Jackets Required: Sharp Teeth

By Fwis -- Publishers Weekly, 3/25/2008 10:00:00 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: Sharp Teeth
Designer: Christine Van Bree
Author: Toby Barlow
Publisher: HarperCollins 

There is a growing awareness in book cover design of illustration as not just a gentle patina or texture, or built exclusively for the editorial or children's-books markets, but as a graphically strong design tool, capable of communicating mood, energy, and concept in simple, but well-considered strokes. The younger lit-geek crowd surely eats up the notebook-scribbles and can relate to the outsider feel of covers like this; a feeling of handmade authenticity despite its mass market. Indeed, the book has the highly-produced feel of an Eggers piece.

In this particular instance, the book not only provides us with the graphic, but a general texture and feeling of a well-crafted book. The illustration - in this book about a pack of werewolves told with irregular narrative device - a nasty-looking canine gnashes his teeth, a simple graphic that might even be cut-paper. The concept is nonexistent; the book is about dogs that bite, and... there you are. But the graphic strength and hand-drawn feel, along with the careful printing techniques (the dog's teeth are foil-stamped) keeps it edgy and contemporary, and provides a strong presence on the shelf without deeply-embossed gold type or massive author treatments.