Asian Type Face Long Time: B O O K . D E S I G N

I have been assigned the task to take the information of a book, (title, author, year,) as well as the opening paragraph of that book, and put it into a thoughtful composition.

But before doing some serious design I was also given the task to seek out books that are well designed.
So I set out, camera phone ready, and took tons of images of book covers that I found were well designed. Through my searching I have found a handful of book covers I find clever, pleasing, or at the very least, uses a typeface that strikes my fancy.

And I left my explorations with two books.
Just my Type a story about typefaces by Simon Garfield and Planet Shanghai a photo documentary book by Justin Guariglia.

I also noticed that my skills with a camera phone is atrocious. Need to learn how to handle this thing better.
All images taken on my phone. Top image/banner/panorama stitched with Photosynth.

F I R S T . S T O P :
The Dusty Book Shelf

This place is amazing to say the least. Tons of good books that have gone through use and love. I saw a lot of more traditional designs as far as the typeface treatments and pretty interesting opening paragraphs as well.

It was so hard finding a children's book cover that was appealing to me

Children's section

Children's Section

So simple and effective.

Walked out of the store with this.

Fell in love with the design inside of this book

L A S T . S T O P :
The Raven

This store was an interesting book store. Admittedly, I do not frequent book stores very often but this one had a completely different vibe than I was expecting. The Dusty Bookshelf was classy, full of used books that have gone through tons of love, but The Raven Bookstore, new books, few classics, but a lot of new books that contained newer and more modern designed books.

I felt like I was in the Urban Outfitters of bookstores.

While I was going through looking at covers I found a lot of treatments to the typeface either playing with an idea or trying to illustrate a point. With the earlier designs it was mostly typefaces that I enjoyed lined up on a grid but with a lot of these the designers found ways to have the type be more expressive and illustrative mixing imagery along with type.