Cover

What's in a cover? Do you judge a book by its cover? Interestingly Penguin has republished a series of age old classics by George Orwell with some fresh cover design. A great break from the usual staunch classics covers by Penguin, provided by designer David Pearson.

Each is stylistically different, a distilled reflection of the content of the book. A tongue-in-cheek cover of Nineteen Eighty-Four shows the title and author blacked out, a visual reminder of the censorship featured in the dystopic novel. As the designer, Pearson must have had to really understand the book's content as the subject matter.

Animal Farm (read my review of Animal Farm from ages ago) has a blood red background slashed with the title, divorced from the cartoony cover of animals (which was ironic considering the content within) on the first edition of the book I ever read.

What strikes me about these new covers is that you can judge these books by its cover because they are a cheeky static image of the novel. Sure, there's a lot more to the writing than the image, but better than having no feathers on a peacock.

You can see the other covers in this article by Creative Review. And do check out David Pearson's other work - he seems to have quite a connection with Penguin. Thanks again to Alice for providing inspiration.