Book Covers - The Assault on Reason

Someone recently asked me what I thought of this cover. The assumption being that I wouldn’t like it and that it was a bit trite.

However, I do like it. For the following reasons:
-It will stand out well on the shelf.

- The simplicity and boldness of the design reflects the simplicity and boldness of the title.

- I think the redline invokes thoughts of “drawing a line in the sand” or “crossing the line” in most people, even if they don’t consciously recognize it.

- The combination of a classic font (Miller Display, says whatthefont) with a basic geometric shape = niiice..

So there you go.

Someone later pointed out how bad some of the kerning pairs are. Which is definitely true, and quite unfortunate.

— , 2007-05-18 07:00:00 -0400

I feel the need to preempt any criticism of this design, largely because the jacket was done by Barbara de Wilde, to my eye the best all-around jacket designer ever.

This jacket was probably put through the ringer more times than any of us could possibly imagine, with the dominant criticisms being, “Make it bigger … No, bigger … No, bigger … Now put Al’s name in all caps … No, remove the dingbat … Can you make the red line pop more” ad nauseum till your head explodes.

No one does PERFECT like BdW … “The Wife” by Meg Wolitzer is just one example of how she can make the most stunning jacket out of nothing but type (enter her name into the AIGA design archives for a tiny sub-sample of her work), and I’m sure no one could have done a better job with this title, given all the restrictions and demands.

Has that political/news paper headline sensibility. The red line grabs you and works very well with those strong, bold words: ASSAULT on REASON”.

For the record, I’m not saying that’s what happend, it’s just my experience with “big books” like this. And this is the single biggest book on Penguin’s list for the year, bar-none.

I don’t love this cover. But ultimately I’m with Mark on this one. The process for designing this “scale” of big book makes its own demands. From a dillentante or design purist’s perspective, they can be total surrender’s. But from a practicioner’s point of view, it’s a lot easier to imagine the battles that occured, and respect that what came out is still formally elegant even if it is not conceptually innovative.

For me, the best example of success along these lines was Archie Ferguson’s 9/11 Report for W. W. Norton. In this class of high profile book that needs to set a tone and communicate authority, it is simply stunning.

What confounds me most after staring at that thing for several years now is how such a simple collection of elements, most of which you can formally deconstruct, so completely become more than the sum of their parts. The final result of the 9/11 report is so pitch-perfect, that it actually does become a kind of “concept” cover.

To phrase it differently, the concept in cases like these isn’t necessarily what you SHOW on the cover, (like a window onto another world,) but rather the character of the BOOK itself, as a cue in a social environment.

In Russian, ‘gore’ means ‘big trouble’, ‘misfortune’; prefix ‘gore-’ means complete failure… Ok, where are the visual metaphors for Reason, the Evil, and their fight? I designer’s task is very difficult here. And the book is part of presidential campaign?

What comes to mind is a very nice classic design for a book ‘The Rationalists’ by Fred Troller:

How can you do a type only cover like this and not finesse the kerning – no excuse.

Imagine, somebody is just asked me if I could do some layout design (quite probably , for a political pamphlet or like )

i find the cover to be quite attractive. and also admire ms. de wilde’s work through and through. but the kerning is awkward. and surprising considering the designer.

I like the concept of “drawing a line.” I also admire the restraint of keeping Gore’s photo off the cover. Are there any cover effects (embossing, spot gloss)? Is the cover matte or glossy?

the only color is see is red. associated with “assault/reason”. such an aggresive color, yet i have’nt seen a deep meaning on it. its just bold and straight forward. which mostly work for either a rational individual and/or the common jackashe… (hurrah for the republic….cans!

i like the simplycity of the work. but what the heck is wrong with the italized word “the”. its soft, lenient, or whatever, its kinda contrasting on the word reason… on the other hand political books need not much color to be understood. read it and its there! matte and direct..publicity matters.

and lastly….. should al gore write his name this big in oder to know that al gore can as well write a book? i think putting his name that way is too much for the book. there should be heirarchy of type. anyways publicity matters.

This is really poor and everyone’s knows it. Don’t start judging covers by the fact that the designer may or may not have done some nice work in the past or that it’s a big book. I liked to know what you’d all have written if this had been designed by an intern.Where’s the Voice of Reason (AKA C-Dog) when he’s needed?

