What does the story look like
Even if it is a ‘No phones allowed’ sign or ‘no smoking’ when I look at them from the corner of the eye. It strictly reminds me of Murakami’s book covers. Every other sign which has a red background and black or white shape in the middle or anywhere on it sticks me with nothing else but this. No wonder the designers of his book covers have done an astonishing job when someone from different cultural background gets back to it in the middle of the day without any context. The original series designed by John Gall was unique for it’s time but in current time it doesn’t stand out for me. Later same thing with Chip Kidd. I do have a huge respect for him since he is one of the legend when it comes to designing book covers. Moving from Gall’s original series consisted of pop art and portraits of lead characters to accuse symbolism. Not only does the cover supplements the story with a succinct expression but the entirety of 1Q84’s design is very well-thought of and intricately symbolic. What I discovered is the inversion of the page numbers, on some pages, the numbers are inverted which suggests a lot of symbolism from the story and the universe the characters reside in. When it comes to the cover of Killing Commendatore, the use of calligraphy brushes and the abstract forms it created, intrigued me to see Suzanne Dean other work too. But the one I remember vividly is the one redesigned by Noma Bar. In much broader sense it not only connects the dot form the stories but in a few designs it also follows the initial surreal map which was formed by John Gall.
The title of this paragraph is inspired by Chip Kidd's Ted talk. I have attached a link below. The Hilarious art of Book Design | Chip Kidd