New book design
Book Reviews | Mar 3rd, 2007
Author: Roger Fawcett-Tang, Ed.
Publisher: HarperDesign
Genre: Design
Pages: 192
Retail Price: 9.99
Buy on Amazon.com link
A nicely designed coffee table book on… nicely designed coffee table books. It sounds Seinfeldian, but after seeing it you wonder why it hasn’t been done before. I suppose that since books have been around for ages, we take their design for granted and don’t think about the artfulness some of them project. Or when we do see a nicely designed book and its inflated price tag, we shrug it off as gimmicky.
But this book collects some of the most interesting modern designs and presents them as creative works of art. Organized in four sections Packaging, Navigation, Layout, and Specification each page focuses on a title that is uniquely designed, whether by its binding, hinges, slipcases, jackets, typography, inner design, or a combination of different elements.
Obviously since the title is “New book design”, it’s comprised entirely of books released during the past few years, and this collection looks and feels like something you could buy at the MOMA gift shop. It strikes me though that I would’ve preferred a collection that reprints unusual and unconventional book designs of the past, maybe showing the evolution of this underappreciated art form (but that may be because I’m more of a bibliophile than an artist). Still, I think typography nuts and students of design and visual arts will appreciate this book, which is artfully designed itself, with clear reproductions and nice use of white space.
Bottom Line: Good coffee table design book, if focused too much on the modern.
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