The title of the book suggests the arguments and themes of this book are philosophical in nature. Just think of other philosophy book titles: “A/The BLANK of/or BLANK.” You can fill in the first blank with “critique” “theory” “history” “groundwork” etc., and the second with “reason” “justice” “judgment” “human nature” etc. I’m sure Gore chose this title to distance himself from a political dialogue, and maybe make his findings seem more like an objective “pursuit of truth.” (I’m not going to argue his intentions).

The cover matches the title by adopting design elements from a traditional philosophy text. Thus you have that line, that classic-looking typeface, a plain background.

But I also think the design tries to give this book a contemporary feel by enlarging the letters and the line, as if to show off the stylistic “look” of the traditional design it is trying to emulate.

The book, therefore, wears the jacket half-seriously, half-fashionably, and with the title, refuses to be categorized as fully/solely political or philophical. Political arguments made against his thesis may not appear as succesful, because such criticisms would appear to be stepping beyond their bounds. Same can be said about philosophical ones. If this was intentional, I think it is very clever. Not to mention, a political book that doesn’t look like it is pushing an agenda is bound to reach a wider audience (unless it is one of them crazy controversial books).

the letter spacing is erratic, doesn’t seem to be sure whether it wants to be ‘close’ or ‘balanced’

Hmmm. I don’t know. The kerning is not bugging me too much. This is a book by a political figure. It is also most likely targeting a fairly middle-ages, conservative audience. I am sure Gore wants this book picked up by all political parties (republicans/Democrats and everyone on the fringes). It has to speak to that end—as painful as it is. So whether the designer acted as a tool for the publishers/authors needs, or came to it all on her own (quite unlikely)—This cover is pretty perfect. For what it is.

The cover uses popular and conventional type treatments that most people are used to. The white, starkness makes it a sure attention-getter. I have to say (and hope I am not stoned for it) that there is nothing that does not work for me here. It just is what it is. Next. Well, unless c-dog wants to wrap things up…

Just read an excerpt. Al Gore appears to have POINT! If he does, then the designer has not succeeded in bringing that out.

If “THE” was uniform with the rest of the text, everything would have to be smaller. The italics allows those three characters to take up the space of two of the rest.

Plus it helps underscore the fact that the current administration’s assault on reason is The worst in the history of this country.

All I see is “The ASS” ... those Ss don’t sit comfortably with me and serif usually looks much better Title Case IMO.

I wish ‘The’ were not capitalized and Al Gore’s name were, maybe, 55% the size it is now.

I’d just like to hear Barbara’s explanation of the cover, but I think some of you guessed right.

This cover took. . . uh, 30 seconds to design. Most of that time involved waiting for InDesign to load.

I kid. No, I’m sure this was the 500th version of this cover. Perhaps it was the 2nd comp she did and then, after 498 rounds of grueling nightmarish back-and-forth with agent, author, publisher, marketing, sales, people at B+N, some dope at amazon, and who the hell knows else, after all that they maybe went back to the original. This kind of insanity happens all the time.

I’m not particularly impressed, except that somehow they managed to forgo putting Gore’s mug on the front. It reminds me of the latest Pynchon novel. Another huge name, hyper-minimalist design. . . like a Typography 101 assignment. These cover works only because there are so few stark white covers with huge type on them.

Basically, my most positive comment is: This cover could have been so, so much worse [see: Audacity of Hope], don’t start screaming about the kerning, for petesake.

But minimalism only has the ability to achieve mood, not innovation or complete domination of the viewer.

I’m a big fan of stark, elegant design
but this seems like a lost opportunity do to something smart.
I know this is a hard book to package, with a lot of powerful egos who may or may not have been voicing their opinions. Still, this is the challenge of designing books with large print runs.

Please, when has this ever been considered a good design criterior on this web site.

the kerning sucks and the rule placement is annoying—perfect design for a gore.

I’ve liked this cover from the instance I saw it in B&N. Straight to the point, no crap, here it is, clean, simple, all the lies have been filtered out, this is all that is left, this is the truth.

Why do all political books look the same? I liked this at first, but working at Barnes and Noble it begins to look like everything else on the shelf.