ Julia Hastings
โ Linda Huang
โ Jost Huchuli
โ Ellen Lupton
โ Peter Mendelsund
โ Paul Rand
โ Paula Scher
โ Jan Tschichold
โ Wolfgang Weingart - Compare and contrast some of the cover designs. For example, how does the cover of Peter Mendelsundโs Kafka series compare with Coralie Bickford-Smithโs gothic horror series for Penguin? Are these expressive or conceptual in nature? Are they both conforming to genre expectations, or are they challenging them in some way? Do Jan Tschichold and Ellen Luptonโs cover designs have anything in common? Make a drawing, sketch or tracing of the covers youโre comparing to help give you a better understanding of the imagery, typography and arrangement within the design. Use your learning log to reflect on your comparisons, identifying which covers you think are the strongest and why.
- Now, select three or more designers from the list that you are particularly drawn to, either because you like their work or because you donโt understand their approach, and research their design careers in more depth. Think about how theyโve responded to very different design challenges, whether they have an underlying conceptual and/or expressive approach, and how their work has evolved over time. Continue to use your learning log to record their work visually, explore these covers through drawing, and your responses in note format. See this as a quick fire activity rather than a long essay.
- Finally, identify at least three different book designers you find visually engaging. To do this you might want to visit a library, bookshop, or browse online. Identify who designed these covers and find out more about them. Try to work out why you are drawn to them. Is it to do with genre or their approach to design? What is it about the design that captures you? What sort of imagery, if any, is used on the cover? How does the text relate to the image? What atmosphere or style does the cover evoke? Summarise your thinking in your learning log – focusing on the kinds of book covers you are drawn to and why – and continue to document what these covers look like.
Part 1
Phil Baines
Phil Baines was born in 1958 in Kendal, Cumbria, and studied for the Roman Catholic priesthood at Ushaw College, Durham. He abandoned his studies at the start of his fourth year, and in 1981 enrolled on a foundation course at Cumbria College of Art & Design. The following year he moved to London, to study graphic design at St Martinโs School of Art (1982-85), where he met contemporaries such as Andrew Altmann and David Ellis (later to form Why Not Associates) and his future wife, Jackie Warner.
Bainesโs work of this period was heavily biased toward experimental typography that took inspiration from medieval manuscripts and the writings of Marshall McLuhan and George Steiner โ he has often noted that his influences came from written rather than visual sources. Letterpress exerted a particular attraction due to its do-it-yourself aspect: the entire process could be handled from concept to production without outside involvement. After two further years of study at the Royal College of Art, Baines graduated during a pre-recession boom period for graphic design. His work was featured heavily in Typography Now: The Next Wave (edited by Rick Poynor and Edward Booth-Clibborn), and he contributed two typefaces to Fuse, and guest-edited its fourth issue.




Phil Baines has got a background in typography, which can be seen in these cover designs. The use of typography and minimal colour palette gave these covers a sophisticated and serious feel.
Coralie Bickford-Smith
Coralie Bickford-Smith is a London based designer, illustrator and author. She graduated from Reading University with a degree in Typography and Graphic communication then moved to London to pursue a career in publishing. Her first book, The Fox and the Star, was named Waterstones Book of the Year 2015 and as one of Time Out’s 100 Children’s Books of All Time.
Coralie’s design work has been recognised globally and featured in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Vogue and The Guardian. The work she did with Penguin Classics on the clothbound series attracted worldwide attention and harks back to the world of Victorian bindings and a golden age of book binding. Coralie has been commissioned to produce illustrations by a variety of clients including Fortnum and Mason, Diageo, Waterstones and Booths.

I really like these book covers by Coralie Bickford-Smith. I am really interested in pattern design and in my point of view these designs are very chic and sophisticated.
Derek Birdsall
Birdsall was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1934 and attended The King’s School, Pontefract, Wakefield College of Art and Central School of Arts and Crafts in London. “At Central, Birdsall came under the influence of Anthony Froshaug, who โ alongside Herbert Spencer and Edward Wright โ taught his students the difference between beautiful lettering and typography proper, with its pre-eminent concerns of clarity, directness and, above all, textual legibility.” Birdsall failed to earn a diploma, however, and began his career in design in the late 1950s and early 1960s.






These book cover designs have got clever ideas in embedding images in between the typography. They are very conceptual, it means that they have some hidden meanings. Theyโre not giving too much information and leave the rest to the readers to figure it out. These designs have serious feel.
Kelly Blair
Kelly Blair is the art director of Pantheon books, an associate art director at Knopf, freelance illustrator.






