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Friday Art Blogging: io9 on Classic Covers

November 20, 2009 Lauren Davis has a great post over at io9 that I've been waiting to point to for art loving Genreville readers.  I'll pick a few of my favorites and give you my impressions.

1984 - Classic riff on Magritte's The False Mirror, which eventually got transformed into the CBS logo, and reminds me of the spying televisions in the book. 

1984 - Bauhaus style riff on the structure of buildings.  Perhaps it's a comment on how population pressure was on everyone's minds, and might contribute to fascism?

Day of the Triffids - Looks like a botanical illustration.  Also, I love how Penguin's art at the time had a consistent style.  Good branding!

The Midwich Cuckoos - I admit I haven't read the book, but that's one creepy cover.  Now I want to read it.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - I love trippy 1960's and 70's cover design.  And the book was in part a commentary on psychoactives and psychiatry. 

Do Andriods Dream of Electric Sheep - Well, there's an actual electric sheep and a pleasure android on the cover.  It's hillarious in it's blatant luridness and lack of understanding of the concept of analogy.

"Blade Runner" (no, seriously) - I think you could power a small town off thr lurid colors in this one.  Might induce epileptic fits.  Is that supposed to be Rutger Hauer?

A Scanner Darkly - It's so awful, it's wonderful.  Also, so many of the Ballantine covers at the time had this concept where there'd be lines stretching off into infinity theme.  I can identify them from 50 feet off with no glasses on they're so repetitive.  And not in the good way that Penguin's design had.

Stranger in a Strange Land - The trend towards photographic covers is interesting, but in putting this one up side down, I can't tell if it's a cheesy gimmick, or brilliantly subtle.

Stranger in a Strange Land - Pure old school.  And gorgeous in it's rough edges.  It's close to crossing the line into childish, but not quite, which is a difficult trick.

John Carter of Mars - Images like this made Tarnsman of Gor an inevitability.  And yes, I know, it was made after the Gor books.

Neuromancer - This image is so amazingly 80's.  If I had to pick a top example of 80's imagery in SF, this would be it.

The Space Merchants - This is Penguin's design team looking back at its self and re-imagining old concepts.  Brilliant. 

A Clockwork Orange - This image deserves to be hanging in a major museum of modern art.  Design genius.  Also, it reminds me of Massimo Vignelli's classic NYC Subway map in that it uses.  You can read about the story of it's creation here. 

Lauren's work in putting together these images must have taken a lot of time, and I'm really impressed.  It's nice to see genre related art blogging going on in such a high traffic location.  

Posted by Josh Jasper on November 20, 2009 | Comments (0)