My initial visual impressions of the book were that the drawings looked very basic and unsophisticated. The figures of the people holding out their hands and attempting to touch appeared to be very basic sketches, like those drawn by kids. However, the second aspect that caught my eye was the black bird. The…
The visual impression of the book, Light Years, is immediately striking and has a very appealing visual design. When I saw this book on the shelf, my eye was immediately attracted to it, I have truly never seen another book quite like it. The design on the binding and the patterns on the outer edges…
The book I chose was The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser. I chose it because it was really very visually interesting, what with being really thick, looking old, and the gold leaf or whatever substance the gold on the cover is caught my attention immediately in a way that the regular beige would not have.…
Boom! What can I say, Boom: Biography of Books by Irma Boom caught me completely by surprise. I went into the design library and their lay a plethora of books all different sizes, some in boxes and some not. I rifled through, and came to one that looked like the size of “To Kill a…
I chose Die vier Buecher von der Nachfolge Christi by Thomas von Kempis. Translated, this title means “The Four Books of the Following of Christ.” This edition of the book was published in 1922. Visually, the book looks to be a religious text without any context of what could be inside. The cover is textured…
Lockhart’s Ancient Spanish Ballads: Historical and Romantic (published 1842) has many interesting and beautiful design features. The book is large and rather heavy, but not so heavy that it is difficult to handle. Its front cover is bound in dark green leather embossed with golden floral designs that frame the title, set in all caps…
Judge a Book by its Cover By: Lavanya Gunturi Part 1: The book I chose to check out was File Under Architecture by Herbert Muschamp. The book caught my eye on the self, because it looked more like a cardboard box than a book. Books that are fragile are usually stored within a custom box,…
As I pulled Asymmetric Typography out of the stacks of other reserved books at the NCSU design Library, I immediately noticed how small it was. It appeared to be hiding closer to the back of the book shelf, in the shadows of two larger books beside it. In fact, I did not even find it…
The book that I chose for this assignment was, Het boek van PTT Telegrafie en Telefoni, designed by Piet Zwart. The first visual impression of this book I had was I noticed the strange graphics on the front and I was curious what the inside of the book looked like. Out of all the books…
While at the Special Collections visit, I looked through the book The Birth, Life, and Acts of King Arthur, by Sir Thomas Mallory published in 1909. At first glance, the book caught my eye because of the unique color and intricate designs on the cover. The book is an olive-green color with gold markings resembling flowers on the…
The cover of Contemporary Furniture and Textiles is bold, with contrasting colors, pattern, repetition, and angular lines and shapes. The cover is shiny giving it an appealing appearance that is modern and chic for its time. The background color is a silver/grey with a red K in the center that stands out visually, drawing the…
For our assignment on “Judging a Book By Its Cover”, I chose Karel Marten’s “counterprint”, a collection of Martens’ independent and non-commissioned graphic design work. The book intially jumped out to me for its simplicity, its lack of adornment, and the seemingly transparent nature of the cover (seen above). At first glance, it’s hard to…
The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia and Electric Speech When I first saw the cover, I found it very interesting because the words “The Telephone Book” didn’t follow the standard pattern of writing. They are separated from each other in different sizes and shapes. When skimming through the pages, I noticed this pattern is all over…