j.d.salinger book covers

I wanted to redesign the covers of J.D. Salinger’s novels in a way that would pay heed to his recent death and his aversion to having imagery on his books. Apart from a few of his earlier editions, Salinger’s covers over the years have never been more than the sum of title and author. I wanted my covers to be more visually interesting but I did not know whether to ‘completely ignore, cleverly skirt around or adhere to Salinger’s dying wishes.’

During the early stages of idea generation I explored all three options. I looked into the possibility of doing a purely typographic cover with quotes from the books, which, I discovered, did not appear to be against Salinger’s rules. I did covers with blatant characterisation in the form of photographs.I tried black and white collages using various imagery to suggest the content - a hat, a hand holding a cigarette, a pair of feet on the beach.I started stockpiling quotes and imagery as well as playing around with techniques such as frottaging and using a photocopier to create noise. I increasingly came back to the idea of ‘cleverly skirting around’ the clause by using obscured imagery. My first attempt to do so used transparent circles over the images in which I placed the title, author and quotes. I quickly changed these circles to transparent strips and it was suggested that I could make these strips into separate tracing paper ‘belly bands’ which would wrap around the book, covering the faces of the characters.

I think that my work is effective in that I have created something that looks good and has meaning. The typography is resonant of contemporary Penguin style; the images are striking and by obscuring them I hope I have achieved a sense of intrigue around the characters. I would like to have taken the photography myself but without a budget for models and without being able to find five people (despite trying) who matched my idea of what the characters would look like, I have used images from Getty and made them my own by placing ‘noise and dust’ lenses on top of them.

I hope you like them!