title: King of the City

King of the City

Another jacket from High Design.

It’s a funny thing really.. this is a really nice cover and a fairly crappy poster, haha.

The rugged texture and the redundant context-driven design work really well here. But the typeface choice and the vector-illustrated crown seem thrown together.

It must have been a hard balance to strike. A poster simple enough to not clutter itself and still act as a good clear message, but interesting enough to pass for an authentic wheatpaste poster. The font choice with its big blocky letters and lowercase accessibility seems to put on a friendly face, but the context is grimy and torn. Nor can I tell what era this is supposed to represent. If anything the interlocking strong sans-serif with the heavy rules make me think of something Paula Scher would have comp’d and then dismissed.

All in all, this treatment works well and makes for a welcome break on the shelf. It just seems to suffer from a bit of an identity crisis.

— , 2007-07-04 20:39:00 -0400

dang, this is an ambitious book cover design.. and i think it works…

well, im kinda not a fan of the black text.. it looks so solid, it should have stains or any other distraction to make it look like its part of the poster.. for me the text float!

i was just thinking, well subjectively that this looks like a rocky balboa poster.. and michael moorcock? sounds like a pornstar… more cock?.... anyone?

— supercow , 2007-07-04 22:23:00 -0400

maybe i should name you madcow…lol…

the poster in the design did not adopt the textured background. the paper should be textured also.. maybe the designer missed it.

— ongoy , 2007-07-04 22:30:00 -0400

The poster is awful.

— , 2007-07-05 03:02:00 -0400

I’d have to agree with you, Ben. It’s a decent cover of kind of a bad poster. But, then, doesn’t that mean that the cover is kinda lame since the poster occupies 80% of it? Heh…

I like the core idea. I’m a huge fan of photographing the text in the real world on three-dimensional things (is there a fancy term for this)? I just don’t know if this is a prime example of such.

I think a white cover with the title just as it is on the poster and an entirely revamped author name would be more successful.

— C-Dog , 2007-07-05 04:31:00 -0400

Why does book design have so much dirt on it?

— eric , 2007-07-05 05:29:00 -0400

What’s the author’s last name again? I can’t quite read it.

— , 2007-07-05 06:09:00 -0400

It’s interesting.

— Ian B. Shimkoviak , 2007-07-05 07:05:00 -0400

Like an Abercrombie & Fitch t-shirt with faux fading and wrinkles?

— eric , 2007-07-05 07:19:00 -0400

This cover is devoid of passion, methinks somebody wanted to get home early for dinner!

— Auguste , 2007-07-05 12:10:00 -0400

like a banana peel stuck between ones teeth.

It’s a cool idea—design a poster, shoot it for a cover—but I fail to see the need to go to this extent other then wanting to “try” something like this. In other words, the concept (and poster) is weak and speaks to nothing. Plus, it looks like the wall this poster hangs on is chipping—and so your eye goes to this cracked/chipped wall, but offers nothing in way of communicating what this cover is about. If there is something going on on this cover, it’s lost on me.

The plus side—very bold, legible title face. Probably grabs you from a dozen other books on the shelf. I think my favorite “make it and shoot it for the cover” application was done for the gay novels posted a few months back. Now that made sense and worked very well.

With this cover (going back to the bad) you don’t know if it’s a book about rock n’ roll, stand up comedy, a rise to fame—it’s just not clear and hints at very little. If you’re gonna be abstract, just be abstract all the way.

The feeling I get from the last 2 High Design posts is that these covers are not thought out very well. Maybe the editors ain’t giving enough info. Who knows. Maybe the deadlines are outrageous.

My final word: At least they are interesting and not bluntly ugly. And bravo on the extra mile of design a poster and shooting it and then designing a book cover with it all. Bravo. Hope it’s a good book and worth all the trouble…

— Ian B. Shimkoviak , 2007-07-05 12:15:00 -0400

I really like the concept and think it’s definately eyecatching. I love the grit on book covers and like the ‘dog’ share a love for environmental type (how’s that for a technical term? You heard it here first). I also like that there are one and a bit posters, nice attention to detail. However, the execution lets it down for me a bit. What genre is the poster going for? How does it match up to the book’s content? Why is the poster so dirty? In my experience, posters are either cleanish or rumpled, or torn up, this one looks like someone threw a meat sandwich at it. Twice. And weirdly it looks also too clean like it hasn’t been pasted up. Hm, nice post though.

