Jackets Required
By Fwis -- Publishers Weekly, 7/24/2007 8:00:00 AM
This is the latest installment in a weekly column by Fwis, a graphic design group that blogs on book jacket design. The Fwis designers judge a recent book by its cover each week on PublishersWeekly.com.
Title: The Chess Machine
Designer: Gray318
Author: Robert Lohr, trans. by Anthea Bell
Publisher: The Penguin Press
In the late 1700's, Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen fooled the royal court by inventing a machine known as "the Mechanical Turk," which could beat anyone at chess. This was of course a farce; within the box was a small, talented chess player moving the pieces about with robotic arms. Robert Lohr's fantastical imagined account of the ensuing cover-up and intrigue is rife with hilarity and intrigue.
This cover feels like John Gray's (of Gray318) frequently brilliant work for Penguin: high-contrast images overlaid with authentic and unique typography. This image itself--of gears and people wheeling about in a slurry of plot twists, machinations and chess pieces--is a literal representation of the contents. The illustration doubles as a literal reinforcement of the title itself; gears and parts comprised of pawns through kings. Most exquisite and delicate is the type, which we're sure was rationalized by the bold patterns of the image. Without it, the cover might have felt too contemporary for the contents.
