The Great Book Cover Project

After Hungarian designer & illustrator Levente Szabo graduated from Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design in 2006, he set up shop as a freelance designer. He soon grew weary with indecisive clients and shifted his focus toward illustration and the concepting of storyboard artwork for the movie and advertising industries in Budapest. It is easy to see how all of this past training and diligent hard work has informed so much of his current book and poster work.
     Last year, Szabo's life took a big turn when he moved to Brussels with his girlfriend so she could begin a Master's degree program at the Royal Conservatory. This new move presented Szabo with some time to pursue a life-long dream of designing book covers for some of his favorite novels. He soon began a self-directed assignment he calls The Great Book Cover Project, where he can display his strong design and illustrations skills in addition to his clever conceptual work. His first cover project of Kafka works was created in Photoshop and included hand lettering. The last image above illustrates some of his initial concepts for each book. 

Szabo considers Arthur Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey to be one of the best sci-fi novels ever written and his design represents a very elegant solution. He chose to use the iconic monolith on both the dust jacket and the hard cover in two starkly contrasting designs, and managed to bridge the time frame between the two. The text block on the back cover fittingly mimics the monolith structure.

  

Stephen King's Misery was part of Szabo's Great Book Cover Project #4. He chose to design two different versions and encourages others to weigh in with their preferences on his Behance site. Szabo states "the text in the red version is an actual quotation of the novel Paul is writing within the novel, I only changed it to place the words 'Stephen' and 'King" in it."

Seen above are two different versions of Lord of the Flies. Below are examples of Lolita, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and The Old Man and the Sea.

Cover designs for Brave New World and I, Robot. Below are many examples of of his initial working concepts for these and other covers.

Levente Szabo has all the markings of a great book cover designer; a rare combination of diversified talents including conceptual design, illustration and typography. I hope his dream of producing The Great Book Cover Project results in a great dream career of designing books. He certainly deserves this. Find much more of his work here and here.

See You at the Fair

Every year at this time I get excited to attend the local county fairs. I love every thing about them except the corndogs and blue cotton candy. I love the animals, the giant vegetables, the quilts, the canned goods, the local artwork and the carnival rides. Well maybe just the carnival signage... I don't really like the rides. (see previous post on carnival signage here!) 
     Truth be known, I was a 4-H girl for many years and exhibited at the county fairs in my youth. I once did a presentation with giant visual aids on the history of the horse and won a blue ribbon. To my horror, I was expected to present my "pony show" several weeks later at the Washington State Fair in 1968. There I stood, frozen, holding a microphone and flipping my enormous hand-colored visual aids of miniature horses from the pleistocene era, in an enormous barn full of giant vegetables and passers-by. Not one person stopped to listen to my "livestockumentary" on the horse. I was so embarrassed to be upstaged by giant watermelons and squash, it is a wonder I still love The Fair. To my delight, I found these wonderful 1960s county fair posters from Northern California displayed in Grickily's Flickrstream. They are great examples of the fairs of my youth and the many silkscreen posters which were widely printed by union shops during that era. I love the great mash-ups of older font styles and 60s hand lettering styles in bright day-glo colors. You can see it all at the local county fair ; ) 

A Typographical Tour to Yesterland

Forget the crowds and long lines at airport security... just click your heels together three times and wish upon a star, and you'll be transported back to 1960s Disneyland quicker than you can say Jiminy Cricket. First stop: Main Street USA, where Walt Disney's dream of a family amusement park first came true nearly 58 years ago, on July 17th, 1955 in Anaheim, California. Every building on the Main Street town square was a model of an early 1900s era structure and built at 5/8ths the original size. 
     The mid-60s record album covers featured here are from Grickily's amazing Disneyland Souvenirs Flickrstream. They aren't the most attractive representation of mid-century design by any means, but I am singling them out for both their font choices and applications. The first three appear to be designed by the Disney marketing machine without too much afterthought along with scores of other Disneyobilia. The designer(s) used a rather formulaic approach of slapping a title on the top third of the cover in a lettering style denoting the era or particular place it represented. In the Main Street USA example above, the bold square serif font is not a bad choice to evoke a late 19th century style, but it is uninspiring and incompatible with the photo. And the ill-matched combination of the bright red letters on the deep blue sky is particularly unattractive, making me think this was either designed by committee or an amateur. Main Street was pretty mainstream. 

