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.

Button up

The type size on each button for the date is really tiny.

 A delicious slice of Americana served up on these pages with over a thousand buttons, all life-size and in color. The two authors know their pin-backs (as buttons are called in the trade) Christen Carter runs a button-making company and museum in Chicago and Ted Hake with his auctions has been involved with pop culture artifacts for decades.

The book's twelve chapters are loosely based on themes like advertising, organizations, people, transport, anti-war et cetera. It all started in 1896 when the New Jersey ribbon badge company Whitehead and Hoag invented the celluloid badge (a round image printed on paper and covered with a clear plastic coating that wrapped itself around a circular thin piece of metal, a continuous piece of wire was pushed into the back rim of the badge and this included the pin). The first use was for the presidential campaign between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. 

The ease of production and eye-catching appeal convinced anyone who wanted to push a message that buttons were the ideal medium. The book has plenty of really colorful buttons from the first decade of the last century. These are paintings or graphics taking most of the small space with circular lettering around the edge. Over the decade's flat graphics or just type became popular choices. The 'Icebreakers' chapter has several type only buttons: 'This button is just an attempt to communicate', 'Huba huba' or 'I'm hep'. A thing I really liked about the book is that so many buttons are decades-old which adds to their curiosity value

The book is nicely designed with all the buttons as cutouts with a slight drop shadow to give them a dimensional look but I think it was a bit unfortunate to use such tiny type for the year date with each button. Graphic designers and anyone interested in pop culture will really enjoy this book.

Home in the final frontier

November 2020 was the twentieth anniversary of NASA so this book could be considered a sort of celebration of the event. The 121 color photos reveal a fascinating interior view of the module which, because of its size and weight limits, means that everything looks very basic and more or less devoid of any designed covering to hide all the technology. 

A first impression is that there are cables everywhere, probably thousands of them to connect all the electrical systems. Next, you'll notice the racks of equipment crammed into small spaces with dozens of pushbuttons, dials and toggle switches each with the name of what they do in capital letters. Storage areas are stuffed with various white fabric bags tethered together so they don't float around in the gravity-less environment. I don't know if it was deliberate but there no shots of astronauts working (for twelve hours a day) or relaxing. The first fifty-six pages have five essays dealing with background to the ISS. One by the Italian astronaut Pablo Nespoli describes how he took some of the photos during his 313 days in space spread over several missions. 

The book is the usual quality production from Damiani, printed with a 250 screen (to bring out the detail in the photos) on smooth matt art paper. In 2024 the ISS will be abandoned and destroyed in 2028 so this book will provide a visual record of this remarkable international achievement.