Jackets Required: Exit Ghost
By Fwis -- Publishers Weekly, 9/18/2007 12:00:00 PM
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: Exit Ghost
Designer: Milton Glaser
Author: Philip Roth
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Milton Glaser takes a break from his typical illustrative fare for this fictional story of charged emotional revelations, a capstone on Philip Roth's Zuckerman series. All we can do is snore a little bit... about the cover, that is. While the tale is brash but complicated in human emotion, the cover is loud, red, black and white, and there seems to be some meaningful reason for the gradient, though we can't see why. The glow of the EXIT sign? Departure is a key theme within the novel, but perhaps there's a direct quote we're missing.
Glaser is, of course, famous and was revolutionary for his time; organizing conferences, using Pushpin Studio to comment on political events, driving designers to reconsider the moral purpose of their profession, and of course creating some highly visible and pervasive graphics, including such icons as 'I [Heart] NY.' We recently had the pleasure of attending a three-person discussion panel involving Glaser, Chip Kidd and Dave Eggers, where they talked a bit about jacket design and their experiences in general with authors, publishers and the books themselves. The work Glaser showed was considered, delicate and interesting; what happened? This jacket does complete all necessary requirements, but whatever happened to the chunky and athletic illustrative style of our most looked-up-to designer?