This designer has got lots of different styles for her designs. The images used in her designs make it conceptual and gives the readers a little information about the book. The different typographical hierarchy.
Irma Boom
There are few designers working today who can claim to have the legacy that Irma Boom has. Born in the Netherlands, and still based in Amsterdam today, Boom has practiced for over 30 years under the moniker Irma Boom Office, producing hundreds of books โ over 300, in fact.
Boomโs books are not your average paperbacks, but they arenโt coffee table books either. They are objects of use, made for the many โ likened by her to โsocial housingโ โ and they wholly embody whatever concept or topic they tackle.



Irma Booms cover designs are about the form of the books as well as the different printing methods. The books are conceptual and not giving a lot information about the content.
Suzanne Dean
Suzanne has been Creative Director at Vintage Books since 2000. She designs and art directs all of Vintageโs imprints which include Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, Harvill Secker and Bodley Head. Suzanne established the design for the Vintage Classics list in 2007.
She has worked on a wide range of cover designs for authors such as Mark Haddon, Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Yuval Noah Harari, Richard Flanagan, Margaret Atwood and Rachel Kushner. Her covers include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Sense of an Ending, Sapiens, Atonement and The Handmaidโs Tale.
Before working at Vintage, Suzanne graduated from Kingston University, where she studied Graphic Design. Her first job was in general design, focusing on food packaging and brochures. A year later she was approached to join Penguin Books as a Senior Designer, working for Hamish Hamilton. Three years later she joined Macmillan, to work on the Picador list.






The patterns and the textures using in these books caught my attention. The designs are not very complicated, but repeated the design make them interesting. This designer used different techniques depending on the audience. The designs are conceptual with no any information about the contents.
Julia Hastings
Julia Hasting (born 1970 in Bremen, Germany) lives and works in Zรผrich.
She is the creative director of Phaidon Press. She studied graphic design at the Staatliche Hochschule fรผr Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany, and finalized with a diploma. From 1993 to 1998 she has been designing corporate identities, posters and books for cultural clients, then she moved to London to design books for Phaidon Press, working closely with Alan Fletcher. In 2000 she moved to New York in order to run the new design department as the Art Director for Phaidon Press Inc., and in 2007 she has taken over the design direction at Phaidon Press and moved to Zรผrich, Switzerland. She taught Publication design at the design faculty of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York from 2001 to 2003. She has given lectures about her work at the BRNO Biennale of Graphic Design, The AIGA New York, Pentagram New York, F.I.T., the University of Lima, Peru, Integrated Design Conference, Antwerp, and has been a jury member in numerous international design competitions. Since 2003 she has been contributing illustration work to The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine. She is a member of the AGI since 2000.






These book designs look very sophisticated. The textures and patterns used in these designs made them different from other ordinary book covers. The typography used in different designs are vary due to the type of the design. The designs are conceptual and not giving lots of information to the readers about the content.
Linda Huang
Linda Huang is a graphic designer based in New York. Her work has been recognized by The Type Directors Club, Print Magazine, The New York Times, 50 Books | 50 Covers, and Itโs Nice That, among others. She is currently an associate art director at Alfred A. Knopf. Formerly, she was an associate art director at Vintage & Anchor Books.






The playful typography and simple colour palette are very eye catching in these designs. The use of texture gave the designs more depth. The designs are conceptual.
Jost Huchuli
Jost Hochuli is one of the finest Swiss typographers and graphic designers. From 1952 to 1954 he studied graphic design at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) of St. Gallen. The year later he did one-year apprenticeship as a compositor at the Zollikofer & Co. printshop, also in St. Gallen. In 1955 he moved to Zurich to attend the composition class at the local Kusntgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts), from which he graduated in 1958. The same year he relocated in Paris to study at the รcole Estienne under Adrian Frutiger. His work has been widely exhibited in Germany, Poland, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In 1993 he curated and designed the โBook Design in Switzerlandโ exhibition that travelled across Canada, Europe, and the U.S.A.



These cover designs are typographical based and following the design rules; hierarchy, alignment and grids, which are the characteristics of the Swiss design.
Ellen Lupton
Ellen Lupton is a writer, curator, educator, and designer. Lupton is the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) in Baltimore. She serves as a senior curator at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.

