Journal Entry 4: Book covers of Neal Stepenson

Since we just finished the book project, I thought I would go ahead and examine the typographic layouts on some book covers by my favorite author, Neal Stephenson. The first book is called Quicksilver and it is from his historic fiction series, The Baroque Cycle. The second book is Cryptonomicon, it is also a historic fiction novel. And the third book is one of his earlier books called Zodiac. Quicksilver was published by William Morrow, Cryptonomicon was published by Perennial, and Zodiac was published by Grove Press.

I picked these book covers for discussion because they are good examples of how typography can help to represent the contents of a book and help sell the book. Of course the old adage "don't judge a book by it's cover" still rings true, but it is good when the inside and the outside of the book are unified. For example, it wouldn't make sense to have a romantic novel with a cover that looks like something from a Rambo movie.

Quicksilver is a historic fiction novel set in the late 1600 and early 1700s. The font chosen for the authors name and title is an old style typeface that is somewhat distressed. I believe that it might be Caslon Antique. This was a good choice for the typeface because of the time that the book was written about. There are parts in the book that are about printing using old style printing techniques and presses. One recurring theme is dissidents printing up libels on hidden press, I imagine the font they would use would look similar to this. Of course it probably wouldn't be printed in silver ink. It looks gold in the photo, but it is silver. Adjusting the color proved tricky due to the glossy paper.

Cryptonomicon is also a historic fiction novel, it deals heavily with cryptography and mathematics. Both the title and the author's name are san serif fonts in all caps. The authors name is in a condensed font that has medium stroke weights and the title of the book is in a font that I wold say is futuristic. It reminds me of something that an engineer or mathematician would use so it fits well with the book. The title font is interesting because of the mix of curvilinear and rectilinear shapes. The letters with round parts (c, r, p, o, etc) are very rounded on the outside but the counter forms of the letters are basically rectangles with 90º angles. Mixing the two makes the letters unique.

As mentioned before, Zodiac is one of Stephenson's earlier novels. This novel is an ecological thriller about a grassroots environmentalist, who is involved in a semi-legal campaign to save Boston Harbor from large chemical companies. As a side note, the main character is not concerned only with Boston Harbor, that just happens to be his main focus in this story. The handwritten text fits very well with the grassroots theme that runs throughout the book. The main character rides around on a zodiac taking water samples and also uses it on other "missions," it talks about how the name of his environmental group, GEE International, is spray painted on the side of his zodiac. This ties in with the handwritten font on the cover. This is a newer addition of the book, I won't even mention the first edition, it was horrible and kind of scary.

I started reading Stephenson's books when I was in middle school and have since acquired all but one. I picked them for discussion since we just finished the book project and because all the covers represent the books well. It is hard to say what my initial reaction to these was because I've owned them for between two and seven years. These books are definitely a case where I would not make a buying decision based on the cover. I can confirm that is true because one of his books has a terrible cover but I bought it any way. If his books have bad covers, I will probably look at them and judge the cover, but not the contents.