INDEX 2020 and Two who made a difference

On page 282 in this book there is a list of publications that Bernard and Glaser (1929-2020) have designed, redesigned or consulted on and it comes to an impressive ninety-eight. The book's three chapters give a visual insight into how these two designers, over several decades, created remarkable covers and inside pages for a wide range of consumer and trade magazines.

Their work on the weekly New York, from the first issue in 1968, takes about half the book with dozens of covers and spreads, each with text and captions explaining their thoughts on the layout and why they chose a particular illustrator or photographer. Over three issues the magazine revealed the secret history of Watergate and eighteen pages are shown from these issues which only used large illustrations. Bernard and Glaser left the weekly in December 1976 when Rupert Murdoch bought the title. 

Chapter two looks at seven titles that were designed independently by either Bernard or Glaser. Chapter three covers work from 1982 when they formed MBMG, an editorial design and development company, sixteen titles are considered including Washington Post magazine, US News & World Report, U&lc, Time special editions, Fortune. Nicely included in this chapter are three failed titles. The New York Film Review ran for five issues, Globe and Inspired never got as far as a newsstand. The Inspired logo, on page 248, looks almost unreadable.

This is a handsome looking book (a tip of the hat to designers Fausta Kingue and Natalia Olbinski) with hundreds of pictures and printed with a two hundred screen on a semi-matt art paper. A worthwhile purchase by anyone working in publication editorial and graphic designers. 

It covers a lot of fiction

A worthwhile overview of fiction covers though I did find it a bit over designed. The first thing I noticed when opening the book was a smaller one inside, the thirty-six pages carry the book's page numbers but it's 9 by 6.75 inches and has a cover on each page to reveal the essence of a book. I thought the inclusion of these shorter pages a nice touch.

The first chapter 'What a book cover is' has a spread with a complete jacket: the two side flaps, back, spine and front, it carries a handsome design by Peter Mendelsund. Any professional designer would agree that the complete jacket should be considered as one design unit but unfortunately, most publishers don't share that point of view so all the covers in the book are just that: the front only, no flaps or backs.

There must be several hundred jackets throughout these pages and they are various sizes, from whole page down to thumbnail size. With that number it obviously includes plenty of mediocre designs, an image (usually an illustration) with the typography just dropped on without any thought about integrating these two elements. This makes several Penguin books included stand out as they have always considered the cover elements should work together. Page 254 has nine French and Italian covers from Apple Books with beautifully simple graphics, flat colors and all the type in Helvetica. Interestingly the Helvetica is in upper and lower case which is a more European style for titles rather than the  American all capitals.

I thought the book was rather over-designed, there are too many black pages with white type, several pastel colored pages and lots of captions are set sideways so the book has to be turned round to read them, this is no more than designer whimsy. Pages numbers are missing here and there: 87 to 93 or 271 to 278 for example.

This is an interesting addition to the slowly expanding collection of titles devoted to cover art so book and graphic designers will want to get a copy.