Ellen Luptonโs designs are expressive as they reveal some information about the content of the book. Most of her designs are simple and typographical base.
Peter Mendelsund
Peter Mendelsund is the author of five books: the novel The Delivery (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Winter 2020; โGorgeously writtenโฆprofound.โ โMichael Cunningham, author of The Hours) and the novel Same Same (Vintage/Anchor, Winter ’18; โBreezy and profound in equal measure.โ โThe New York Times) as well the non-fiction works What We See When We Read, (โWelcome and fascinatingโโTim Parks, The New York Review of Books), Cover (โCover pushes us to reconsider what we think we know about the graphic representation of words and ideas.โโThe New Republic) and The Look of the Book (Crown/TenSpeed, Fall ’19). Mendelsund has been described by the New York Times as โone of the top designers at work today,โ and his design work has been described by The Wall Street Journal as โthe most instantly recognizable and iconic.โ He is the Creative Director of The Atlantic.






These designs are very creative in terms of using repeating patterns to give the designs a 3 dimensional feel. There are some quirkiness to his designs. The use of ordinary objects that normally take for granted in his designs make them even more interesting. The designs are mostly expressive as they give some hint about the contents.
Paul Rand
Born Peretz Rosenbaum in 1914 and deceased in 1996, Paul Rand is a graphic design legend. Throughout his 60-years long career, he changed America’s opinion on visual communication. With his editorial designs, advertisements, and visual identity works, Rand brought avant-garde European ideas to the United-States, mixing visual arts and commercial design. His colourful combinations, approach of typography and use of media translate his desire to “defamiliarize the ordinary“. His style consequently still have an impact on graphic design today.






The designer uses overprinting, geometrical patterns and textures in these designs. The colour palette is simple. These designs has got some mysterious feel and make the readers curious to find out more about the content of the books.
Paula Scher
Paula Scher is one of the most influential graphic designers in the world. Described as the โmaster conjurer of the instantly familiar,โ Scher straddles the line between pop culture and fine art in her work. Iconic, smart, and accessible, her images have entered into the American vernacular.





Paula Scherโs book cover designs are based on typography, initial of her name and her poster designs. Her designs are used for her own publication. These designs are expressive and giving out some ideas about content of the books.
Jan Tschichold
Tschichold claimed that he was one of the most powerful influences on 20th century typography. There are few who would attempt to deny that statement. The son of a sign painter and trained in calligraphy, Tschichold began working with typography at a very early age. Raised in Germany, he worked closely with Paul Renner (who designed Futura) and fled to Switzerland during the rise of the Nazi party. His emphasis on new typography and sans-serif typefaces was deemed a threat to the cultural heritage of Germany, which traditionally used Blackletter Typography and the Nazis seized much of his work before he was able to flee the country.






These covers have got a minimal colour palette. The main colour is red. The angle compositions are giving the designs some energetic feel or movement. The Penguin covers were refined by Tschichold in 1950s. Most of the designs are conceptual and giving out minimal information about the contents.
Wolfgang Weingart
wolfgang weingart, who was born in 1941 in salemertal in southern germany, attended the merz akademie in stuttgart from 1958 to 1960, where he familiarised himself with typesetting and the process of making linocuts and woodcuts. after this he trained as a typesetter and discovered swiss typography. since the 1970s wolfgang weingart has exerted a decisive influence on the international development of typography. in the late 1960s he instilled creativity and a desire for experimentation into the ossified swiss typographical industry and reflected this renewal in his own work.






https://www.typographicposters.com/wolfgang-weingart
These designs are typographical base. Wolfgang Weingart was one of the pioneers in experimental typography. He tend to break the rules to use typography as a design element not just for information.
Part 2



