Design
#books
#digital
#illustration
#Matt Stevens
#movies
It’s mentioned that you just shouldn’t decide a ebook by its cowl, however each readers and publishers are savvy sufficient to know that cowl design speaks volumes about what’s inside. From the explosive graphics of pulp fiction to the attention-grabbing mud jackets of clothbound copies, cowl design visually hyperlinks to particular genres or collection. For designer Matt Stevens, a love for the aesthetics of shelf-worn pocket paperbacks mixed with a ardour for films spurs the continued collection Good Movies as Old Books.
The thought for the mission dovetailed from a proposal Stevens made to a film manufacturing shopper. “Usually, we attempt to make the pitch appear and feel like one thing else. Possibly an previous handbook or a set of classic baseball playing cards,” he tells Colossal. “(For) one of many pitches, we have been promoting a fairly trendy concept however in a manner that wanted to look actually previous and worn. I actually loved the method of placing one thing in a special context and thought I’d take it on as a private mission.”
Stevens grasps the potential of digital instruments to create life like depictions of analog objects and explains that he’s most within the digital world when it may be used to recreate a sensation of tangibility. He says:
I used to be developing proper as computer systems have been changing into dependable design instruments, and in design faculty, we nonetheless used issues like French curves, photocopy machines, and drew loads of sort by hand—as a result of we needed to. I actually love issues that really feel handmade, display printed, printed on a press, worn down…you may see the method within the picture and the grit and age.
Stevens’ illustrations draw on a appear and feel we affiliate with the well-read and well-loved tomes of the twentieth century, from pocket-size thriller thrillers to traditional Penguin covers to strengthened library bindings that would stand up to a whole bunch of reads. Full with bookstore value stickers and creases alongside the spines and corners, Stevens’ designs look actual sufficient to choose up and crack open. “The covers began out exploring a lot older books: linen covers with frayed edges and coloured foil stamps,” he says. “However because it’s progressed, an enormous a part of the enjoyable is researching the historical past of covers of the final century and seeing what I reply to and what makes these specific covers work.”
Stevens simply launched a Kickstarter marketing campaign to print a second quantity of Good Motion pictures as Previous Books, which incorporates 100 new designs, plus a reprint of the sold-out first quantity. See a lot extra the place these got here from on his website and Instagram.
#books
#digital
#illustration
#Matt Stevens
#movies
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