Aged paper is great

Here's a 40 year old dust jacket I stole from the library's donations bin. I love the subtle things time does to paper. The softness of the letters, the variations in the colors, the unifying texture and color of it.

Some things I've learned at the library

Penguin books are always well designed. Including the Pelican series.


In the 60s.


And today.


Chuck Palahniuk books tend to be well designed.





Such awesome book design. Can't find any images of the back or spine which are just as cool. If you can't see, the negative space of the letters is naked chicks. My kinda' design.

Michael Chabon's books are also frequently well designed

Nice book covers from the library

Worked at the library today, grabbed a couple books with nice covers. Really you'd think that good designs wouldn't be in short supply nowadays but honestly most of the stuff out there is pretty terrible. Generic cut and paste template assembly line crap. These are just a couple of the ones that caught my eye today.

(Oh ignore the stickers. Can't find good pictures online of the covers.)

Kafka by Crumb

Here's an excellent book my dad picked up last November. Kafka, illustrated by R. Crumb and written by Zane Mairowitz, is a biography/tale about Kafka. The writing is great, superbly weaving between fiction and non-fiction, sticking Kafka in his own stories then pulling back for a bit. The real star of this novel, however, is the work of Crumb and the general book design.

Crumb shares many of the demons that Kafka was known to possess and this is clearly evident in the work. Crumbs illustrations are pulsing with neurotic energy, with an outsiders fire. I love his work, and respect his line work immensely.

The book is also very well laid out. The cover and back are both unique and communicative of Kafka. The page design weaves graphic novel conventions with text in very interesting ways.

I highly recommend picking it up or heck, I'll lend it to ya'.


What a great first page.