Adrian Jackson's Blog: Covers to Cover - Posts Tagged "tequila"
Kickin’ It Up a Texas Notch
Let’s face it. University press books can be dry. Limited budgets and staff restraints limit the ability of small presses to compete with large non-fiction operations and their stylized book covers. Not that all covers from multi-million dollar companies are works of art.
Cruising through the University of Texas Press book catalog, I came upon two gems. The first, Cooking Texas Style by Candy Wagner and Sandra Marquez, resembles an old concert poster. The second, Viva Tequila! By Lucinda Hutson, has a giant tequila bottle.
Cooking Texas Style: Traditional Recipes from the Lone Star State (http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/wagckp.html) looks like it was printed with black, red, orange and yellow ink. Thirty years ago, it would have taken four passes through a single-color press to achieve the imperfect look of it and each color would have been given 24 hours to dry. In reality, I’m sure this book was printed on a modern, full color press, but I appreciate the nostalgia. The design works with the contents – traditional home cooking – and pays homage to the time this book was originally published.
Some artists interpret Mexican themes using what I call the San Antonio palette. These colors, often used to sell the idea of Tex-Mex, include magenta, cyan, orange, purple, lime green and yellow. This palette is so prevalent in Tex-Mex design that it is passé. The designer of the Viva Tequila!: Cocktails, Cooking and Other Agave Adventures (http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/hutviv.html) cover used these colors, but conservatively so that this cookbook doesn’t blend in with a thousand other Tex-Mex-themed books like it. The tequila bottle, with the title and author, are a gutsy and imaginative choice. If I saw this in a bookstore it would grab my attention. What seems, at first, to be a cyan starburst behind the bottle is a clever interpretation of the spiky agave plant.
Design Grades:
A//Both designers demonstrate restraint on the use of color. The positive impact of their decisions increases the value of each book and show that they put solid time into interpreting the contents.
A+//Three words – GIANT. TEQUILA. BOTTLE.
A+//The artist used two orange values on the flame. He or she could have used the same orange throughout the piece and no one would have complained, but making a value change gives the fire more movement that just its shape could convey.
Cruising through the University of Texas Press book catalog, I came upon two gems. The first, Cooking Texas Style by Candy Wagner and Sandra Marquez, resembles an old concert poster. The second, Viva Tequila! By Lucinda Hutson, has a giant tequila bottle.
Cooking Texas Style: Traditional Recipes from the Lone Star State (http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/wagckp.html) looks like it was printed with black, red, orange and yellow ink. Thirty years ago, it would have taken four passes through a single-color press to achieve the imperfect look of it and each color would have been given 24 hours to dry. In reality, I’m sure this book was printed on a modern, full color press, but I appreciate the nostalgia. The design works with the contents – traditional home cooking – and pays homage to the time this book was originally published.
Some artists interpret Mexican themes using what I call the San Antonio palette. These colors, often used to sell the idea of Tex-Mex, include magenta, cyan, orange, purple, lime green and yellow. This palette is so prevalent in Tex-Mex design that it is passé. The designer of the Viva Tequila!: Cocktails, Cooking and Other Agave Adventures (http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/hutviv.html) cover used these colors, but conservatively so that this cookbook doesn’t blend in with a thousand other Tex-Mex-themed books like it. The tequila bottle, with the title and author, are a gutsy and imaginative choice. If I saw this in a bookstore it would grab my attention. What seems, at first, to be a cyan starburst behind the bottle is a clever interpretation of the spiky agave plant.
Design Grades:
A//Both designers demonstrate restraint on the use of color. The positive impact of their decisions increases the value of each book and show that they put solid time into interpreting the contents.
A+//Three words – GIANT. TEQUILA. BOTTLE.
A+//The artist used two orange values on the flame. He or she could have used the same orange throughout the piece and no one would have complained, but making a value change gives the fire more movement that just its shape could convey.
Covers to Cover
Book covers are often works of art. The design helps to tell the story and sell the book. Take a look at some beautiful cover art and read about why they work. Adrian Jackson is a publications manager
...more
- Adrian Jackson's profile
- 5 followers
