BLUETS - Maggie Nelson
And so I fell in love with a colour – in this case, the colour blue – as if falling under a spell, a spell I fought to stay under and get out from under, in turns.
Bluets is part essay, part poetry. It is a meditation on desire and suffering seen through a blue lens. It tells of new love and then heartbreak, and about the life long obsession by the author with the colour blue. It is a collection of fragments and the ideas are presented in short paragraphs, which winds its way past famous blue figures like Yves Klein, Leonard Cohen and Billie Holiday and quotes Barthes.
Here, the designer describes how she created the cover:
My brief was to create something beautiful. I read the text and was mesmerised. I immersed myself in the exploration of all things blue. I collected, painted and photographed. I wanted to reflect the potency of blue, and respond emotionally to the text. This book was just too brilliant – I wasn’t satisfied with anything I had created.
I had painted patterns in blue ink, but none were strong enough as stand alone pieces. Just as the text was layered… I experimented with layering the patterns in Photoshop and set them against a black background. The blue became almost iridescent, sharp and electric. Now I had a cover.
Vintage are also publishing The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson in Vintage