Part 3
Julia Hastings
Julia Hasting (born 1970 in Bremen, Germany) lives and works in Zรผrich.
She is the creative director of Phaidon Press. She studied graphic design at the Staatliche Hochschule fรผr Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany, and finalized with a diploma. From 1993 to 1998 she has been designing corporate identities, posters and books for cultural clients, then she moved to London to design books for Phaidon Press, working closely with Alan Fletcher. In 2000 she moved to New York in order to run the new design department as the Art Director for Phaidon Press Inc., and in 2007 she has taken over the design direction at Phaidon Press and moved to Zรผrich, Switzerland. She taught Publication design at the design faculty of the Cooper Union School of Art in New York from 2001 to 2003. She has given lectures about her work at the BRNO Biennale of Graphic Design, The AIGA New York, Pentagram New York, F.I.T., the University of Lima, Peru, Integrated Design Conference, Antwerp, and has been a jury member in numerous international design competitions. Since 2003 she has been contributing illustration work to The New York Times and The New York Times Magazine. She is a member of the AGI since 2000.
Selected Awards:
2015 – Silver Cube, Art Directors Club (Sottsass)
2015 – Bronze Cube, Art Directors Club (WA)
2015 – Wooden Pencil Award, D&AD (Bruce Nauman)
2015 – Wooden Pencil Award, D&AD (WA)
2014 – Art Monographs Winner, British Book Design and Production Awards (Bruce Nauman)
2014 – Brand / Series Winner, British Book Design and Production Awards (Phaidon Focus)
2008 – Silver Medal, Art Directors Club, New York (Unmonumental)
2006 – Merit Award, Art Directors Club, New York (Sample)
2006 – Design Distinction, I.D. Magazine Design Review (Vitamin D)
2006 – Hnorable Mention, I.D. Magazine Design Review (Sample)
2005 – Silver Medal, Art Directors Club, New York (Vitamin D)
2005 – Award for Outstanding Design, Graphis Magazine, New York (Area)
2004 – Golden Bee Award, Moscow (10X10)
2003 – Golden Bee Award, Moscow (Area)
2003 – Gold Medal, Art Directors Club, New York (Andy Warhol – Vol. 1)
2003 – Hnorable Mention, I.D. Magazine Design Review (Blink)
2002 – Award for Typography, Golden Bee, Moscow (Andy Warhol – Vol. 1)
2002 – First Prize, AโZ Competition, Print magazine (Fresh Cream)
2002 – PDN Photo book awards (Blink)
2002 – Certificate of Typographic Excellence, Type Directors Club, New York
2000 – Disctintive Merit, Art Directors Club, New York (Magnumยบ)
2000 – BRNO Biennale of Graphic Design (Andy Warhol – Vol. 1)
2000 – 25th Kodak Fotobuchpreis, Stuttgart (Magnumยบ)
2000 – Design Distinction, I.D. Magazine Design Review (Fresh Cream)
2000 – PDN Photo book awards
1999 – Certificate of Typographic Excellence, Type Directors Club, New York
1998 – BRNO Biennale of Graphic Design (Magnumยบ)
1994 – BRNO Biennale of Graphic Design (รbergriff)
1993-1999 High Design Quality, German Award for Communikations-Design of the Design-Center Nordrheinwestfalen, Germany (รbergriff)
1999 – Award ITP International Poster Triennale in Toyama, Japan
1993-1995 The 100 best posters, Berlin, Germany
1994 – Broncemedaille, The nicest books of the world, Bookfair Leipzig/Frankfurt, Germany
1993 – Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Gold Medal, 7th Triennale, German Poster Museum, Essen

Peter Mendelsund
Peter Mendelsund is the author of five books: the novel The Delivery (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Winter 2020; โGorgeously writtenโฆprofound.โ โMichael Cunningham, author of The Hours) and the novel Same Same (Vintage/Anchor, Winter ’18; โBreezy and profound in equal measure.โ โThe New York Times) as well the non-fiction works What We See When We Read, (โWelcome and fascinatingโโTim Parks, The New York Review of Books), Cover (โCover pushes us to reconsider what we think we know about the graphic representation of words and ideas.โโThe New Republic) and The Look of the Book (Crown/TenSpeed, Fall ’19). Mendelsund has been described by the New York Times as โone of the top designers at work today,โ and his design work has been described by The Wall Street Journal as โthe most instantly recognizable and iconic.โ He is the Creative Director of The Atlantic.

Suzanne Dean
Suzanne has been Creative Director at Vintage Books since 2000. She designs and art directs all of Vintageโs imprints which include Jonathan Cape, Chatto & Windus, Harvill Secker and Bodley Head. Suzanne established the design for the Vintage Classics list in 2007.
She has worked on a wide range of cover designs for authors such as Mark Haddon, Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Yuval Noah Harari, Richard Flanagan, Margaret Atwood and Rachel Kushner. Her covers include The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, The Sense of an Ending, Sapiens, Atonement and The Handmaidโs Tale.
Before working at Vintage, Suzanne graduated from Kingston University, where she studied Graphic Design. Her first job was in general design, focusing on food packaging and brochures. A year later she was approached to join Penguin Books as a Senior Designer, working for Hamish Hamilton. Three years later she joined Macmillan, to work on the Picador list.

