Peter Mendelsund designed the cover of your favourite book, you pleb

[Anonymous No.13640762]

Reading through Peter Mendelsund’s instagram page. For an instant he seems interesting. Then, beyond the NYT-lite aesthetics he’s helped to pioneer (with all its genius and charm), I catch glimpse of his personal life. Playing some jazz music on the piano to a bunch of boring looking old bitches (those bland white women who consider themselves charming when in fact they’re insufferable, and wouldn’t blink to ruin your life— even killers are more remorseful than that type). A text from his wife, “are you in Boston? I’m here” “yeah just leaving from east station now”, subtitles ‘modern marriage’… what misery. I wonder if they cheat on each other, for their own sakes I hope so. He has a picture of a group of gorgeous teenage girls, with black hair and intelligent eyes and aristocratic features, sitting on a beach. Their budding breasts and slender arabesque curves barely visible beneath their summer clothes. For a minute, my interest is peaked, by the erotic possibilities of this nominally successful designer and author— this artist— and his haram of beautiful, barely legal, teenage loves. Three gorgeous young things with slender thighs and soft young features, to service the sexual desires of what I can only assume is an immensely sensual man. I scroll further. Despair! They are his daughters. In indignant contempt for this strangers entirely respectable middle class existence, I fling my computer across the room. As I pull up my pants in dismay, it occurs to me that if even this lone genius, existing anonymously within the centre of literary society, can bee so lacking in that bohemian spirit exiled from our age, what hope does any artist have? Closing the browser with heavy resignation, I open private browsing and begin to type… “4chan literature forums”… at last, I am home among equals.

[Anonymous No.13641065]

>>13640762
obsessed

[Anonymous No.13641076]

I like his covers. Maybe you prefer the more austere covers of the Europeans, but as far as American covers go, he's pretty good.

[Anonymous No.13641121]

>>13641076
Roberto Calasso argued (Art of the Publisher) that the greatest disaster of Anglo-American publishing was placing cover design in the hands of 'Graphic Designers and similar 'Experts'. Mendelsund is great because, although he's clearly within the anglo-american tradition (at the center of it, from the looks of his Instagram) he's also clearly person who reads and thinks deeply, with a good aesthetic sensibility.

It's an interesting, and oft ignored, subject-- book design. Not many people even think about it, despite being an art almost entirely directed towards thoughtful people. Recently I've been looking at folios from the Blue Qur'an, I think that no book before or after has ever come close to the aesthetic perfection accomplished in that edition.

[Anonymous No.13641287]

>>13641121
> If God is light, one might consider the gilded words on this Qur’an page as rays of light for those who read and recite his revelations. The “Blue” Qur’an, so named after the rich, indigo-dyed parchment used for its folios, is arguably one of the most extraordinary luxury manuscripts ever created. The angular gold Kufic script was executed using the technique of chrysography, in which ground gold suspended in solution is carefully applied. The unusual color scheme may have been inspired by Byzantine manuscripts; it also may bear some relation to the decoration of the mihrab (prayer niche) at the Great Mosque of Cordoba in Spain. The page shown here includes Arabic text from the chapter called “The Women” (Surat al-Nisā’, 4:56–59); these verses refer to the rewards of Paradise awaiting believers in the hereafter.

[Anonymous No.13641308]

The trend of printing black ink on white paper is a tragedy.