Jackets Required: Windy City
By Fwis -- Publishers Weekly, 4/22/2008 11:00:00 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: Windy City: A Novel of Politics
Designer: Thomas Beck Stvan
Author: Scott Simon
Publisher: Random
The subtitle says it all — "A Novel of Politics" — and the book delivers on the vapid goings-on of big-city, all-American politics. Formally, the angle of the layout says 'crooked', and the boater hat says 'good, old-fashioned American,' which leaves us without much question as to what’s going on here. That combined with the weather vane and Old Glory... clearly the designer wanted to take no chances. Nevertheless, the cover is rather satisfying both for its integration of these elements, the wild and energetic portrayal of the wind, and the classy type treatment. Many political books (fiction or nonfiction) either rely on a very small set of visual queues: classical typography, red and blue, engraved illustration, and stripes and stars. Here we have those elements, but because the story is so over-the-top and they're put together well, the design becomes hysterical and unique.
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