Better research- NSFW YouTube Video (language)

Getting into Waterstone's and WHSmith's (and asking nicely) allowed me to photograph whole series and sub genres of books. I got about 300 snaps in total, which I will be boiling down into a useful document later. It was good to trace and retrace some of the trends I remember noticing as they happened. Particularly what followed 'Northern Lights' and the 'His Dark materials Trilogy'. The 1998 UK release of the first of the trilogy broke from tradition of illustrative covers and presented a single object key to the story as the cover design (the gorgeous Alethiometer) on a wintry/sidereal blue background. Following that was the Red sunset over a city behind the eponymous 'Subtle Knife' of the Second Book and then an Amber Spyglass for the final book, 'The Amber Spyglass' Cover designs by Black Sheep/David Scutt. The enormous success of the trilogy sparked a wave of imitators, and we can still find traces of this pattern- plain(ish) back ground with a single indicative or emblematic object for the main cover design.

Two years later than 'Northern Lights', 'Harry Potter' debuted. Once the series had some momentum, an adult market segment was identified and quickly catered for this developed the 'Object on a Background' approach with a sombre photographic element against a matte black field (becoming reminiscent of Bernhard's Sachplakat?), this obvious sobriety intended to answer the accusations of childishness surrounding interest in the book.



Soon other titles followed this approach, including the 'His Dark Materials' Trilogy and, later the fantasy satire/comedy series 'Discworld'. Major or hopeful fantasy titles produced Adult versions that eschewed color and adopted artworks or photography as their principal method, becoming repetitive and predictable, in their own way quite immature.

A strange halfway approach seems to have emerged in the last half decade. Illustration has returned in the form of the a single dramatic figure on a monochromatic background. This in itself is a consistent trend, expressed in some variety across many series of Fantasy books. Meanwhile Science fiction seems typified by the object/spaceship or object/planetscape, unable to shed the illustrative tradition begun by the excellent and now-archetypal work of Chris Foss nearly three decades ago.



Chris Moore's work, also, seems a staple http://www.chrismooreillustration.co.uk/galleries/index.php?idx=1 So far I have found few exceptions and few surprising covers on the shelves. As I suspected there are new traditions and new cliches in contemporary fantasy and science fiction art. There are also cliches and convention in other Genres- Crime, for example or romance. These seem like borders as rigid as the wooden shelf divisions that wall one genre from another. These conventions include a variety of (generally high) quality, the days of http://www.cracked.com/article_14790_best-worst-fantasy-science-fiction-book-covers.html are quite gone, but they also present an opportunity for innovation and originality.

To this end I have been rereading David Tufte's practically poetic books on information graphics (or 'cognitive art'). Diagrams/charts are things that get referenced, applied as texture or ornament or conjured childishly in lots of graphic design, but I don't get on with that. I have also been reading Ellen Lupton's book on indie publishing. Her usual clarity and wit has made me wonder if info-graphics, genuine and serious 'escapes from flatland' might be a solution to this project's problem. I am also seeking contemporary typography that is more than just Helvetica and deconstructions of Helvetica, or else handicraft for the sake of it. Perhaps I will have to plunder decades further back and revisit Heller 'Merz to Emigre' book.

Tomorrow I will put up the pictures I took today, in an order that will make things explicit. Also, get samples of interesting DVD sets.

First Research Dump

I have just completed my review of the covers visible on Amazon under the relevant Genres. So... What have I learned?
1. Amazon sorts its books by genre extremely badly:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_n_2?rh=n%3A266239%2Cn%3A!1025612%2Cn%3A56%2Cn%3A279292%2Cn%3A279295&bbn=279292&ie=UTF8&qid=1271292875&rnid=56

'The Prince' okay maaaybe you can count it as social-science-fiction, although there isn't actually any fiction in it. 'Tom's Midnight Garden'? 'The Hobbit'?

2. Depending on how you sort you get very different results. By Best Average User Rating you tend to get different editions of the same classic texts, 'Dune' or The 'Lord Of The Rings'. By Best Selling you get a mixture of results that are heavily skewed by TV and Movie Tie-Ins, at present 'True Blood' by Charlene Harris, 'The Twilight' books by Stephanie Meyer and TV spin offs from 'The 4400' and 'Torchwood'. Also evident is the highly fractured nature of the science-fiction and fantasy genres. It includes fiction with a magical or supernatural element in a contemporary setting- ranging from 'Harry Potter' to the noir-ish 'Dresden Files', fiction that deals with the social sciences such as Neal Stephenson's 'Baroque Cycle' or '1984', fiction that blends surrealism, psychology and magical-realism such as China Mieville's 'The City and The City'. Both can be seen as meta genres that overlap other genres such as detective fiction or romance. This complicates the issue of what to pick.

3. Due to this fracturing and diversity there is a wider range of book covers styles and designs out there. See in particular the covers of Kim Harrison's witchy series. These styles become bland and obvious, following trends that mark out what they are. This You Tube Video demonstrates that the covers of today urban fantasy fiction are no less consistent or predictable than the shoulder-baring pulp damsels and gun flare of yore:



4. Classic texts of science-fiction (and some fantasy) are also published under literary classics ranges, with creative cover designs that lift them out from any visual ghetto. These books, for example 'War of the Worlds', 'The Man in The High Castle' or perhaps even '2001'/'2010' may not need the attention of this project. But then is this project about reversing a trend or is it about giving overlooked books a new exposure- if it is the later will it automatically be the later?

Covers that inspired posts such as http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LegCling and http://www.goodshowsir.co.uk/ may not be being published anymore, but the stereotype persists, and other trends have arisen that are equally suspect.

So the next step is to revise the research Strategy to be more knowledge led and to refine to question to identify exactly what books need making more visible- which are actually afflicted by bland or stereotypical covers.

Contribute to the project!

Have your say as to what titles should be tackled on this survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/HPJGQBR

Write as much or as little as you like, feel free to add comments below.

Stay lucky ;)

Hello Everyone

Here is a new blog I shall be starting as a progress-tracker and a research/thought dump for my last 6 week FdA project. The project brief is:

The Fantasy, and Science Fiction, genre of books has suffered from long-term ghettoisation in the book market and reading environments such as the class rooms and libraries. This is in part due to the clichés of cover design that have persisted, with some mutation, throughout the history of the genre- making it (unfairly) appear specialist, juvenile, repetitive and unappealing.

Devise book covers based primarily on graphic and typographic elements that change the image of fantasy and/or science fiction books, beginning with classic and established texts of the genres.

Hope you find it interesting.

Stay lucky!