It was fantastic to receive a package from Penguin books yesterday containing the finished Bulgakov book covers! As I mentioned on this blog on July 3rd, The Master and Margarita is a reprint from a 2003 silver Penguin Modern classics cover which I won a competition to illustrate (also see my website) while the A Dog's Heart and A Dead Man's Memoir (A Theatrical Novel) were commissioned directly from Penguin last year. My thanks again to the team at Penguin for all their help and encouragement!
While on the subject of Penguin I just bought a copy of "Seven Hundred Penguins" which I recommend you check out at your local bookshop. As the title suggests this weighty tome contains 700 Penguin book covers running from 1935-2000. I wouldn't say that every cover was a winner but taken overall it is an amazing body of work with some real gems. The actual book is also a great piece of design in it's own right thanks to David Pearson (www.davidpearsondesign.com) and if you like what you see I'd also suggest you pick up a copy of "Penguin by Design" by Phil Baines with the book design again by David Pearson.
So there is a reading list for lovers of book design and Russian literature (A Dead Man's Memoir is yet to be published, I believe it will be out on Oct 4th). If you're not sure about Bulgakov I'd say start with A Dog's Heart as the most accessible of the trio (think Frankenstein meets the littlest hobo...) and move on from there.
2 comments:
I love these. Great illustrations and great design. Did you do both or just the illos?
Brilliant covers. I'd love to do that ...(as well as the whole inside of the book) :D
The 700 penguins sounds cool, I'm gonna sees if I can finds it.
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