The ‘Vintage Loves Film’ series is a one-off Summer Promotion to highlight ten Vintage bestsellers whose films also became box-office successes. For the consumer who may have seen the film but not read the book, we would be offering a fresh way of viewing these literary classics. This presented the design team with a difficult problem – how to tie the concept of film and book together. We particularly wanted to avoid a film tie-in approach, or work with film stills – the visual conceit would lie in how we described the transition of typed word to spoken word.

It occurred that quotes would be the way forward for a number of reasons:

1 – Most film fanatics can quote lines from their favourite films. For instance, we may not have seen, or know the story to the film Casablanca, but we remember the lines – ‘Here's looking at you, kid,’ ‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine’ , and even the misquote – ‘Play it again, Sam...’

2 – We use quotes from critics to help sell books, so why not use a quote from the book to sell itself?

We made a point of selecting quotes that were relevant to both film and book whilst making sure we remained faithful to the wording of the novel. The author name and title were relegated to the spine so that the quotes would be read as the description of the book, and not as typographic window dressing. Our insistence to work only with quotes and forego the usual trade conventions was initially met with some concerns, but the positive reactions from authors and estates alike confirmed that it was a bold, but correct approach.

Each designer took on two titles apiece, with the idea of choosing a type solution that would reflect the period or feel of the film (see below) and to complete the film connection we numbered the series with a motif inspired by the ten-to-one celluloid countdown on old black and white movies.

The simple cover concept needed to be complemented by the production values, so we printed in two colour (black and PMS485) on a pearlescent stock (Curious Metallic Virtual Pearl) with the bookblock edges dipped in black.

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Individual title approaches:

Alice in Wonderland needed a font that was evocative of the period whilst reflecting the eccentricities of the text. Ornella was based on a specimen from an old font catalogue.

Using a traditional typewriter, the design for Atonementis representative of the letters sent between the novel’s two main characters. The open letter-spacing echoes the yearning in the quote.

The opening sentence of Brighton Rock immediately positions the book in both location and genre. Using type scanned from
genuine Brighton rock references the book’s analogy that human nature is unchangeable like the words running through a stick of rock. When reset as a bold sentence in black and red, the type also takes on a gritty, film noir feel.

The quote on Catch 22 is bold and playful, and purposely echos WWII Defence Posters in layout and its use of the font Benton.

Death in Venice interprets renaissance typesetting with a twist – the idea of something once-grand slowly fading away. Individual T’s become crosses as a forewarning of the inevitability of death, an odd contradiction to the enlightenment of the quote.

Fight Club takes its inspiration from 1990’s experimental ‘grunge’ typesetting. The subversive design and misplaced O echo the novel’s anarchic nature.

The French Lieutenant’s Woman uses a redrawn and more elegantly spaced Cheltenham Book Condensed Italic to echo the 1981 film poster. Mirroring Fowles’ writing, the highlighted ellipses allude to a breaking away from nineteenth century conventions.
 
The quote from Memoirs of a Geisha evokes Sayuri’s spirit and resolve, and almost reads like a haiku. The simple typesetting is given further context and atmosphere by the effect of soaking into wet paper.

One of the most popular and enduring sans serif fonts, Futura, was widely used both in the fifties when The Talented Mr Ripley was written and in the nineties when the film was made – stylistically it suited both. As implied by the quote about Tom’s disguise, the speech marks on the cover are in an alternate (serif) font and highlighted in red to ‘give the game away’.

Why use anything other than Helvetica for Trainspotting? – a typeface going through a much-welcomed renaissance in the 1990s.
The highlighting of the final line being an ironic nod to the novel’s subject matter.


Regards,

The Design Team