London's largest bookshop, with bookshelves as high up as the grand buildings around it, sits in Piccadilly.
It is an inspiring display of books of many genres. The guide on the wall shows the vast array of topics you can find on each floor.
As part of my University project for Illustration, I visited to find inspiration for designing book covers.
The illustrator behind this lovely collection of covers is, Coralie Bickford-Smith. The display shows her work for many penguin classic books in a two colour palette cloth bound book. As she describes on her website:
"These titles explore my obsession to create beautiful, timeless artefacts for people to enjoy, cherish and pass on. Sumptuous, tactile books that evoke a rich heritage of bookbinding while retaining fresh appeal to modern readers; that both stand out in bookshops and have a longevity appropriate to the contents."
Illustration on book covers has developed greatly. Dust jackets were used to wrap the book and protect it whilst it was being sold at the bookshop. However, it was soon to be thrown in the bin! These dust jackets protected the cloth covers that too developed to have more decorative designs. Dust jackets developed over time to have printed designs on them that made the change for dust jackets to stay with the book.
When Penguin started publishing their paperback books in 1935, it made books accessible to many more people. On their website they host the book Cover Design awards competition, supporting designers and illustrators.
Looking at the books at Waterstones shows the huge array of styles of book covers, on cloth bound, dust jackets, hardback and paperback books.
Paper back book of Jon Day's 'Homing'.
Book dust jacket that has a continuous illustration that wraps around the cover.
Mythology book cover written by Edith Hamilton and Illustrated by Jim Tierney.
A reading that helped me write this post is https://bookriot.com/history-of-dust-jackets/ that explores the fascinating history of the Dust Jacket in further detail.
Coralie Bickford-Smith portfolio for the clothbound series: https://cb-smith.com/#/cloth-bound-classics-series-one/
Penguin Cover Design Award: https://www.penguin.co.uk/company/work-with-us/cover-design-award
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