I enjoyed clicking around a crowdsourced graphic design project called Recovering the Classics the other day featuring new covers for old classics produced by anyone and everyone who had the inclination. Bibliographic art is always interesting to me, and I think it is a dynamic genre as interest in things that appear to be fading naturally and conversely escalates. Even though some of the cover designs are a bit simplistic (or confusing, or not particularly representative of what’s inside), it’s interesting to compare them: just click on a big image and you will see all the other submissions for the same title. I am naturally drawn to the starker, more symbolic designs as well as those which are slightly retro or antiqued in some way, and I am a sucker for nearly every new cover of Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter that I encounter: they are always an easy A in my book.

Book covers by MrFurious (The Scarlet Letter), Huy Ho (Jane Eyre); Ji Sug Kang (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz); J.R.J. Sweeney and Roberto Lanznaster (Metamorphosis); Ioannis Fetanis and MrFurious (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde);  Michelle Kondrich (The Jungle); Nick fairbank..f9 design (The Jungle Book); Steve St. Pierre (Dracula); and Luis Prado, Alexis Tapia, and Ed Gaither–Modern Electrographic (Frankenstein). I don’t know why no one has caught the prominent typo yet!

More covers on view at Recovering the Classics.