Every cover tells a story

Lynn Andriani in Publishers Weekly looks back on the interesting effort to rate an oft-forgotten aspect of publishing--the art of book covers. Fwis, a design firm, developed "Jackets Required," a forum featured on PW since July where the firm weighed in--with comments from booksellers, readers and designers--on cover designs for new works of fiction and nonfiction.

How do you classify book jacket design? As art or advertising? The answer, it seems, is somewhere in between. Of course illustrators create arresting images to draw readers--"I think it works well from a distance, which is all book covers really need to do," one critic says--but they also want something that will endure and hopefully become forever connected with that book (think of the timeless red cover to J.D. Salinger’s "The Catcher in the Rye").

These judges are a pretty harsh bunch, coming down hard on Milton Glaser’s design for Philip Roth’s "Exit Ghost" ("Looks like it was done under the gun") and Susan Mitchell’s design for Denis Johnson’s Vietnam epic "Tree of Smoke" ("It’s like the Pantone Swatch Trend of 1975 vomited on a book jacket").

What did the folks at Fwis like? For one, Chip Kidd’s design for Orhan Pamuk’s book of essays "Other Colors" ("The jacket presents the classic brooding black-and-white photograph of Pamuk’s hometown"). None of the raves, however, comes without contentious remarks, but that’s a good thing. The result of edgy debate is excellent work, and it also makes for some entertaining reading.

Nick Owchar