Alphabet Road Trip | the blog of Iskra Design

Lettering Design for Book Covers: Contemporary Fiction

Here are samples of different ways contemporary script calligraphy can be integrated into book cover design. Most of these books are ongoing series, in which the hand lettered book title becomes part of the brand.

                                  Book Jacket Lettering Brush Calligraphy

Casual, fun brush lettering integrated into the illustration

ShopaholicCasualHandwritingStyle

Monoline pen handwriting for Sophie Kinsella's "Shopaholic" series


Brush Script Calligraphy Cat in an Orange Twist 

Brush calligraphy that flows with the curves of the illustration          

                                     Casual Script Lettering Book Jacket

Script as illustration, a visual pun

 

Script Lettering Used With Font Book Title

Contemporary brush script designed to play off of a font


                        QuickieChick'sBrushCalligraphyBookJacket

A long title treated as a text shape for Laurel House


Elegant Hand Lettering For BookCovers

Elegant contemporary pen calligraphy in two different styles

 

 

The Seattle Times Logo, Well Weathered Gothic

"Signs I Like" has been on a long vacation. But today I saw something I could not resist outside the Lighthouse coffee shop. I did the lettering for the Seattle Times masthead about twelve years ago, in association with Landor Seattle. Coincidentally the logo was featured in Logo Reviews a few days ago. The true test of a logo is how well does it stand the test of time? Here it is on a newspaper kiosk, rotated so you can compare it with the way it is used in the paper. I had nothing against that eagle, but I do like how abstract (and even more Gothic) this becomes without it. Perhaps someone liked it so much they tore it out to sew on their jeans:

SeattleTimesLogo

My task was to look at every other Gothic newspaper masthead in America and come up with a subtle, very legible, fresh variation. Here is the before and after:

SeattleTimes

(I do not know who did the eagle, so unfortunately I can't credit them here.)

Masthead typography is uniquely challenging. Gothic is by its nature very difficult to read. It may look traditional and authoritative, but it is based on a completely zen principle: the space between letters and that magical yin/yang balance of darkness and light. This was a dream project. My father was publisher for eight years of the paper he started, The Auburn Citizen, which also had a Gothic masthead. This assignment connected me back through time to the long tradition of the small- town newspaper and work in the original public sphere. Websites, as convenient and up-to-the-minute as they are, do not age well; we will never admire their distressed and curling edges or how the wind transformed their serifs.

 See more typographic logotypes at Iskra Design.

Lettering Design For Book Covers: Fantasy Genre

 

Lettering_For_BookCover_PrinceOfThorns

Title design by Iskra, a mix of Gothic and Uncial pen calligraphy

                     LetteringDesign_For_BookJackets_Fantasy

Drawn typographic lettering design by Iskra

LetteringDesign_for_Book_Covers_Imajica

Title and Author lettering design by Iskra

The Imajica letterforms were designed by me as a proprietary style to be used in Clive Barker's books over a period of time. They were then lifted and turned into a font for general use by another designer without my knowledge or permission, a perplexing and less than gallant appropriation of one artist's works by another.

See more book cover title lettering at Iskra Design.

Classic Calligraphic Lettering Styes for Romance Book Jackets

I do title and author design for many books by romance authors. These recent covers for Karen Robards and Danielle Steele are a good match of lettering style with other visual elements.

Calligraphy_Handlettered_BookTitle

Title and author calligraphy by Iskra, Art Director Lisa Litwack

DanielleSteele_BookTitleDesign

Title calligraphy and lettering design by Iskra, Art Director Lynn Andreozzi