posted on 06 Mar 2016

Faber & Faber : Eighty Years Of Book Cover Design by Joseph Connolly

This fabulous book was published in 2009 to celebrate Faber and Faber's 80th anniversary and what a fitting tribute it is. Faber and Faber have been part of my whole book reading life and I still have editions of their books that I bought back when I was 16 - and one of the things I most love about them is their design. Both hardback and paperback Fabers are immediately recognisable and they very rarely make a false or jarring move when it come to matching design to author or subject.

As an independent publishing house Faber have always been about literary quality and an ability to spot literary merit. Whenever I'm hestitating about buying a book the fact that it is published by Faber will often reassure me that its going to be worth the gamble. In particular - and this is certainly a legacy of T.S.Eliot's time with the firm - their poetry list is both first rate and daring.

If I was being honest, it's really the paperback designs that most stay with over the years. They often used geometric or art deco designs and the range of fonts was always startling. They used a kind of laminated card for many of their softcover books and this gave them a substance and solidarity that other paperbacks couldn't match. The spines were robust and well-glued and only rarely did they dry out and crack in that distressing way that many other imprints did.

I also like the fact that their design values haven't stayed locked in the past and they contine to develop and innovate without compromising that essential identity that screams 'Faber' right across the shop. A good example of how they've managed to stay traditional and yet modern is the comparison between the original jacket for Lord of the Flies and the one they produced for that book's 40th anniversary edition - both are exactly right for the story but equally both are exactly right for their time.

I've often thought that I 'd have liked to make my own dedicated collection of Faber jackets but I eventually decided against it. There were two reasons I drew back from the brink: there's just too many of them and they're all so great that collecting them would almost certainly become a monomania. The other reason I decided not to collect was this book - why do I need to do it when someone else has done such a great job on my behalf?

You can have your own copy from the second hand market for anything over £5 and up to £25 depending on condition - the book documents a masterpiece of modern design thinking and you really don't want to be without it.

Terry Potter

March 2016