Can you judge a book by the cover?

I have always said and still maintain that you CAN judge a book by its cover. There are books I go out of my way to read and then there are books that I happen across at the library or the bookstore SPECIFICALLY FOR THE COVER!!! The cover catches my interest, draws me in and gets me to pick it up and read the back jacket. Then I will decide if I want to spend time with the book. The most important part of book design just might be the spine – as I am walking down aisles and aisles of books, that is often the only part of the book I see – that little one inch wide area is all the designer has to get me to want to learn more. It’s all about type, font, color and of course, the title of the book.

I love to read and this is how I find books. I go to the awesome Salt Lake City
library downtown and go directly to the second floor to Fiction. I usually start at the A’s and walk up and down the aisles looking for a book that catches my interest. Sometimes I make it to the M section before I have selected 4 – but usually not which is why I have to stagger my starting point in the alphabet. Friends comment on the eclectic array of books I bring home from the library and ask me how I found out about said book. “I just find them – or they find me” I say.

So, I’m leaving town last week and know I will be sitting on a plane for at least 4 hours and I’m out of books. I go to the library and stumble across a book called ‘The Cheese Monkeys’ by Chip Kidd who is a graphic designer writing a novel about art school and becoming a designer in the 50’s. The book jacket is intriguing and the book makes the cut. Turns out, the main character is going off to college to major in art and ends up taking a class on graphic design. Think Dead Poet’s society with a crazy but inspiring design teacher, Winter Sorbeck, and naïve college students majoring in art.

I loved it and will be sharing Sorbeck’s thoughts on graphic design as well as his interesting design assignments, through the perspective of the 1950’s in blogs to come.

Here is a taste…
Introduction of class content by Winter Sorbeck...

“They would have you believe this class is the Introduction to Commercial Art. It is not. I’ve been put in charge of the store here, and I say it’s Introduction to Graphic Design. The difference is as crucial as it is enormous – as important as the difference between pre- and postwar America. Uncle Sam… is Commercial Art. The American Flag… is Graphic Design.

Commercial Art tries to make you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas. One natters on and on, the other actually has something to say. They use the same tools¬–words, pictures, colors. The difference, as you’ll be seeing, and as you’ll be showing me, is how. Design is, literally, purposeful planning. Graphic Design, then, is the form those plans will take

“Eight notes in the scale: you can write either ‘Smoke gets in your eyes’ or 'The marriage of Figaro'.

“Twenty-six letters: 'Marjorie Morningstar' or 'Ulysses'.

“The man-made world means exactly that. There isn’t an inch of it that doesn’t have to be dealt with, figured out, executed. And it’s waiting for you to decide what it’s going to look like.

Alright – here’s your first assignment…”

And me? I’m hooked!!!
Click here for the book on Amazon.com