Vintage International recently unveiled its beautifully redesigned Vladimir Nabokov backlist, with fresh covers for Nabokov classics like The Enchanter and The Luzhin Defense.
 
“Every so often, a dream project lands on your desk,” writes Vintage art director John Gall at the Design Observer blog. “Here's one: redesign Vladimir Nabokov's book covers. All twenty-one of them. Let me rephrase. Every so often the most daunting project of your entire life arrives on your desk.”
 
Gall enlisted a number of artists (including Utne visionary Dave Eggers, who designed the new Laughter in the Dark cover) to play on the concept of specimen boxes, as a way to honor Nabokov’s passion for collecting butterflies. 
 
“Each box would be filled with paper, ephemera, and insect pins, selected to somehow evoke the book's content,” Gall writes. “And to make it more interesting for readers—and less daunting for me—I thought it would be fun to ask a group of talented designers to help create the boxes.” The final covers aren’t the actual boxes, of course (they’re photographs of the finished projects), though perhaps those will resurface as extra-extra-special collectors’ editions?