The Importance of Content, Peter Mendelsund

The Importance of Content

Peter Mendelsund

Book Cover Designer Associate Art Director of Alfred A. Knopf Peter Mendelsund

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ach designer has their own process; reading, thinking, sketching, designing, iterating and after sometime, a final product. As each designer has their own process, they also have their own specialty.

In the case of Peter Mendelsund, he is a reader and a thinker. As a book cover designer, he reads the piece, reads through, reads across, backwards and forwards.

Dissecting the piece almost methodically into irreducible building blocks. With a complete understanding of the book, he can design with intention.

Covers: by Peter Mendelsund The Enchated Wanderer, The Girls, What We See When We Read, Zhivago, Illuminations, Adieux, Ulysses, The Girl With The Dragom Tattoo, The Ravishing of Lol Stein, Metamorphasis

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Across and Through Reading Into The Work Essays, Autobiographies, and Novels

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ith a complete understanding of the book, he can design with intention. Create the “aha� moments on the cover, Such as The History of Sexuality connected to the image of a singular bed spring. Or Illuminations and Reflections by Walter Benjamin. Benjamin writes travelogues of different cities, like Moscow under Stalin. He moves seamlessly from literary criticism to autobiography, as if expertly navigating city streets. Brought to attention by the autobiographical work and seamless transitions in Reflections, an abstracted illustration of streets are created.

(top) left to right, Discipline & Punish, Power / Knowledge, and The History of Sexuality covers, by Peter Mendelsund (bottom) left to right, Illuminations, front and back covers, and Reflections Front cover

by Peter Mendelsund

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The Kafka Series Redesigning the Face of A Classic Metamorphasis, The Trial, and others

“you’ve got lovely dark eyes.”

– The Trial, f. kafka

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nspired by the above quote, Mendelsund creates a theme of paranoia and skepticism. By using the eye as a motif, he turns the literal gaze back to the reader, introducing them to this new anxiety and scrutiny that plagues many of Kafka’s characters. In the case of Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Mendelsund did not simply put a picture of an insect on the cover, because he knew it was never about that insect. Instead he gave the cover a face, a simplified eye paired with a circle filled in with a hexagonal pattern, to introduce the theme of scrutiny and change.

Covers: by Peter Mendelsund The Castle, Aphorisms, Diaries, The Sons, The Stories, America, Letters to Milena, Letters to Friends, Family & Editors, Letters to Uttla & the Family, Letters to his Father, Letters to Felicia, The Trial

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A Novel Peter’s Own Writing “What We See When We Read”

Covers: by Peter Mendelsund

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left to right, What We See When We Read, and Cover

and a Monograph Peter’s Own Work “Cover”

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endelsund created his monograph with the title “Cover” and it contains the majority of his work with books. Also containing his process, rough drafts, scrapped drafts and written accounts of others experiences with either him, or his work. It quickly covers his portfolio. Best described by Mendelsund “To cover can mean to travel a certain distance, to pay for, to camoflauge, to describe or comment on, but it also can mean to comprehensively include. This book is not comprehensive.

It does not contain all of my work. What is covered here is but a very small fraction of the book jackets and covers I’ve worked on. Also not included here: large categories of my design output including editorial illustrations, magazine covers, branding, advertising and (most painful of all to omit) music packaaging. I considered making a book that was all of it, the whole kit and caboodle, but then imagined that you rhe reader might find it confusing and thus decided against it.

This book is therefore a book of book-work. Not all the book work, but still.”

Most recently, Mendelsund wrote “What We See When We Read”. It is an explanation of literally what we see when we read. It’s filled with illustrations and examples of text and how the average person reads through it. Including the foggy parts that we forget and visual representations of novels.

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“Originally, they were supposed to be feathers, because birds played a special part in this story. I thought I would construct myself a three dimensional bird, using these pieces of paper. But as it turned out, they just started to look better as flames.”

–Peter Mendelsund, on The Flame Alphabet 10

Designed and written by Dani McCluskey. Composed in Helvetica and Baskerville, Typefaces designed by Max Miedinger in 1957, and John Baskerville in the 1750s, respectively. Printed from a Big Gray printer onto Hammermill 60# text. Copyright © 2018 Dani McCluskey, Portland, Maine, Maine College of Art.

Sources

Mendelsund, Peter. “Cover.” powerHouse books, (2014) https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/portrait-cover-artistinterview-peter-mendelsund Mendelsund, Peter. “What We See When We Read.” Vintage Books, (2014)