BRAVE NEW WORLD - Aldous Huxley
We commissioned the cover artwork for Brave New World by Scot Bendall & Richard Carey of design studio La Boca. Here is what Scot had to say about the design process behind this cover:
“As a designer, being faced with the task of redesigning a classic is always a tough, but exciting proposition. Whether it’s a logo, a film poster, or in this case a book cover, it’s impossible to ignore the numerous designs or adaptations that have appeared since the original. Whatever the outcome of the design it already has something to compare itself against. But at the same time this creates an opportunity to interpret something already well-loved for a new audience. The challenge is whether or not you can add something of value to an artefact that already has it’s own history, and in doing so do you attempt to build upon that story or rip it up and start afresh.
In the case of this new cover for Brave New World it was decided quite early on not to dismiss the past but rather to give a nod and a wink to the original artwork (created by Leslie Holland) for the first edition by published by Chatto & Windus in 1932. Not to simply replicate it, but to play with the same iconography to create a new edition that would hopefully have one foot in the past and one foot in the future.
There was certain iconography used on the original cover that we could introduce to the new design. We maintained certain elements such as the aeroplane and the globe, which we saw as representing the ‘world state’, and the circular motifs which we read as the idea of controlled reproduction. We introduced five expanding circles to suggest the five grades that people are genetically designed to fit within. We hoped the final design would suggest a scientific mood, but not be placed too much in a specific time. We aimed to reference the period the book was published (1930s), but to also suggest the future the story was set within (AD 2540). The danger when representing the past is that we potentially end up simply creating a pastiche. It’s important for us to try to place ourselves in a period, rather than attempting to imitate it, but it’s a fine line to tread and quite easy to fail.
An additional challenge for this design, was that the brief also specified that the image was required to work as a simple Stereoscopic 3D image. This was a whole new way of working for us and something we’d never explored before. We didn’t want the technique to dictate the concept for the cover or how the design would look, so we experimented until we were sure the effect would compliment the illustration style and not overpower it. Initially we were a little sceptical that the 3D would enhance the design, but after a week or so of sitting in the studio wearing the glasses we were totally convinced! It’s quite an old technique now of course, but somehow still manages to hold a certain kind of simple delight (at least for simple designers!).”
Published tomorrow by Vintage Classics.
