Compose styles
Rather than blending styles toward a middle, this gives them roles. The first one carries the structure, the next comes in as the accent, and anything after that shows up in a single detail. Where they fight each other, it says so before you start.
How to divide the work
- Composition
- Follow Modern American Book Jacket: One shape set off center with generous emptiness around it
- Type
- Set in Modern American Book Jacket's manner (Title in hand lettering beside type, author name kept small), and let Penguin Cover System's lettering (One serif face fixed, size and leading unchanged across every volume) appear only where you want the eye to catch.
- Material
- Ground in Modern American Book Jacket's material (Two or three flat inks over the bare paper color); bring in exactly one thing from Penguin Cover System (Ground colors limited to the categories, one paper stock throughout).
- Colour
- Build on #e3d9bc, #d1371e, #3e3a46 and admit one accent from #e9dbce, #f03f17, #140e0f.
Where they fight
- Modern American Book Jacket and Penguin Cover System both belong to Publishing and Editing, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable.
Caution
- Modern American Book Jacket Choosing an abstract shape without tying it to the book yields an ornament that would fit any title, so the series stops being distinguishable.
- Penguin Cover System Making an exception for each title breaks the premise that the system is the product and the shelf stops reading.
Image prompt
Produce four original images that take their structure from Modern American Book Jacket (style, 1940s–1950s) and their accent from Penguin Cover System (style, 1935–). ## What to make Make the kind of thing Modern American Book Jacket exists for: literary series covers made one by one without showing the plot, or A dress that reads as one series when shelved beside earlier volumes. Choose one subject and hold it across all four. ## Structure comes from Modern American Book Jacket - Abstract suggestion of content - Compositions of sign and shape - Hand lettering with type - Series coherence Composition: One shape set off center with generous emptiness around it. Type and lettering: Title in hand lettering beside type, author name kept small. ## Accent comes from Penguin Cover System, used sparingly - Color-coded bands - Rigorous composition rules - The Marber grid - Consistency as a series Let one material quality come from it: Ground colors limited to the categories, one paper stock throughout. ## Colour and feeling Build the ground on #e3d9bc, carry the structure in #d1371e and #3e3a46, and let a single accent come from #f03f17. These are read off real works, so a direction rather than a fixed palette. Feeling to carry: luxury, calm, rebellion, trust, play. ## Where they fight - Modern American Book Jacket and Penguin Cover System both belong to Publishing and Editing, so the difference is small. Push the roles further apart than feels comfortable. ## What goes wrong - Modern American Book Jacket: Choosing an abstract shape without tying it to the book yields an ornament that would fit any title, so the series stops being distinguishable. - Penguin Cover System: Making an exception for each title breaks the premise that the system is the product and the shelf stops reading. ## Across the four Keep the roles fixed in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows what this pairing can do rather than four versions of one picture. ## Constraints - Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work. - Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work. - Produce original compositions in the general period languages described above.
Related entries
- Modern American Book Jacket 1940s–1950s / Style / Publishing and Editing
The jacket style Lustig built at New Directions: suggestion by sign and abstraction instead of illustration, turning literary covers into small modern artworks and raising postwar American book design.
- Penguin Cover System 1935– / Style / Publishing and Editing
From the tripartite color bands of the first covers through Tschichold's composition rules to Marber's ruled grid, Penguin kept reinventing the cover as a design system. The paperback became a textbook of modern design.
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