See article for comments from designers on inspiration for book designs

http://www.printmag.com/Article/Redesigning-Nabokov-How-Limitations-Can-Be-a-Designers-Best-Friend

Publishers routinely outfit their backlist titles—the books that have been kicking around for years but still sell—with new jackets, hoping that an updated design will keep a classic book afloat in an easily distracted market. But Vintage Books has done something altogether different with the works of Vladimir Nabokov, timed to coincide with the posthumous release of his last, unfinished book, The Original of Laura.

Vintage art director John Gall asked a roster of jacket designers to create new covers for the twenty-one Nabokov titles that the company publishes, including such masterworks as Lolita, Pale Fire, and Pnin. (The existing Nabokov design scheme dates back to the late 1980s.) Gall gave the designers one stipulation: each cover would be a photograph of a specimen box, a nod to Nabokov’s passion for butterfly collecting. Within the framework of the box, and using layers of paper and insect pins, the designers were free to create more or less what they wished.

The new versions have been rolled out as existing back stock of old editions are depleted. “I thought that using the different designers would be a way to keep people interested in what was coming,” Gall says. “People stop paying attention after the major books are issued. I wanted them all to be important. So many backlist redesigns just slip themselves onto the bookshelves barely noticed.” We asked seven of Gall’s selected designers to discuss Nabokov’s books, their cover art, and just how tricky it was to work within the confines of a butterfly box.


Suellen Stinger-Hye