The Lolita Cover Project, curated by John Bertram, is a fascinating exercise. Dozens of stellar book designers have been approached for their takes on this important 20th century novel. I’m thrilled to be in such good company (see the link for the list of participating designers!)
I thought the image of a cage was fitting, in that Lolita has become trapped in her relationship with Humbert Humbert, but he is equally trapped by his attraction to, as he calls them, nymphets (hence the white cage, to represent their perceived innocence). The bird is ambiguously both inside and outside the cage. The images are from one of my favourite resources for mocking up illustrated covers, vectorstock.com.
It’s been years I’ve read an issue of Wired cover to cover, but with the release of the iPad app, the time had come to revisit an old favourite. From the point of view of a print designer, with years of magazine experience under my belt, what a pleasure it was to explore this new magazine format. Whereas the Popular Science iPad app certainly looked the part of ‘magazine of the future’, I found it cumbersome to navigate, and I lost interest quickly. Wired’s app sits in a sweet spot between traditional print magazine and multimedia experience — with goodies like 360º images that are rotated based on user input, integrated video, and well-placed audio, it all feels… right.
