In today’s publishing world, individuality is as quaint a term as dust jacket. Just as the mom-and-pop booksellers have been replaced by megastores like Barnes & Noble and Borders, so has the independent book publisher increasingly been acquired by larger publishing conglomerates. The labyrinth that is Random House, Bantam Doubleday, Dell, Knopf is a perfect example. Acquired by the German media giant Bertelsmann AG in 1998, Random House, Inc., is the world’s largest English-language general trade-book publisher.

Maintaining distinction was a matter of form for independent book publishers, expressed both through editorial choices and graphics. With formerly independent publishers reduced to imprints within much larger corporate entities, uniqueness is all the more difficult to achieve.

One group that has managed to do so is the Knopf Group. Headed by art director Carol Devine Carson, she, along with designers Chip Kidd, Barbara de Wilde and Archie Ferguson, and Louise Fili at the imprint Pantheon, put book cover design back on the map, starting in the 1980s. Winners of numerous publishing and design industry awards, with a high public profile, Knopf was the design shot heard ’round the publishing world.

This makes the fact that one imprint within the Knopf group has maintained its own identity all the more remarkable. Vintage Books was founded in 1954 by Alfred A. Knopf as the trade paperback offspring of the hardcover books Knopf published. With a list that included such literary masters as William Faulkner, Vladimir Nabokov and Albert Camus, it quickly established itself as a leader in this burgeoning field of oversized paperbacks. Progress was greatly aided by the hiring of design luminaries Paul Rand and Albert Lustig to create many of the imprint’s covers.

This legacy continued in the early 1980s with the hiring of Susan Mitchell as the art director for Vintage. Together with freelance designers Marc Cohen and Loraine Louie, Mitchell created a look that set itself apart from its cloth brethren, one that was at once sophisticated, literary and intimate. Louie’s design for Vintage Contemporaries dominated the 1980s and was imitated by virtually ever other trade paperback publisher at the time.

ENTER JOHN GALL
Mitchell left in 1997 to become art director of Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Carson hired John Gall, previously with Grove/Atlantic, to replace her. Born in 1963 in New Jersey and a graduate of the design department at Rutgers University, Gall brought along his own original and idiosyncratic design sense—and most especially literary intelligence. Recently, in addition to Vintage, Gall assumed the helm of another venerable imprint, Anchor Books, the oldest trade paperback publisher in America, founded in 1953 by Jason Epstein.

Gall’s stylish sensibility, simple but elegant use of typography and quietly rebellious spirit infuse these literary works with an added dimension. Subtle and compelling, his covers play with the perceptions of the viewer in unexpected ways, and to satisfying effect. Scanning the table of trade paperbacks at the local bookseller, one would have no difficulty spotting Gall’s distinctive and visually articulate work. Collage, photography, typography and art are all grist for the mill, yet no matter how varied the medium, the end result is pure Gall.

SB: Why did you become a graphic designer?

Gall: I was studying—one semester—to be an architect. Ha! I was also taking some art courses, drawing, etc., which led to some design courses, then seeing and being turned on by certain things that were going on in the field at that time … mid-80s. The immediate attraction was purely visual. The learning-to-think part came later. Unlike kids entering the field today, where they know what they are getting into, I didn’t even really know what graphic design was. My first freelance job was to make these hand-painted signs for this little grocery near my house. It took me about two weeks to imitate the kind of signs you see hanging in supermarkets —ground beef, $1.99 lb. I think I was paid $10.

SB: What makes a good book cover?

Gall: Different groups within the publishing company will each have different answers for this question. What an editor thinks is good, Sales might not. And as designers we have a different set of criteria, which must also include everyone else’s criteria. How that gets resolved is always a bit tricky. A really great cover is going to convey the essence of the book in a unique and surprising way that maybe pushes the design envelope a bit. It might even add to and enhance the editorial content of the book. A cover that is seen and respected by other designers is a good thing too, I guess, but the mission is really to allow the book to make a great first impression.

Whether people actually buy books because of the cover is open for debate. I mean, even I don’t know, though I’m usually checking the credit to see who is designing them.

SB: There seem to be three different design approaches for each major category of book: cloth, trade and mass market. Do you think this is true?

