London-based design firm A2/SW/HK has came up with the complete design of book cover & bespoke typefaces for the complete works of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989). Published by Faber & Faber, there are a total of eighteen Beckett titles under these unified design. Requested to match the 1960s covers in their ‘bold typographical approach’, The cover designs feature a custom-made type treatment printed in a minimal palette of two or three colors. A bespoke cover font, newly designed by A2/SW/HK, forms a type family in four weights that range from a light condensed weight to a bold wide weight, and is used to ensure each book cover has its individual design and character but is still clearly identifiable as part of a larger collection.
Book titles run vertically to allow for the use of large point sizes and parts of the titles bleed off the edges to create a tension in the design. Additional material is typeset in a bespoke sans-serif font of two weights and specially drawn italics.
A neutral grey background has been chosen as a counterpoint to the special Pantone colours chosen for each of the eighteen titles — this choice is also, in part, a playful reference to the Samuel Beckett’s directive, that his gravestone be ‘any colour, so long as it’s grey’.
Samuel Beckett was an Irish avant-garde writer, dramatist and poet, writing in English and French. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 for his 'writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation'.
via A2/SW/HK
A neutral grey background has been chosen as a counterpoint to the special Pantone colours chosen for each of the eighteen titles — this choice is also, in part, a playful reference to the Samuel Beckett’s directive, that his gravestone be ‘any colour, so long as it’s grey’.
Samuel Beckett was an Irish avant-garde writer, dramatist and poet, writing in English and French. Beckett's work offers a bleak outlook on human culture and both formally and philosophically became increasingly minimalist. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1969 for his 'writing, which—in new forms for the novel and drama—in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation'.
via A2/SW/HK
