Biblionomatopoeia

So what do we call it when book jacket designers deploy a similar strategy in the effort to use the cover itself to illustrate a book’s content?

The answer: biblionomatopoeia.

The relationship between form and content has long been perceived as a particular hallmark of modernism, and could be loosely said to characterize a good deal of the educational basis for teaching graphic design. Or at least it used to be: one of the most memorable features from Richard Wilde’s primer on visual literacy are the examples, taken from a classic introductory class exercise, in which students are asked to express specific personalities through key typographic choices on calling cards. (A larger-than-life Texan, for instance, might require a more robust set of letterforms than, say, a shy and retiring librarian.) The range of possibilities revealed here is striking, and helps to highlight the sorts of decisions a graphic designer is likely to face when visualizing varying sorts of content.

Visualizing content itself is indeed the primary domain of the graphic designer. Beyond type, there are numerous choices a designer makes in order to identify — and ideally, to amplify — a particular idea. Where books are concerned, there are further considerations of context and series, of imprint and size. There is the relative question of the display area (bookshelf space being fairly limited) and the issue of visual competition (lots of books sharing minimal space) and no shortage of opinions (book designers juggle authors, publishers, publicists and the ever-present agendas — read egos — of all of the above.)

In principle, the goal is to accurately represent — and boldly differentiate — a given book from all the others in its vicinity. “Vicinity” is, of course, a term open to some interpretation, largely actionable at the discretion of the bookseller: it’s a categorical conceit that can manifest itself through alphabetical organization, genre-based groupings, books recently reviewed in the popular press, flagged by experts, recommended by the bookstore staff or even (and often) those books jettisoned to the discounted sale pile.

In this tumultuous and unpredictable visual climate, why not
turn to the book as a self-referential object?

In one example, a book about trauma
literally traumatizes it’s own spine, while a riff on the famous Abbie
Hoffman volume “Steal This Book” becomes a fingerprint-laden surface featuring a casual subhead scribbled on
masking tape. In another, a novel by John Darnton appropriates the language of the
newspaper, bleeding the headline and blurring the fine print, while a
dessicated trio of letterforms makes Augusten Burroughs’s new book —
aptly titled “Dry.” — (note the full stop for emphasis) into little more than a shadowy
skeleton. And finally, there is Homecoming, a more abstract illustration in which the book’s title is placed inside a cutout
portion of another book, pages splayed open yet oddly inert, becoming,
in a sense, an inanimate yet oddly imposing three-dimensional frame — much like a house, in fact.

Made to Stick, by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, cover design by Stephanie Huntwork, 2007