Gall: Trade paper is closer to hardcover but with more information —a quote, maybe a bestseller line—presented in a smaller format. Mass market is its own animal that doesn’t really abide by the usual design principles.

SB: How are the differences among them manifested in your design approach?

Gall: There is definitely more freedom in hardcover design. Hardcover sales are generally review driven, so the cover doesn’t have to come on as strong and, I think, less people buy them on impulse because of their price. They’ll read a review and look for the book. The paperback does not have the fortune of being timed to the review attention, so the cover—we’re talking front list here—has to say something like “Remember me? You were waiting for me to come out in paperback? Remember? I’m the one the New York Times really liked, you know, the one about the guy with narcolepsy who likes the girl in the plaid skirt. …”

SB: Are “design aesthetics” at odds with mass-market book jacket design? If so, how?

Gall: Having spent a little time, years ago, working in the mass-market format, things may have changed, and there are genres within mass market that I really have little knowledge about, such as Science Fiction or Romance. In a way, the thinking behind a cover could be as conceptual as any other type of design, though in a more general way. But the format is more about making the cover appear larger than the other 4 x 6 books it’s sitting next to in Wal-Mart, which means the exploratory aesthetic work goes into things like stretching type, applying drop shadows, crazy printing effects—horrifying things you were told not to do in art school. My way of working was: If you think this is the way it should be done— do the opposite.

SB: Does it bother you that trade paperbacks are by their very nature ephemeral?

Gall: I may have overstated this case during the lecture [a talk given at the Kean University “Thinking Creatively” conference; see www.adcnj.org for more information]. Most graphic design is ephemeral, and books are actually less so than other things—magazines, etc.—even paperbacks. I really don’t think about it that much, if at all. Though it is sort of sad when you see the well-thumbed books washed up in used bookstores. But at least they are there.

SB: Very often you are redesigning a cover that was well designed in the first place, whether the classic covers of Roy Kuhlman at Grove Press or the hardcover jackets from Knopf. Does this ever intimidate or present any special obstacles?

Gall: At first I was troubled and intimidated by this, but you’ve got to look at it as a problem to be solved, and these problems have many possible solutions, even some interesting ones … in fact, the older design becomes helpful in the sense that it is one direction you can rule out.

SB: Does the style or creativity of a writer have any influence on your design style?

Gall: Yes, I am definitely a slave to the book.

SB: You’ve also worked in the music industry designing CD covers. Do you see any similarities between the two fields?

Gall: The information that goes on the front of the package is similar: title, author/artist and image. The packaging of a CD is a bit more involved since there are more components, and a theme must be carried out—but they are very similar. The big difference is that music is a lot more open to interpretation than the literalness of a book. You can put just about anything on a CD cover and, in fact, it starts to get kind of weird, in a bad way, when you get too literal with music. This may also reflect somewhat how literal we have become with our book covers if we compare with say, old Grove or New Directions covers.

SB: You think of doing things that most would not; you change the intention of something. For example, you have put the spine of a book on the front cover; and you have used foil stamping, usually used to highlight information, as an interesting design element, integral to the solution. Do you seek to do the unusual, or does the solution grow directly out of the material?

Gall: There are things that are part of the language of book cover design—elements and techniques that have been used in the production of books for ages, such as foil stamping, embossing, etc. I just try to find different and more conceptually appropriate ways to use them.

SB: Your design solutions have a great plasticity—range, the creation of illusion of depth, elasticity—as if you were a master fine artist manipulating collage elements or sensually moving oil paint on a canvas. Your work pushes the range of the design medium. How did you learn to manipulate the 2D surface in such fascinating ways?

Gall: I’ve always been kind of interested in flat 2D space vs. representational 3D space and how to create space using 2D elements as well as negating or poking holes in space within a 3D context. When designing a cover we’re basically reworking the same 5 x 8 or 6 x 9 space over and over, so I’m always trying to arrange elements into interesting juxtapositions and trying to find some breathing room. It’s very easy to clutter up the page.

SB: Each of your covers has a surprise. What I’ve noted in works by some other respected designers is that, in an attempt to create a well-constructed, prize-worthy creative jewel, the resulting design solution doesn’t surprise the viewer. Cover after cover, how do you find twists and turns and all those creative surprises that continue to jolt and engage the viewer?

