Matthew Buchanan (Home)

One of four Jules Verne cover designs by Jim Tierney created for his senior year thesis project. Faceout Books has extensive coverage including original sketches and this video of the completed books. Would buy! (via Meagan Fisher)

Design and Art Direction 1966 Annual, with superbly minimalist cover design by Alan Aldridge and Lou Klein. From D&AD’s Flickr page (via Peter Nidzgorski):

During the past few years one has been aware of a growing professionalism in editorial, film and advertising techniques. In this Annual you will see work where a strong idea has been welded to this competence, to solve a design problem with economy and flair.

“The Backwards Novel Seen Backwards”, more cleverness by Tom Gauld in The Guardian. (via Dan Wagstaff)

Less and More: The Design Ethos of Dieter Rams, edited by Klaus Kemp and published by Gestalten, presents the career of the peerless industrial designer from concept to final product, with commentary placing the work in context. Available from Vitsoe and Amazon. (via Alex Cornell)

Spaceships:

Dan Winters, from his new book Periodical Photographs (the making of which is chronicled here).

Peter Mendelsund turns a small typographic request into a faultless redesign of an entire series (via Dan Wagstaff):

Several weeks ago I was asked to re-tool the type treatment on the old US edition cover of The Archeology of Knowledge by the great philosopher, sociologist, and géneálogiste Michel Foucault.

Alex Cornell’s student project to rebrand Playboy magazine for his Nature of Identity course at the Academy of Art University:

The final deliverable for the class was a book in which we the explain history of the brand, walk through our rationale for the new identity, explore the process of the logo development, present brand standards and guidelines, and show example brand implementations and extensions.

Plenty more photos (NSFW) and a complete write-up are on Scott Hansen’s ISO50 blog where Alex is a regular contributor.

Robin Pen from Planet Books picked this striking cover for Brian James’s Zombie Blondes as one of the best executed for November. Anyone know the artist? (via Peter Nidzgorski)

Update: In this article for Tor.com the author credits British-born artist Sas Christian for the original painting.

Stocking stuffer: Tom Gauld’s The Gigantic Robot, the illustrated tale of an impressive secret weapon whose promise goes unfulfilled. (via Drawn!)