Book designers have always been fundamentally concerned with the readers experience – from that initial seeing the book cover in the shop, the rolling it around in the hands, the touching the stock and the taking in of the image; to the reading of the blurb and perhaps a sly breathing-in of the binding. When we take it home, we crack it's spine a tad and sit for several nights with it's flawless typography, enjoying the care and attention to detail and run our hands across of the pages.
I guess this is now called the UX, the User Experience?
And here's the UK Penguin Essentials – (Essential reading, beautifully designed).
In this new digital age, never has the design of a book been more important.
http://www.penguin.co.uk/static/cs/uk/0/minisites/penguinessentials/#
My favourite is the cover of Diary of a Nobody, illustrated by Rob Lowe of Supermundane:
I liked Mrs Dalloway and Steppenwolf.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad to see A Diary of A Nobody in the selection; we named our cats after two of the characters and nobody ever picks up the reference!
ReplyDeleteHard to move on from the original illustrations, though. Are they still inside the book?