One thing that I have always loved is the way collage shows up in everyday design,
and today, we're looking at book design!
I recently had the opportunity to speak with John Gall about his work for Vintage/Anchor Books and his own personal collage work. He is the Vice President and Art Director of Vintage, and he uses collage in his book cover designs because he feels it works well with many works of fiction. I was working on a post about his cover designs when he contacted me with a link to his collage site!
The following images are from one of John's personal projects where he was recombining existing old found book covers. The main image (above) is a poster he designed that encompasses bits of his work. "A lot of my personal work seems to end up in projects here and there," he says.
John also does a great deal of collaboration in his personal and professional work, which I think is an indispensable resource for artists and designers for coming with new ideas and making adjustments to your own designs. "I work on the side with a friend of mine, Ned Drew, and we do these emailed, Photoshopped, collage illustrations for a couple magazines. We also worked together on the Kobo Abe titles (below, after break). Some of these started as personal work too."
Q: Why do you think the collage style works so well with book covers?
A: A collage approach is just one of many ways to approach a cover design. Covers can be photographic based, typographic based, illustration based, etc. Collage seems to work best (and is most accepted) on certain types of fiction, fiction that is highly descriptive, maybe with a surreal bent, magical realism. That said, these approaches aren't set in stone, I’d love to do something like a biography of Abraham Lincoln with a collage cover, but it depends on the writing, from which most of the inspiration derives.
Q: Graphic design and collage seem to go hand in hand. Do you think this is true?
A: On a certain level almost all graphic design is a form of collage, especially flat surface designs like posters and book covers. We’re dealing with text and images. Designers see typography as image and texture as well as text, so we’re trying to combine all these elements into a pleasing (or unpleasing) whole.
More collaboration work with Ned Drew, above and below images.
I was excited to learn that his personal work will be a little more accessible (via the internet) on his new blog, never always. If you like any of the work in this post, I strongly encourage you to check out his more recent collages.
if you would like to read more in depth about John's life and work, there is an excellent interview right here.
Thanks John, for your invaluable help with this post!
![](http://www.notpaper.net/images/masters1.JPG")
this is cool, your blog is wonderful aprile! keep up!