Comments on: Shepard Fairey Meets George Orwell

Shepard Fairey Meets George Orwell

jonson — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:09:25 -0800

Shepard Fairey's cover art for Penguin releases of 1984 & Animal Farm.

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:17:52 -0800

I like em. Though he's sort of getting all Phillip Glassish about this mock soviet propaganda style.

By: CitrusFreak12

CitrusFreak12 — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:24:07 -0800

At first I was like wow this is just like the style of that artist up in Providence who-- Oh. Yeah. That's his name, isn't it. Heh.

By: humannaire

humannaire — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:34:25 -0800

Good post.

By: kittens for breakfast

kittens for breakfast — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:40:39 -0800

Penguin has been producing some really gorgeous book covers of late.

By: jonson

jonson — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:41:20 -0800

Heh - that's exactly what I was thinking to, Dave Faris. Pretty soon you could release a "Fairey" plug-in for Photoshop that might be indistinguishable. Still, it's nice to have a brand.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:43:17 -0800

I like the covers but I hate blurbs that tell you the plot of the book up through the 2/3 mark. Fuck off with the spoilers, blurb writers. I loved Pride and Prejudice when I first read it precisely because I didn't yet know what would happen, and I was young enough that I was surprised that a classic could be unpredictable. (Set aside whether you agree that P&P is unpredictable -- the point is, these are stories that unfold in a way for a reason, and if you just give it all away on the back cover, you're draining the fun and tension from the experience of reading the book.) At the beginning of 1984, we don't know if he will find love, and the way that part of the book unfolds is important to our sense of Winston's psychological situation.

By: orange swan

orange swan — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:00:55 -0800

And then there's blurb writers who haven't read the book at all....

By: paulsc

paulsc — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:07:04 -0800

"... This edition is the one we want to get into the hands of school kids, to grab their short attention spans. ..."

In my day, when 1984 was still the distant future, and the book of the same name was a possible dystopian forecast thereof, we read it, not because we liked the cover, but because our teacher told us to do so, and would have flunked us, after ridiculing us publicly, if we hadn't. Kids today live in a world of too many nice book covers, and not enough threat of public ridicule. Orwell tried to warn us. But did we listen? No. We read it, we reported on it, and we promptly forgot it, and now, sure enough, they're dressing it up in harlot red and black, and marketing it, fer chrissake. Well, we've no one to blame, but ourselves.

By: Dave Faris

Dave Faris — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:08:53 -0800

Then again, I still like Phillip Glass, too, despite his music hasn't really evolved much in the last 30 years. Minimalists are so lazy.

By: gnash

gnash — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:10:13 -0800

I wonder who he copied to make the Penguin covers. See previous: Shepard Fairey Plaigarist? (Before everyone gets huffy - I get the whole commercial sampling bit - ala Designers Republic. And I am a BIG low-brow art fan, but I'd like to see one thing of Fairey's that wasn't sampled. This said, the cover is great).

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:15:23 -0800

My college students haven't read it. None of them were required to read it in high school. It's a hell of a time for it to drop out of the curriculum.

By: The Bellman

The Bellman — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:46:02 -0800

I have to say I had never heard of this guy and I hadn't read anything about his philosophy or his street cred (or lack thereof) until I came into the thread. My outsider's view, on looking at the covers, was "holy crap, those are awesome". Just a datapoint from the unhip.

By: msbrauer

msbrauer — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:53:18 -0800

It's a hell of a time for it to drop out of the curriculum. No kidding. Surprising that it isn't being taught in your area, though. I graduated from high school in Montana in 2000, and I think everyone ran into the book at some point at my public school. In the AP literature class, in fact, we read 1984 and Brave New World at the same time and I think the teacher also gave us some passages from We. Hopefully it isn't out of the curriculum everywhere.

By: Artw

Artw — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:52:54 -0800

That guy always reminds me of KMFDMs cover art.

