Books you should buy because they have nice covers
You should buy some of these books. Because they have nice covers.
The series is called Great Ideas and Penguin say, "Throughout history, some books have changed the world... now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization, and helped make us who we are."
Forget all that rubbish, they have lovely covers.
A really nice uncoated stock, lovely rich blues and reds and some cracking debossing. They feel nice in the hand. Designed by David Pearson and Phil Baines and some others.
(There's a more serious article about these babies over at the International Herald Tribune written by my friend and yours Alice Rawsthorn.)
Hey Ben, I can see that you've been learning from Richard http://www.acejet170.typepad.com/ what with getting that woodgrain background to your pictures and all. But you need to put a bit of work into getting them either straight or deliberately shot at an angle.
That 'just cutting off the bottom right hand corner of the cover on the right' effect just doesn't quite do it.
Posted by: davidthedesigner | Jan 15, 2007 at 19:20
The wonky edges are all part of the 'created in a bedroom by a lone designer' mystique that we work hard on here at Noisy Decent Graphics.
The cut off edges are entirely Typepad's fault.
Posted by: Ben | Jan 15, 2007 at 20:05
Penguin has a history of very beautiful covers.
Posted by: Blip | Jan 16, 2007 at 08:39
Alistair from We Made This reports that they were one of the "and others" mentioned above.
http://wemadethis.typepad.com/we_made_this/
He also says that "The Great Ideas Series (first lot) was up for the Designer of the Year Award, but we lost out to Hilary Cottam."
Posted by: Ben | Jan 17, 2007 at 16:55
That's what I thought when I began seeing them in the bookstore--the covers! I'd buy them just for that.
I've also bought several CDs just because I was in awe of the packaging and design. *
Posted by: Joy | Jan 17, 2007 at 18:27
Hi,
Does anyone know how to do the text-shaping like the first book cover? Or know of a good online tutorial?
Posted by: L.Vazquez | Jan 18, 2007 at 18:21
L - you're probably best off doing it manually and spacing the individual words by hand.
Posted by: Ben | Jan 18, 2007 at 22:12
L, you could also draw a path in Freehand and "flow inside path", but in that case you would spend so much time fixing and fighting to make it look good that I agree with Ben. Actually I think that was what he meant in the first place.
Posted by: Blip | Jan 19, 2007 at 11:45