Fantasyland took a cue from the first Disney logo design and applied a blackletter revival font style on the cover. I do like this font choice, but again, not the application. I can only assume the blackletter choice was to tie it to the Bavarian style castle in the photo, which does little to represent the "happiest place on earth." 

While I do love this style of "broken board" type, this Frontierland cover looks like it was designed by Goofy. Who else would place the paddle boat's smoke stack in the unfortunate position where it interferes with the R? 
     The three covers below appear to be designed by a different designer and with a little more forethought. They are 7" singles, each with an illustration which provides more interest. The "broken board" Adventureland version below gives it that "Tom Sawyer" appeal, and the background doesn't compete with the letters this time. 

This design is less appealing. The Tuscan style font for Frontierland feels almost as out of place in this frontier fort as the tee-pees and the Native American standing just outside the gate. 

Off to Tomorrowland, my favorite of this bunch. I love the artwork as it reminds me of some of the great illustrative work of so many of the early Disney animation artists. But why is it that Tomorrowland has to be italic? Is it supposed to be more futuristic by making it forward leaning? 
     This little type tour to Yesterland fails to meet smart design solutions, yet is a great example of what happens when you get design by committee or nonprofessionals. Choosing fonts and combining them successfully with images requires more forethought and attention than simply applying a clichéd approach. All six of these covers are from one of the richest periods of design of the last century, yet they fail to achieve the character or the simplicity that is often associated with some of the best mid-century design. At the time, Disney had one of the greatest assemblies of artists, illustrators and designers on staff of any company anywhere, yet someone was off in Never-Never Land on this one.   

This is the backcover which appears on all the albums. 

::Via Vintage Disneyland Tickets.

For your listening pleasure...I promise it's NOT "A Small World Afterall" ; )
Or download them all here.

Signs of Human Kindness

Some months ago, I came across the lettering work of Boston artist Kenji Nakayama, when I noticed some handsaws he hand-lettered. I recently revisited Nakayama's site to explore his handsaw work further, only to discover another story of a humanitarian sign painting exchange he inspired. In 2010 Nakayama chose to use his skills as a sign painter to raise public awareness of the many homeless he saw living on the streets of Boston. Although a small contribution for people with great need, Nakayama hopes his signage might inspire others to take notice and begin conversations with many of the anonymous people living in the margins. To date, he has offered a handful of them $10 and a freshly painted, hand-lettered sign in exchange for their own handmade sign, and he hopes more sign painters will eventually be inspired to participate.  
     In April, Norwegian lettering artist Carl Frisso followed Nakayama's lead and painted this sign for Mike, who calls himself "The Pope of Harvard Square." In 2008 during the economic crash, Mike had a mild stroke and was soon laid off from his job as a construction supervisor in Boston. Because he hasn't fully recovered, he can't return to his former career. You can read his entire story and others on the tumblr, Signs for the Homeless, sponsored by Kenji Nakayama & Christopher Hope.

Beyond Nakayama's humanitarian sign work, he has no shortage of other ambitions and pursuits. This month the Hellion Gallery in Portland, Oregon has an exhibition of Nakayama's individual and collaborative work with fellow artist, Dana Woulfe. Between exhibitions and commissions, he creates large multi-layered stenciled artworks on wood panels and yes, the occasional hand-lettered handsaw. 

Vladimir Fuka Uncovered

The book design work of Czech designer and illustrator Vladimir Fuka (1926-1977) who designed many playful covers for adult and children's books. He was one of the most admired and celebrated Czech artists and book designers of the 20th century, yet his work was banned by the Communist regime after he and his family defected to the United States in 1967. In 1951 he became part of an unofficial group of dissident artists and writers who secretly organized in flats and at the famed Cafe Slavia in Prague. A year later he began a daily art diary of stark illustrations reflecting the anxiety of living under the oppressive regime. In 1964 he collaborated with Czech poet and collage artist Jiri Kolar (1914-2002) to write a humorous text for Seventh Heaven, a book of riddles, rebuses and games for adults and children. This book was published in three languages and awarded the Torchio d'Oro (golden) medal in Bologna in 1965.  

< Fuka's cover design for Exploits & Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician with endsheets below. Both via Bustbright.

Illustrations above and below from his 2008 book New York.

Granted, Vladimir Fuka was a very gifted artist and book designer, however in my mind his 1963 poster for Buster Keaton's silent film The General beats all. With his playful collage of type and image, he totally nailed Keaton's adorable portrait. 

:: With exception, all images via Terry Posters.