Friday, July 23, 2010

Connected


hello there, apologies for the gap in posting.

First post up for the summer is Connected. This book came to me from Julianna Lee at Little Brown. A interesting project since I already owned the hardcover, bought in part because of how much I liked the hc jacket (designed by Julianna). The direction was to take an entirely different approach than the jacket....maybe something closer to this cover I did many years ago.

Here is a quick summary from Amazon:

Scientists Christakis and Fowler present compelling evidence for our profound influence on one another's tastes, health, wealth, happiness, beliefs, even weight, as they explain how social networks form and how they operate.

My first idea was to form the letters out of groups of people. I spent an inordinate amount of time placing these silhouettes. This was a favorite concept on my part, but was deemed too difficult to read because of the title not reading as one word.


On this comp, I graphically connected the letters and layered them over a crowd of people:


The final cover is a literal interpretation, but bold & iconic. Small figures with an overlying grid showing the multiple connections. Printed a bright orange with the gray printing metallic. A fun project to work on...


5 comments:

Andrew Brozyna said...

You posted about this somewhere before, right? It's still lovely. I like the colors, metallic, and typeface. I'd love to see this in person.

Anonymous said...

Not sure if you remember me from NU Press, but a friend I used to work with there just visited and it brought back memories of certain cover designers I used to work with, including you. I found this site and just have to say that you're one of the most talented cover designers around. I'm just floored by your endless creativity and flawless sense of book cover design. Wow. Anyway, just had to say that. I'm not in the book biz anymore, I'm an acupuncture student in California (!), but still appreciate good book design. Good luck to you. --Karen Keeley (former NUP art director)

K. Glyder said...

hi Karen,

Of course I remember you, enjoyed very much the book design I did for NU Press. Thanks very much for the kind words & good luck in your new endeavors! best, K

Nicholas Christakis said...

I am one of the authors (Nicholas Christakis) and I just stumbled on this site. Thanks so much for your wonderful design for our book cover. I have to say that i really liked your first design, perhaps even more than the final design.

K. Glyder said...

Nicholas,

Thanks for your nice comments and for checking out the post. I too preferred the first comp while designing, but in the end I think the best decision was made. Since publication, I've seen a couple covers with very similar designs to the first comp...it may be the publisher was trying to avoid an overlap of designs within the same subject matter. Also, nothing beats a fluorescent orange cover in a bookstore!