Hi BookBreakers! I'm super excited to be here today talking to you about some
very snazzy new book covers. If you haven't seen my face before,
hi, I'm Holly. I am a book cover designer and I also have a YouTube channel where
I talk about books and design. When Andy and the team at BookBreak got in touch
with me and asked if I would like to do a video about these new Pan
paperbacks I was so excited about that and I said yes of course because if
there's anything that I love as much as books, it's book design. These are a new
set of book covers for Pan paperbacks and they're celebrating 70 years of
paperbacks from Pan Macmillan. They were designed by Justine Anweiler and her
team there at Pan and they sort of represent that 20th century Swiss style
which I'm going to talk about a little bit in a minute and in case you couldn't
tell I absolutely love these covers I really do genuinely think that they are
very very clever. A lot of them do things that I just think I really wish that I
had thought of that. So, what makes these designs in the Swiss style? Well, first of
all, there is the typography and the titles and the author's names are set in
Helvetica which is a typeface which has been so widely used now but it was
originally made in this Swiss style. It really is the quintessential typeface of
this era and this style. It first came out in the late 1950s. Other traits of
the style in general include really bright bold colors and strong geometric
shapes and also really dynamic angles. So, let's have a closer look at some of
these covers. The Provincial Lady by E. M. Delafield has been described as kind of
a 1930s Bridget Jones. The cover has the shapes cropped in a way
that the dark circle becomes the curve of the hair and the white circle a pearl
earring and then the triangle is just the suggestion of red painted lips. This
is all achieved with three shapes, a few colors and the word lady and I think
that's what pulls it all together and makes you
realize that that's what this image is. If we take away the text or any one of
these elements, then the cover becomes abstract. And that's what makes this such
a successful design there's nothing more that can be taken away and it's as
minimal as it can be. Then we have Born Free. Now, I wasn't actually familiar with
this title at least not to begin with so I wasn't sure what it was about so it
did take me a little bit longer to figure out what these shapes were trying
to say so I think that if you were familiar with the title then it would be
pretty obvious straight away. Can you see what it is?
It's a lion's nose which was confirmed when I looked at the synopsis obviously.
But again, if you take away any of these elements; the top triangle, the bottom
triangle, or the color, then it loses its meaning. This cover for Jaws is probably
my favorite of the whole series. It's so simple, yet so clever. Using typography to
tap into the iconic image of the shark's fin is just genius and then the colors
reference the original film poster. This is one of the designs that I just really
wish that I'd come up with it's just so so clever and especially that reference
to the original film cover because this is a book that has become so, so
interchangeable with its film and that's kind of the picture that comes to your
mind especially with that that fin, so yeah,
hats off to the team with this, this is absolutely brilliant. So, Dead Simple is
one of these covers which works, but I'm having a really hard time figuring out
why exactly it works and again... you take away any one of these elements and it
doesn't work. Now, I thought it was pretty clear from just looking at this without
knowing the synopsis of the book, that this has got something to do with death
and what it's trying to represent is the title sort of being six feet under. Yet,
if you take away the red rectangle at the top it kind of loses that reading
and likewise if he takes away the elongation of the L and I love how the
title reflects the simplicity of this design. You know, it's "Dead Simple" and
so is the cover. So, I think that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy is one
of the most delightful books in the English language and I think that this
cover really captures that. It's got that quirkiness because of the colors but
also the shapes and it's just referencing this fish which can be a
reference to a couple of things in the book; one is
the "so long, and thanks for all the fish" which is what the Dolphins say when they
leave the planet and it could also refer to the Babel Fish and again the colors
here are key to to us reading it as a fish in water. The Lady Vanishes
is set on a train and I love the way that this is kind of represented in
these parallel vertical lines which decrease in their width. It gives you
that visual sense of the world flashing by and of course it also
reflects the meaning of the title with the words sort of disappearing behind
the lines. Ken Follett's The Eye of the Needle has a completely
typographic cover. Having the word 'eye' in white makes it legible and emphasizes
its importance. If you tried to convey this in a different way say putting an
eye or an iris in the O of the 'of', then it would read very differently
because that would then put the emphasis on 'of' rather than 'eye' or 'needle'. Dam
Busters and Gone with the Wind have more obvious imagery, not that that makes them
any less effective again these objects are distilled down to their most basic
shapes and because of the kind of visual language that goes along with
these stories, it's very obvious straight away the you might not even need the
title and you would know at least what sort of book it is if not the actual
title. I had a quick talk with Stuart from the design team at Pan Macmillan
and he answered a few questions that I had about the process of designing these and
he said that it was a kind of collaborative thing where they would be
shared around at the cover meeting which is where the important players sit down
and talk about the visuals and whether they work and it's sort of a
collaboration between marketing and some of the executives and the art director
everyone made sure that they were reading correctly and that you could
still tell what each of the objects are. I think that's a wonderful thing
about these is that they do make you think a little bit, it's not necessarily
immediately obvious what each thing is but it takes just a moment and
I really appreciate that because I love these kind of visual puzzles. It's that
element of surprise which is one of the things that I think it makes a great
design. Something looks one way to start with and then you realize that there's a
little bit more to it. So I'll leave you here with a slideshow of some of the
other images that I didn't get a chance to talk about in full and just you can
kind of appreciate how beautiful these are and of course there will be links
for more information about these in the description. Thank you very much to Pan
Macmillan for having me on your channel and I wish you all happy reading.
Bye!