— , 2007-07-05 12:15:00 -0400

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/images/0684861445/ref=dp_image_text_0/203-2454866-9040705?ie=UTF8&n=266239&s=books

— , 2007-07-05 12:38:00 -0400

http://www.locusmag.com/2000/covers/moorcockkinguk_93×140.gif

— beauGeste , 2007-07-05 15:34:00 -0400

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0380795035/sr=1-5/qid=1183736624/ref=dp_image_0/102-3234120-7044156?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1183736624&sr=1-5

— * , 2007-07-06 04:46:00 -0400

Sorry previous one didn’t work.

http://www.theedge.abelgratis.co.uk/booksim/kingofthecity_files/kingofthecitysmall.jpg

I guess that makes three version of this cover kicking around out there. The one Ben posted gives me the impression it is about boxing which is not the case. If the synopsis I read is correct, it is about a paparazzo in London in the 80s and 90s. In that case the version with the flash bulb beside a bus gets my vote.

— beauGeste , 2007-07-06 05:51:00 -0400

Whose his wife… Ivanna Moorcock

— travis , 2007-07-06 06:09:00 -0400

I think it’s pretty great. I would just change the vector crown into a small siloed photo of a crown.

— mike , 2007-07-06 06:29:00 -0400

beauGeste,
Your post did not work.

Dave,
That cover, as atrocious as it is, somehow works better for me than this one. It feels more natural.

You know, sometimes a book just has the wrong title for it’s content. I read a review of this book, but see no connection between the covers and the content of the book. I think that sometimes being abstract and super conceptual works for a book, and other times it does not. I wonder if there is a better way for the fantastical London and mood of the central character to find it’s expression on this cover…

— Ian B. Shimkoviak , 2007-07-06 07:59:00 -0400

Travis, you’re funny. BeauGeste, I have to agree 100%, that flashbulb cover is perfect for the book. That’s what I’m talking about!

Ben, can you post all those up for comparison?

— Ian B. Shimkoviak , 2007-07-06 08:11:00 -0400

LOL… I didn’t notice his last name. Oh man, that’s sad.

— C-Dog , 2007-07-06 15:17:00 -0400

Look folks, further off-topic, lewd, or otherwise uncivilized comments are just going to start getting deleted, IPs banned, etc. If you want to insult each other or make potty jokes, you may search elsewhere. I’ll make another announcement next post, beyond that, you’re toast.

— , 2007-07-06 20:27:00 -0400

Sorry….will not happen again…. Although the cover is trying to look like a flyer, the type could appear a bit more distressed and or intergrated on the paper. Distressing type is something of a cliche but can give the cover like this a more organic look. Although the type choices could use some refinement it is a visually grabby cover.

— Travis , 2007-07-08 04:38:00 -0400

Bring Ben back!

— C-Dog , 2007-07-08 14:41:00 -0400

guys, chris is serious.. in fact, he deleted all those unlikely comments we made in the past post.. check it out… and now im toast and will be banned….

— supercow , 2007-07-08 18:48:00 -0400

supercow,

You’re still here so I think if we all heed Chris’s advice and stay on-topic it will be alright. I apologize for my past transgressions.

The guys at fwis deserve all our gratitude for creating this venue for discussing cover design.

— beauGeste , 2007-07-09 05:12:00 -0400

amen.

— Ian B. Shimkoviak , 2007-07-09 08:37:00 -0400

It looks like a tiny poster or a giant wall, out of scale.

— , 2007-07-10 03:43:00 -0400

It’s sort of a copy of the UK edition, which actually was used as a poster as part of the publicity when the book came out.

— Michael Moorcock , 2007-07-12 07:27:00 -0400

Pardon my ignorance, but is this a mock up of a poster on a wall, or was a poster applied and a picture taken?

If it’s the latter, I think a crisper photo would be a better choice.

Like others have said, the poster itself is lacking. Something about the kerning in “King” bugs me although I understand the need to bump it up for the crown.

Otherwise, with a title like that, I think that there could have been a plethora of concepts better suited.

m welch

— , 2007-07-15 20:29:00 -0400

that poster reminds me of clunky showcard design ideas from a Speedball™ lettering book.

— , 2007-07-19 09:08:00 -0400

I don’t know, I have nothing against the poster. If I saw it by itself on a wall, perhaps the kerning and simplicity of it would annoy me, but as a photographed poster on a rugged wall on a book cover, I think it’s pretty clever—almost like metaficiton or something, the cover is engaging with the story on a really strange level.

I’m also a fan of photographing text in the “real world.” There has to be a term for this…

— Guinn , 2007-10-09 21:18:00 -0400

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— yapay havuz , 2009-12-03 10:15:35 -0500

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— garlica , 2010-01-20 08:12:47 -0500