EVERYTHING UNDER - Daisy Johnson
As daring as it is moving, Everything Under is a story of family and identity, of fate, language, love and belonging that leaves you unsettled and unstrung.
The Finnish artist, Kustaa Saksi, was commissioned to illustrate the cover. He builds fantastical worlds of playful shapes, combining organic qualities with detailed textures and dramatic colour palettes. Kustaa Saksi is represented by Dutch Uncle illustration agency.
Daisy Johnson’s debut novel is out now.
THE GREAT LEVEL - Stella Tillyard
Stella Tillyard’s latest historical novel transports us to England in 1649, where Jan arrives from Holland to work on draining the Great Level, an expanse of marsh in the heart of the fens. Here he meets Eliza, whose love forces him to see the world differently. The book then takes the reader, along with its main character to the New World, where Jan’s skills as an engineer are needed.
The Great Level is a dramatic and elemental story about two people whose differences draw them together then drive them apart.
For the jacket we wanted to suggest travel and distance, as well as an obvious indication of the period and setting. The front of the jacket uses intricate embroidered foliage from a mid seventeenth-century curtain, with interwoven details of a compass and ships from the period. The back depicts a wet and earthy, ambiguous lowland landscape which could be either the Old World or the New. In reality, the brooding landscape is a photograph of Welches Dam, in the Cambridgeshire Fens.
The two sides of the jacket are brought together by the fine gold foil ‘rays’ eminating from the compass on the front.
HARUKI MURAKAMI BACKLIST
Haruki Murakami’s first two novels, illustrated by Noma Bar, are now available in our backlist series style.
Published by Vintage
JOHN O'HARA - Vintage Classics
John O'Hara’s first novel, Appointment in Samarra
was published in 1934 and won him instant acclaim. He quickly came to be regarded as
one of the most prominent writers in America.
We wanted to make a virtue of the era in which these books were published and commissioned Bill Bragg to illustrate our Vintage Classic editions with a period feel. You can see more of Bill’s work here.
THERE THERE - Tommy Orange
There There by Tommy Orange weaves together the stories of contemporary Native American characters into a dynamic narrative about violence and recovery, family and loss, identity and power.
The title THERE, THERE commands attention so the design required something that was simple, strident and bold that used both type and image in a stark combination. The idea was to create something incredibly graphic, filling the cover dimensions perfectly.
The work of US woodcut artist, Bryn Perrott, reflects a raw energy, which perfectly matches the tone of the novel. Bryn described her working process for us:
I start any commission/client woodcut or image by talking with the client about their ideas and what they envision for the final composition. I usually make a mock up sketch for the client but that sketch is far from how the final image will look. From there I enlarge the drawing into a stencil I use for cutting the wood shape with a jigsaw. That shape is then painted black and the stencil applied on top of the black flat with a transfer paper. Now the block is ready for carving. Most of the detail and nuances happen when i’m carving and it comes as I work. I don’t plan everything out but I have a general idea and then elaborate on that idea.
Once the lettering was designed, Bryn worked up a single large feather accompanied by her signature water/tear drop motifs.
The feather is in a blazing red colour and has been placed directly over the black title, and some of the feather vanes have been wiped away to make it look as though it has been entwined with the title lettering. It partially obscures THERE THERE, but is still readable. The cover was printed using red foil, which sits on top of the matt background, giving a hand-printed feel to the cover.
Publishing tommorrow by Harvill Secker
HISTORY OF VIOLENCE - Édouard Louis
I met Reda on Christmas Eve 2012. I was
going home after a meal with friends, at around four in the morning. He
approached me in the street, and finally I invited him up to my
apartment. He told me the story of his childhood and how his father had
come to France, having fled Algeria.
We spent the
rest of the night together, talking, laughing. At around 6 o'clock, he
pulled out a gun and said he was going to kill me. He insulted me,
strangled and raped me. The next day, the medical and legal proceedings
began.
History of Violence retraces the story of that night. It looks at immigration, dispossession, racism, desire and the effects of trauma in an attempt to understand, and to outline, a history of violence.
The powerful painting used on the book jacket is by French artist, Guillaume Bresson. It is the perfect match for Édouard’s startlingly personal novel. The violence is portrayed in disturbingly fine detail, yet the the image also lies somewhere between an emotionally charged Rennaisance painting and beautifully choreographed modern dance.
History of Violence is published by Harvill Secker.

THE STOPPING PLACES - Damian Le Bas
Damian Le Bas grew up surrounded by Gypsy
history, but his own experience of life on the road was limited to Ford
Transit journeys from West Sussex to Hampshire to sell flowers.
In
a bid to better understand his Gypsy heritage, the history of the
Britain’s Romanies and the rhythms of their life today, Damian sets out
on a journey to discover the atchin tans, or stopping places –
the old encampment sites known only to Travellers. Through winter frosts
and summer dawns, from horse fairs to Gypsy churches, neon-lit lay-bys
to fern-covered banks, Damian lives on the road, somewhere between the
romanticised Gypsies of old, and their much-maligned descendants of
today.
