VINTAGE WOOLF
We are excited to share a small selection of our latest Virginia Woolf classics. Click here for the full set.
VINTAGE BOWENS - VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHY
It’s always an exciting challenge to take a backlist author and give them a new, fresher “look”. We were recently asked to do just this when our series of books by Elizabeth Bowen moved into the Vintage Classics list. Previously we had used black and white photographs, so we wanted to do something different but to keep a period feel suitable for the writing.
Picture Research often presents a chance to consider using different and period photographic processes in current design work, and we thought autochromes would make an attractive series. The autochrome was invented by the Lumière Brothers in 1904 and was the first accessible colour process in photography. These rare and beautiful photographs have a lovely fragile quality and subtlety of colour, and we looked for details rather than a particular narrative moment for each cover.

BLACK WHITE & COLOUR
Celebrating the release of Black White & Colour. A new book by the Vintage Design team.
For more info click here.
VINTAGE DESIGN INTERNSHIP
Paul Nelson
The Vintage Design Department has been my home for the best part of a month now and as well as helping with smaller tasks that keep the (very large) ball rolling, I have also been able to contribute to the breadth and variety of imaginative design work being produced.
I very much look forward to completing the remainder of my time here and seeing what the future holds for myself and the design team.

BACK TO BLOOD - BACK TO BASICS
Hand-drawn type for Tom Wolfe’s latest novel…

VINTAGE 007
The process
A quick behind the scenes look at the creation of our latest Bond Vintage Classics.
Click here to see the full set!
EXODUS
Following on from the Merivel post a few days ago, we visited photographer Marcus Lyon at an open day in his studio yesterday. On display were fantastic artworks from his Exodus and Brics series’, highlighting man’s dramatic impact on our planet. Click here to see his work.
MERIVEL - MAN OF HIS TIME
The sequel to Rose Tremain’s Restoration meant spending a couple of days at Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland, with a photographer, assistant and our very own ‘Merivel’.
We settled on the idea of the character on a dramatic staircase, to suggest a strong narrative, a past and a future… a journey.
See photographer, Marcus Lyon’s website here.
VINTAGE CHILDREN’S CLASSICS
Our Vintage Children’s Classics list launches next month and we all had a great time working on them. This was new territory for us all and after lots of research we had the opportunity to work with some fantastic illustrators across the list.

VINTAGE 007
The Brief
The brief I gave all the designers was to be inspired by Saul Bass, a graphic designer and filmmaker, perhaps best known for his design of film posters and motion-picture title sequences, including Psycho, The Man with the Golden Arm, and North by Northwest. Bass once described his main goal for his title sequences as being to ‘try to reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is all about and evokes the essence of the story’.
Our colour palette was referenced from Bass’s posters, and we introduced an authentic retro feel by cutting out our designs. With six designers working over fourteen titles it was important for the visuals to cohere.
Folio was one of the first popular sans-serif fonts and was used in a lot of newspaper and display graphics of the period. As we were keen to reference the period and content when the books were written, rather than the movies of the sixties and seventies, the font was perfect for the graphic film posters of the fifties and sixties.
Folio is a realist sans-serif font designed by Konrad Bauer and Walter Baum in 1957, and is more closely related to Akzidenz Grotesk (1896) than similar fonts like Helvetica. It has a strong circular O in its bold version, which formed an important feature within our designs, and had the added attraction of having a very fifties-feeling bold condensed version. Mixing the two gives an immediate retro feel, whilst having fresh take on layout also keeps the covers contemporary.
The deadline was tight and we had already produced the first six covers when the market research came in and confirmed our choice of brief.
– Suzanne Dean
