STORY COVERS
Book covers make my heart beat. I love designing them, judging books by them, buying them and holding them in my hands. As a book cover designer, I have the pleasure of creating the very beginning of a journey for the reader, an invitation into the book. Metaphorically and physiologically, words and language have the power to transport the mind. The book cover is the entry point to the many other worlds and times that exist in literature. It is this magic quality of books and the enjoyment of reading that draws me to designing covers.
I consider book cover design to be an important responsibility, one that extends beyond individual books or marketing goals and contributes to shaping our culture. Books are our means of preserving the secrets of the past and contemplating the future, the cumulative memory and imagination of mankind. The cover is a key part of our decision-making process about which books we read, translating into which ideas we allow to soak into our individual and collective identities.
ABOUT
Anne Jordan is a principal at Hypothesis and a faculty member at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
CONTACT
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Cheever, John. The Stories of John Cheever. New York: Vintage International, 2000.
- Grace, Patricia. Waiariki. Auckland: Penguin, 1975.
- Nabokov, Vladimir. Nabokov's Butterflies: Unpublished and Uncollected Writings. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000.
- Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Picador, 2001.
- Updike, John, and Katrina Kenison, eds. The Best American Short Stories of the Century. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.