The New Sleekness » Little Brother, in progress

Tor designer Pablo Defendini has, in his spare time, done up an alter­na­tive cover to Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (which I hope to get­ting around to read­ing some­time this decade). I really love the approach of this cover design, and from what I’ve read about the book any­way, it seems really appro­pri­ate. The addi­tion of easter eggs means after read­ing the book, you have a new­found appre­ci­a­tion to it.  I like the illus­tra­tor style–it’s not some­thing you see in SF book cov­ers very often, so I think this book would stand out if I saw it on the shelf.  The typog­ra­phy is tight, well done, and going with the Neil Gaiman quote promi­nently like that is a damned good deci­sion that will help sell the book.

I’m adding this site to my feeds. I’m more inter­ested in cover design lately, and I think his work is par­tic­u­larly inspiring.

Here’s a pro­gres­sion of that Little Brother sketch I put up a few days ago. This is what hap­pens when I have a week­end to myself. I’ve had lots of fun putting this together, par­tic­u­larly includ­ing lit­tle easter eggs (hints: run the binary through a trans­la­tor; check out the ‘maker’s brand’ on the arphid on the spine, etc.)

Tagged as: books, cover design, defendini, doctorow, Tor