Are “design aesthetics” at odds with mass-market book jacket design?
If so, how? Gall: Having spent a little time, years ago, working in the mass-market format, things may have changed, and there are genres within mass market that I really have little knowledge about, such as Science Fiction or Romance. In a way, the thinking behind a cover could be as conceptual as any other type of design, though in a more general way. But the format is more about making the cover appear larger than the other 4 x 6 books it’s sitting next to in Wal-Mart, which means the exploratory aesthetic work goes into things like stretching type, applying drop shadows, crazy printing effects—horrifying things you were told not to do in art school. My way of working was: If you think this is the way it should be done— do the opposite. TITLE: PROJECT X, DESIGNER: JOHN GALL, ART DIRECTOR: CAROL DEVINE CARSON, CLIENT: KNOPF SB: Does it bother you that trade paperbacks are by their very nature ephemeral? Gall: I may have overstated this case during the lecture [a talk given at the Kea