The jacket features a beloved charm of Romanies; the upturned horseshoe, while the endpapers play on their fondness for all things black and white, such as the piebald cob horse and wagtail bird
QUEER CITY - Peter Ackroyd
The cover of the hardback edition of Peter Ackroyd’s history of London told through it’s gay culture, referenced historic protest, and information graphics, which we showed in a previous post.
For the Vintage paperback - we wanted to acknowledge that gay heritage and present the history of Queer London in a bright and modern new package.
Gilbert Baker, the creator of the iconic Rainbow Flag, was both an LGBTQ activist and artist. After his death in 2017, NewFest and NYC Pride partnered with Fontself to create a font, named ‘Gilbert’ to honour his memory, inspired by the design language of the iconic Rainbow Flag. The cover of a book celebrating London’s LGBTQ history feels the ideal canvas for such an eyecatching, memorable font.
To find out more about ‘Gilbert’ see Type With Pride.

FOREVER AND A DAY - Anthony Horowitz
A spy is dead. A legend is born.
This is the story of the birth of a legend, in the
brutal underworld of the French Riviera.
When we began working on the cover design for Forever and a Day, so
many icons and ideas came to mind, with such a wealth of imagery associated
with Bond we looked at a huge variety of options. A boat plays a major part in
the plot of the book and we considered images of motor yachts in the Riviera
but they tended to look too much like a travel brochure. We looked at
photographs of yachts taken from odd and unexpected angles, and when we found
images from above, the idea of it resembling a bullet suddenly clicked. The
design uses well-known Bond iconography but also hints at the plot of Forever
and a Day. Underneath the jacket we have echoed the design with a gold
bullet and clear foil wake.
Anthony Horowitz’s new James Bond novel Forever and a Day, the explosive prequel to Casino Royale, is published today by Jonathan Cape.
PHILIP ROTH
CMYK were very sad to hear about the passing of Philip Roth – one of our greatest authors. Provocative, insightful and blessed with a devilish wit, Roth scandalised middle America with his intelligent and often sexually explicit novels which blurred the lines between reality and fiction.
Along with his alter-ego characters Nathan Zuckerman and David Kepesh we celebrate his more ribald inventions Alexander Portnoy and most notoriously Mickey Sabbath.
In memory of the great man and his work we have revised this short video.As he once said – ‘Literature isn’t a moral beauty contest. It’s power rises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.
MEN WITHOUT WOMEN - Haruki Murakami
A cosmetic surgeon is faced with love, and its imperfections, for the first time. A veteran actor finds himself beholden to his female chauffeur. A recently-divorced salesman opens a jazz bar as memories of an ex-lover riff and swell.
Across these seven tales Haruki Murakami brings his wry humour and quiet sense of the surreal to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone in the world.
The Vintage cover designs for Murakami consistently use a circle icon. The design for Men without Women slices the circle to convey the title. It also playfully allows the positioning of the word MEN on both semi-circles.
Men without Women is published by Vintage in paperback today.
HOUSE OF NUTTER - Lance Richardson
From an early age, there was something different about Tommy and David Nutter.
From humble beginnings in Post-War Edgware London but blessed with a unique strength of imagination, the brothers transformed themselves into the unlikely protagonists of a swinging cultural revolution.
By the age of twenty-six, Tommy had graduated to running his own bespoke tailoring boutique. ‘Nutters of Savile Row’ became an
immediate sensation among the young, rich, and beautiful, beguiling
everyone from Bianca Jagger to the Beatles – who immortalised Tommy’s
designs on the album cover of Abbey Road.
Meanwhile, David’s
talent with a camera vaulted him across the Atlantic to New York City,
where he found himself amongst a parallel constellation of stars
(including Freddie Mercury and Elton John) who enjoyed his dry wit
almost as much as his photography.
Featuring a cover shot of Tommy by David, our design includes details from original Nutter suits - bold checks, braiding, patterns on the bias, grosgrain – details that give Tommy’s designs that hint of flamboyant cool.
House of Nutter presents a dual portrait of brothers improvising their way through five
decades of extraordinary events, their personal struggles playing out
against vivid backdrops of the Blitz, the birth of disco and the
devastation of the AIDS crisis.
Tom Wolfe
‘No one wrote a sentence like Tom Wolfe did, full of capitals and exclamation marks and begging to be read aloud’
These words from Dan Franklin, Tom’s UK publisher perfectly sum up the experience of reading this literary great. Tom has sadly passed away at the age of 88 but his legacy is second to none.
This month Vintage will be re-jacketing three of his classic non-ficton titles with typographic treatments that echo the noise, excess and sensory overload of Tom’s genius.
We are proud to be re-issuing these cult classics.
V&A ILLUSTRATION AWARDS 2018
Suzanne Dean’s
illustration for Bluets was announced as the winner in the Book Cover
Design category at this years V&A Illustration Awards.
The
book and the original illustrations are currently on display at the
museum.
To read more about the awards, click here.