Part 4
Identify at least three different book designers you find visually engaging.
Noma Bar (born in 1973) is an Israel-born graphic designer, illustrator and artist. His work has appeared in many media publications including: Time Out London, BBC, Random House, The Observer, The Economist and Wallpaper*. Bar has illustrated over one hundred magazine covers, published over 550 illustrations and released three books of his work: Guess Who – The Many Faces of Noma Bar, Negative Space and Bittersweet a 680 page 5 volume monograph produced in a Limited Edition of 1000 published by Thames & Hudson
Bar’s work has become well known throughout the world, winning many industry awards; more recently a prestigious Gold Clio for his animation & direction work for the NewYork Presbyterian Hospital, a campaign to highlight new frontiers in cancer treatments.
He has also won a Yellow Pencil award at the D&AD Professional Awards and his London Design Festival exhibition ‘Cut It Out’, was selected as one of the highlights of the festival. The project was nominated in the graphics category for the Design Museum, Designs Of the Year.

Chip Kidd is a contemporary American graphic designer, author and editor. He is best recognized as graphic designer for book covers. Being a huge admirer of comic books he not only wrote some of those for DC Comics but also designed their covers. Born on 12 September 1964, in Pennsylvania, Chip Kidd grew up to be an associate art director at the New York publishing house, Knopf. He was hired at the publishing house as a junior assistant in 1986. Besides, Kidd freelanced for various firms and produced more than 70 book jackets per year. Some of the publishing houses he freelanced for included Farrar Straus & Giroux, Amazon, HarperCollins, Scribner and Penguin/Putnam. At Pantheon Book he designed the graphic novels.

Na Kim is a graphic designer based in Seoul and Berlin. After studying product design and graphic design in Korea, Kim participated in Werkplaats Typografie in the Netherlands. Kim is currently running the project space, LOOM in Berlin. Na Kimโs design practice as a system engages without putting limits on the field of graphic design. Kim is taking a methodology to collect objects and events found in everyday life and rearrange them into new order and rules, and ultimately expand design literacy. Besides many other projects, she was responsible for the concept and design of GRAPHIC magazine from 2009 till 2011 and has initiated series of projects based on her monograph, SET since 2015. She has held solo exhibitions, such as Bottomless Bag (2020), Black and White (2019), Red, Yellow, Blue (2017), SET (2015), Choice Specimen (2014), Found Abstracts (2011), Fragile (2006). Besides, Kim has been a curator for Brno Biennale, Chaumont Festival, Seoul International Typography Biennale, and Fikra Graphic Design Biennial. Kim also worked on projects with COS, Hermรจs, ร LAND, and many other clients, and Kimโs works been invited to international exhibitions at MMCA, SeMA, V&A, MoMA, Milan Triennale Museum, Die Neue Sammlung, etc. Na Kim has been a member of AGI since 2016.

Sources:
- ACADEMIC. Derek Birdsall. At: https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/11634470. (Accessed: 17/03/2022).
- AOI. Suzanne Dean, Creative Director at Vintage Books. At: https://theaoi.com/wia/suzanne-dean/. (Accessed: 17/03/2022).
- Curtis Brown. Carolie Bickford-Smith. At: https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/client/coralie-bickford-smith (Accessed 17/03/2022).
- Design Culture. Jost Hochuli. At: http://www.designculture.it/interview/jost-hochuli.html. (Accessed: 19/03/2022).
- Design is history. Jan Tschichold. At: http://www.designishistory.com/1920/jan-tschichold/. (Accessed: 20/03/2022).
- Dutch Uncle. Noma Bat. At: https://www.dutchuncle.co.uk/noma-bar. (Accessed: 21/03/2022).
- Ellen Lipton. At: https://ellenlupton.com. (Accessed: 19/03/2022).
- Eye magazine. Reputations:Phil Baines. At: https://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/reputations-phil-baines (Accessed 17/03/2022).
- Famous Graphic Designers. Chip Kidd. At: https://www.famousgraphicdesigners.org/chip-kidd. (Accessed: 21/03/2022).
- Grapheine. Paul Rand, everything is design! At: https://www.grapheine.com/en/history-of-graphic-design/paul-rand-everything-is-design. (Accessed: 20/03/2022).
- Itโs Nice That. Irma Boom on standing up for yourself, even in the face of controversy. At: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/irma-boom-in-conversation-graphic-design-160320. (Accessed: 17/03/2022).
- Julia Hasting. At: https://www.juliahasting.com/About. (Accessed: 19/03/2022).
- Kelly Blair. At: http://kellyblair.com/about. (Accessed 17/03/2022).
- Linda Huang. At: http://www.linda-huang.com. (Accessed: 19/03/2022).
- Na Kim. At: http://ynkim.com/info/. (Accessed: 21/03/2022).
- Pentagram. Paula Scher. At: https://www.pentagram.com/about/paula-scher. (Accessed: 20/03/2022).
- Peter Mendelsund. At: https://www.petermendelsund.com/about. (Accessed: 19/03/2022).


























































