The Publisher
There are few artistically inclined publishers as McSweeney’s who not only have a fabulous literary magazine, but also a magazine-magazine, a DVD “magazine”, a very simple but funny online magazine, and tons of cool books (some of which you can get automatically every month in the McSweeney’s Book Release Club) under its wide, artsy umbrella. Oh, they also run non-profit writing centers for kids. And raise consciousness about the crisis in Sudan.
The Author
But enough about McSweeney’s, let’s talk about Michael Chabon who has an extensive vocabulary, slambamthankyoumame writing skills, & tons of awesome books in his repertoire, including The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (which has an interesting book cover history in itself) and Wonder Boys. His new book, Maps & Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands, actually discusses how book covers are, well, judged, often marking a book as simple “genre fiction” (romance, sci fi) or a classic and thus defining not only its worth but its placement in a bookstore before it is even read.
The Cover & Book Design
But enough about Micheal Chabon, what about Jordan Crane, who created the book cover and, in amazing feat of artistic genius, made a three layer dust jackets (each layer a different color and different scene) and a pretty black book with foiled gold lettering underneath it all (a gold X marks the front of the book and surrounds the title, as if the book itself is a map). (The picture above is from NY Magazine.) The acknowledgments page is also cleverly designed as a map featuring Chabon’s mentors and helpers.
What is best about this book design, though, isn’t its perfect selection of typography, its quirky acknowledgments page, or its clever new use of the dust jacket, but that the cover fits thematically perfectly with the writing inside.
Now that, I think, is the ultimate goal of book cover design, making the book feel like one entity, cover and all, a piece that is worth both reading and owning.
3 Responses for "Maps & Legends"
Dust jackets usually bother me, but these ones are worth it.
i very much judge books by their cover and the section of the store they were in. i’m still unsure if i would read this one based on the cover (though it is pretty looking). but you always have a solid taste in books!
[...] publishes some of the best-looking books on the planet. You’ve already seen my review of Maps & Legends, printed by McSweeney’s, and you can browse around for even more on the McSweeny’s [...]
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