Osvobozené hry | book series design
Creating book series is hardly a simple thing. The problem is, that if you screw it up, you don’t screw only artwork only, you’ll screw the whole book, which is written by much respectable master. Spoiling a book-jacket is a way to hell.
Tied to be free
A year ago, when I was to choose an edition for the book design, I did get a big idea - reedition of famous czech theatrical plays of Osvobozené divadlo. It seemed like a brilliant idea, poetical coupe of avantgarde actors = loads of inspiration, but design is about finding the concentrated and uniting elements and finding them (and not repeating previously released materials) was far from facile.
Facile Facial Idea
After couple of days I found it. In certain period of time, Jiří Voskovec & Jan Werich used to paint their faces with kind of pushed-clown make-up which I used for the edition mark (called Osvobozené hry, meaning Freed plays). It shows two faces with this typical make-up, the shape of the heads is directly determining the actors themselves. (Of course you cannot recognize them, if you’ve never seen their plays.)
Then I chose five of their plays and made a five-book edition in mild pastel colours contrasting with the avantgardity of the content itself. The shelfback is semi-hard, but not a paperback at all. The plays are short so it would be wasting of material making the full shelfback.
List of the plays:
- Vest Pocket Revue
- Těžká Barbora (Heavy Barbara)
- Kat a Blázen (The Executioner and a Fool)
- César (Ceasar)
- Balada z Hadrů (Ballad of Rags)
Cover of Těžká Barbora
This is an open cover of the book. V&W is the famous monogram not only for Volkswagen but aslo for Voskovec & Werich.
Cover theme
All the five books as they are. Spot the colour theme, mild, long pastel in various hues.
As you may know, designing a book is not only about designing the cover. I also did the composition and typography of the content (the title atfer the flyleaf etc.), but it is not easy to present it on the web, because it is just a design and you would probably need to see it in real or in a photo.
September 3rd, 2006 at 7:08 pm
good work at da cova, man!
September 3rd, 2006 at 7:25 pm
nice!
September 3rd, 2006 at 11:33 pm
whata f,
kazdej ma jinej vkus a do meho ses zrovna netrefil,
hlavne s tou ikonou, ci logem? to opravdu neeee!
http://ihate.biz/images/osvobozenehry_edition_mark.jpg
to prosim je uplne nepekne, to mi tam hodne dráždí,
sorry pravda ode mne, mej se ;)
September 4th, 2006 at 11:28 am
Docela fajnej dizajn, na druhou stranu bych cekal na obalce neco k tematu hry (mimo nazvu samozrejme :) - takhle je to takove “cheap solution” - design once, sell five times
September 4th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
2Triptamine: To bylo soucasti zadani.
September 4th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
Libi se mi, ze dokazes nejen udelat dobre navrhy, ale taky je umis prodat. ;)
Pastelove barvy a minimalismus - dle meho nazoru: Well done!
September 5th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
I like attractive contrast between pastel colours and black&white elements. Two-colours theme in not very original but it looks good in a library ;). Selection of colours for each play seems to be accidental, not match to theme of play, but this is very subjective. After all I must say ‘well done’.
October 19th, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Preved! Nice resourse! Kagdila? I’m medved
November 3rd, 2006 at 12:45 am
Artioma: I am sorry, but I dont get it :o)
February 17th, 2007 at 11:28 pm
Dear Friend:
Great job! Where can I get Tezka Barbara? Or is there an English translation anywhere? I’m trying to get ahold of a good translation of David a Golias, and it’s pretty hard to capture the original tone.
Ale takovy je zivot.
Thanks, beautiful design.
Mike
February 26th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Michael:
Thx! I will try to look after a translation, but I am afraid… Still, V&W were quite a long time in USA, moreover and lots of czech emigrants started a new life there so there’s a possibility that someone translated it. I’ll let you know.
Maybe some readers know…
March 4th, 2007 at 6:33 am
Thanks. I just gave a talk on Jezek’s American years at a conference in London. Obviously, I’m trying to find out about their American performances.
Can I buy your books somewhere?
Ahoj,
Mike
March 13th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Oh Michael, I hope it is not because of my english - but the article says clearly I just designed the COVERs for the books, imaginary. Noone has republished them, unfortunately :o( But maybe someday….
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:18 pm
www casinomissionimpossible com…
writhed congest quilting,Monfort …
April 17th, 2009 at 10:03 am
www lionslotscasino com…
floppy conditioned pussy:…