Gall: Basically, I am always trying to surprise myself; and if I can do that, odds are others will perceive it as invigorating design. And I’m a big fan of the happy accident, and if I can contradict what I was saying about mass-market books, I will also approach a project from the viewpoint of what I shouldn’t do. Like I really shouldn’t put an airbrushed unicorn on a cover … but let’s see what it looks like.

SB: Who are your influences?

Gall: Tough question. I can almost say I have different influences for each project. Or am I getting that mixed up with inspiration? Or outright thievery? There are lots of designers—Roy Kuhlman, etc.—that I really admire but have never influenced my work much … did I just say “my work”?

And then there are the many talented designers working within 30 feet of me whose amazing work I get to see pop out of the printer every day. In the end, I probably get actual inspiration from either the book itself or from outside sources and explorations.

SB: You’ve mentioned how important the spine is to marketing in bookstores. Do you think it’s significant or even important that book jackets are now seen online at booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble?

Gall: I have heard some grumblings about how things will look on Amazon’s website, but luckily I haven’t heard anything on the level of, “No, this cover won’t look good on a cell phone screen.” Yet.

SB: The way books are sold in general has changed greatly. The mom-and-pop bookstores are gone, replaced by chains that have great power. A single buyer at a chain can make or break a cover. Does this ever affect your design decisions?

Gall: It doesn’t really affect the way I go about things, but it definitely affects how others in the company may view a cover. And I have heard things like, “Barnes & Noble says they’ll take 500 more books if we do this. …” Like they wanted cannons on the cover of Cold Mountain, which the publisher decided against. Just shows what an inexact science this is.

SB: How much freedom are you granted between the author, editor, publisher and marketing people? Is it ever hard to get yourself in there? Do you ever view design as a means of self-expression?

Gall: When you are working with people who really trust what you are doing, they are usually open and receptive to interesting ideas. If you know of anyone like that, please let me know—I’m at 212.572.2412. I am very lucky to be working for a publisher that has a long track record pushing boundaries in design.

As far as the self-expression thing is concerned, that’s a tricky one. There are times when I am working very intuitively and feel as if I am sort of free to do whatever, and other times when I am trying to organize a lot of input from various sources into something not too embarrassing. But it is nothing like me trying to put “my mark” on something. The whole point is to figure out what makes a particular book tick, and then trying to communicate that in visual terms. Wow, when I say it like that, it sounds so easy.

SB: In the design profession, which issues do you confront on a regular basis that make you think the profession needs to change?

Gall: There is still this lingering undercurrent that designers are just glorified and overly pampered typesetters—“Can you make the damn type bigger already?” And with everyone and their grandmother now able to set type on their computer, there are now more “authorities.” Hopefully this just raises the bar for designers.

SB: Sorry, but I have to ask: Is the death of print greatly exaggerated?

Gall: Unfortunately, early retirement does not appear to be an option [for me] at this point. As an industry we seem to be printing more and more books every year, so unless we’re trying to get it all done under the wire, I’d say there’s been some exaggeration, yes.

SB: Do you see any significant changes in the profession in general, and book publishing specifically, in the coming years?

Gall: I was glad to see that the first version of those e-book things didn’t catch on, but I’ve seen some new technology on the horizon that seems to function a lot better—in fact, it would be a great way for those of us in the industry to carry around unbound manuscripts. But, I mean, I understand wanting to take a few hundred songs with you on a trip, but do you really need to take the equivalent of 80 books on a plane ride? Plus, that’s yet another battery charger you have to pack. I understand that most books being published today don’t require a lithium battery to work properly.

SB: Will you ever get out of graphic design and do something else?

Gall: I think about this all the time. Like having a nice job that starts at 9 and ends at 5. Or during certain frustrating times, I wish I had a job that had all the ambiguity removed, like a short-order cook or something. Two eggs over easy. There. Done. Next.

(TOP) MURAKAMI TITLES, DESIGNER/ART DIRECTOR: JOHN GALL, CLIENT: VINTAGE/ANCHOR BOOKS