By: Ambrosia Voyeur

Ambrosia Voyeur — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 20:53:16 -0800

if you're going to grab people, get them by the short and curlies. Good job at tapping into the contemporary progressive conscience, Penguin. Why, Jack Black himself couldn't have spoken the urgency of these perennial political classics better!

By: Senor Cardgage

Senor Cardgage — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:11:27 -0800

You know exactly what the covers look like before you see them. Meh. As a designer myself, I understand the unfortunate truth that the only way to become famous is to develop a cool style and then run it into the ground and inflict it on every piece you create whether or not its appropriate for the subject. But still, cmon Shep, widen your style out a bit. You have peoples' eyes, now get them to follow you. Isnt there someone else you can rip off that isnt in this exact same lockstep style youve been rocking for a decade plus now?

By: dirigibleman

dirigibleman — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:22:19 -0800

They arrived in 25 boxes shrink-wrapped on a wooden pallet, over 750 lbs. of books. That would be the entire Penguin collection as of late 2005 (only $8000).

By: fearfulsymmetry

fearfulsymmetry — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 01:11:43 -0800

If you want a picture of the future, imagine innovative marketing stamping on a human face—forever.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:14:43 -0800

Yeah, I thought that new blurb sucked too. The writing was so flat and uninteresting. And LobsterMitten is right, The fact that Winston finds love is one of the key turning points of the book and it really comes as a suprise.

By: vhsiv

vhsiv — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:33:11 -0800

The blurbs SUCK. The less said about the plot and it's labyrithian turns the better, much less the hints of Winston finding 'true love'. Anyone looking for true love in an Orwell novel is either badly misguided or indulging in some terrific drugs. The blurbs should be confined to place, setting and some rudimentary discussion of plot and conflict. Love? Big Brother's got some Total Information Awareness for your ass... [Without the blurbs, I came to appreciate 1984 as a biographical roman à clef of Britain during and immediately after WWII (closed borders, black market shenanigans, thought police, etc.), which is scarier, given the costs of 'war', 'freedom' and all the rest. War narratives seldom lend much attention to the hardship of civilian noncombatants on either side.]

By: churl

churl — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 02:34:30 -0800

I wish he hadn't put his personal "obey giant" logo in the bottom-center of both of the covers. Get over yourself and put that shit on the back.

By: 15 step

15 step — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 03:49:37 -0800

These aren't very good (good post, though!). They're ugly, which would be fine in itself – although Penguin did much better Sovietesque covers in the 1970s with (e.g.) Solzhenitsyn's short stories (no image on the internet). What i really don't like is the way this cover seems to interpret the narrative as exclusively anti-Soviet satire. It's very 'nice' in a graphic design way, but the iconography is lazy.

By: arungoodboy

arungoodboy — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 05:21:35 -0800

On a related note, 1984 pencilled as a black-and-white comic is worth a look.

By: mikeh

mikeh — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 06:38:02 -0800

I prefer Chris Ware's cover for Candide that came out a few years back.

By: rottytooth

rottytooth — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:18:20 -0800

As a designer myself, I understand the unfortunate truth that the only way to become famous is to develop a cool style and then run it into the ground and inflict it on every piece you create whether or not its appropriate for the subject. Well put. I'd really like to see him take chances with his work.

By: flaterik

flaterik — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:40:37 -0800

We read it, we reported on it, and we promptly forgot it It is pretty obvious that a lot of people have forgotten it.

By: klangklangston

klangklangston — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 10:46:53 -0800

"I wonder who he copied to make the Penguin covers." I thought the same thing when I saw the headline.

By: 7segment

7segment — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:28:09 -0800

>That guy always reminds me of KMFDMs cover art. That's (most often) the brute, a much better artist IMO. And I don't dislike Fairey.

By: Joseph Gurl

Joseph Gurl — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:17:48 -0800

Shepard Fairy, really? Some reason I'd thought he'd finally slunk out of relevance.