“I started designing this typeface by merging Art Deco scripts with my joined up handwriting (which seemed appropriate as the main character is a writer) and this eventually developed into letterforms that have extended arms intertwining with each other. These intimate letterforms can suggest romance or relationships and also creates an interesting sea-like rhythm.”
Publisher Orion engaged graphic designer Sinem Erkas to create a series of covers for six books of late author F Scott Fitzgerald.
Inspired by the 1920s Jazz Age, Erkas created bespoke Art Deco-influenced typefaces for each of the six titles—reflecting on the culture of the time that reference Fitzgerald’s books, with a modern touch.
As a big fan of simplicity, Erkas told British book retailer Waterstones that the redesigned jackets were kept “monotone and purely typographic” to look “abstract and intriguing as well as classic with a contemporary twist.”
The type-only covers for Fitzgerald titles will be available in March 2014.
Head over to Waterstones Blog to find out more.
“This was the first book I designed in the series to coincide with the Baz Luhrmann film. I started by customizing a slab serif typeface and developing it into my own by making the O’s perfectly circular, the geometry and line weights more extreme and occasionally breaking this up with more ornate line-work placed randomly. I wanted this to have a glitzy feel but be quite haphazard at the same time, subtly reminding us of the books subjects.”
“On the glamorous French Riviera, I researched art deco on the coast and came across a piece of hand-painted seaside lettering that unusually had dots above the uppercase I’s, which influenced me to use heavy round circles above the I’s and as decorative swashes. At a distance they look like stars in a night sky but as you get closer the letterforms become clearer. I used double lines and bars on this typeface evoking the art nouveau design style of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, which the art deco style took part of its influences from and was popular at this time in France.”
“I designed a grid of dots to represent the Hollywood Lights without being too literal, and made the structure of the typeface quite architectural, but as this is one of Fitzgerald’s unfinished novels I left the structure of some of these letters half-formed, filling the blanks in with the dots. I have also confused the boundaries between some letters by making interesting ligatures—the overlapping O’s remind me of the Coco Chanel logo.”
“I was inspired by the 1920s cafe culture that is central to this novel and particularly drawn to the heavily geometric shapes on the cafe shop fronts and design paraphernalia. Starting with Paul Renners font ‘Futura’, I reduced each letterform down to its fundamental shape. In the end the cover is a mixed bag of readable and more abstract letterforms, to be something beautiful but at the same time broken up, hinting at Fitzgerald’s themes of money, relationships and destruction, which I think are similar for all of his books.”
“This is a collection of short stories, the cover just wanted to communicate the Jazz Age in America. I think this is probably the most contemporary looking design out of all of them and I drew the typeface in continual line to look quite industrial as well as heavily stylistic.”
[via Waterstones Blog]