Here is the Washington Post obituary, "Carin Goldberg, designer of book covers and Madonna’s first album, dies at 69/John Updike called her book covers — which numbered in the thousands — 'bold and festive.'"
And here's her Instagram page, where you can see a lot of her work, including this:
Posts
28 comments:
(Instagram posts show up for me as a large white box with a small text link in it. I don't know if others see pictures and color. I do know that you run an orderly, beautiful site; this may not be the presentation you want.)
@Kate
What are you looking at it on?
I see a nicely formatted image on my desktop, my iPad, and my iPhone.
You can't judge a book designer by her covers.
Instantly recognizable as Vonnegut from across a room. Branding is important.
Shows up perfectly for me on a Chromebook, a Linux desktop running Firefox, and an iPhone.
I see it fine on my MacBook using FireFox browser.
Me, too. Kate's scenario happens if you make an effort at reducing the amount of information you're sharing while you travel the interwebs. Thought they've loosened up since the beginning of the year, Meta really needs your data in order to take a peek.
Those V books are no bodice ripper covers but I guess they worked on the intended audience...
I see the same blank box as Karen, I'm using a Windows PC. The pictures show up on my i-phone.
I'm not too fond of the Vonnegut book covers shown, as they display a contemporary book cover/jacket design aesthetic that seems sterile to me, relying primarily (if not solely) on graphic design tricks with typography and flat swatches of color, etc. But, they're better examples of the style than most. I don't hate them, which I can't say about most book cover design I see today.
I always loved the covers of Vonnegut's books- they are distinctive, much like the writer himself was- a perfect fit.
I didn't know the cover of Madonna was by the same designer. I owned that album and played it a lot during the Summer of 1984 before going off to college.
Kate; It's that damn balloon -- the Chinese are out to get you and your computer. Works fine on my Windows machine but possibly I'm a little further East than you are, and the balloon hasn't gotten here yet.
Pray with me.
I was a huge Vonnegut fan in the early 70's. Read everything he wrote up to Breakfast of Champions. But those weren't the covers I had when the paperback editions originally came out. Must be for a reissue?
Anyway, I like the original paperback covers better.
I don't hate them, which I can't say about most book cover design I see today.
Tell me you didn't say that in Alan Rickman's voice as you were typing that out... I definitely did as I read it.
The Vonnegut covers were such an improvement over the sometimes garish covers that preceded them.
Ah, thank you. Yes, I have location services turned off and ad block on.
Early covers of Vonnegut's work were all different (based on the titles) because who knew what Vonnegut would become? Her execution of these re-issues is great - dealing with the most important entity with that graphic V. Nice.
Really good stuff...
Reading those covers from left to right, but bottom to top is like watching a great writer get destroyed over time by his addiction to politics.
I like science fictioney covers, myself. I still remember finding a paperback copy of The Sirens of Titan by Kilgore Trout in a bookstore in the late seventies. It had a great cover, and it wasn't graphic stuff you could do on a 1985 Macintosh, it was art produced by hand.
Here it is, a proper sci-fi cover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_of_Titan#/media/File:TheSirensofTitan(1959).jpg
N:B: Ah, turns out per Wikipedia that the book I found that claimed it was written by Kilgore Trout was actually "Venus on the Half Shell" and that is the book I found. Now I will have to dig up a copy, because even though it was not actually written by Vonnegut, as I recall, it was pretty good.
I wonder what she could have done with Pynchon's 'V.'?
"Here it is, a proper sci-fi cover https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sirens_of_Titan#/media/File:TheSirensofTitan(1959).jpg"
That cover was painted by the premier illustrator of science fiction, the peerless Richard Powers, who towered over the field like a colossus for decades. I was fortunate to attend a World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in the early 90s where Powers was the Artist Guest of Honor. He gave a two hour slide lecture on his career, which was cut short because another event was scheduled for that convention room at a certain hour, and he ran out the time allotted for him. The convention organizers offered a wan sort-of-promise of "we'll try to schedule a room for him to finish his presentation," but it never happened.
"I wonder what she could have done with Pynchon's 'V.'?"
This cover of V by James Bama will never be surpassed.
The "Kilgore Trout" who wrote VENUS ON THE HALF SHELL was SF writer Philip Jose Farmer. He wrote it with Vonnegut's begrudging agreement.
"The Vonnegut covers were such an improvement over the sometimes garish covers that preceded them."
Oh no you didn't.
Thanks for the V cover image, that was great. I realized my mistake on Kilgore Trout, but didn't correct my comment, because it was a genuine memory from maybe 1978, so I wanted to honor it, warts and all. It happened in a store called The Book Nook, where I liked to visit.
This sort of minimalist book cover is well... low achievement, no? Here are some, that are much better. https://lithub.com/the-25-most-iconic-book-covers-in-history
I must say, that i never judge a book by its cover, and I have a lot of books. In fact, I can't remember a single book cover. Hold on while I look at my book shelves.....
Yep, just as I thought. Half my books don't even have book covers, and the other half are are bland nothings.
I wonder why Vonnegut never became a cult author like JD Salinger. Their talent level and target audiences were pretty similar. I've seen Kurt Vonnegut speak in person. There was a great convesation with him, Joe Heller, and some other famous dude (who isn't famous to me), about their WW II experiences. You can find it on CSPAN.
Vonnegut had a sorta dry mark Twain like wit. Better at speaking than writing.
I vaguely recall that Pynchon cover, Robert, thanks for looking; I was coming back here with the Kilgore Trout info but you beat me to it.
If you can't see the images, it's because of your browser and an ad-blocker.
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