AbeBooks: Book Design at its Best

Emma
Jane Austen

Fine Edition, illustrated by Amy Gibson

David Pearson is a design genius. Currently the art director for White's Books, Pearson spent several years with Penguin designing numerous successful series including the Pocket Penguins, Penguin Popular Classics, Penguin Reference, the Great Ideas series and art directing the Great Journeys and Great Love series. Needless to say, this man knows his stuff when it comes to designing visually beautiful covers for books. It's hard to say which cover is more beautiful. As you scroll down the page you'll fall in love again and again.

Although Pearson did not design all of the covers for White's Books, except for the Sonnets and Poems by William Shakespeare, he certainly was involved with the process, including doing all of the typesetting and layout work. White's Books hired well known artists to design the covers for the Fine Editions series. The illustrators used traditional mediums such as drawing, woodcutting or engraving. Some of the artists include Stanley Donwood (Treasure Island), best known for designing Radiohead's album covers, Petra Borner (Jane Eyre) and Joe McLaren (The Christmas Books) who regularly illustrates for the Financial Times and The Times of London.

The Fine Editions series books have decorated cloth bindings instead of dust jackets. The color printed endpapers extend the cover design inside and the pages are sewn in rather than glued to make the book sturdier. The White's Books Pocket Classics are smaller in size and come with colored endpapers, marker ribbons and illustrations embossed on the front and back covers to give a lovely tactile feel.

Regardless of the topic, whether it be a timeless classic book like Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, any book or subject that has been touched by the hands of David Pearson is bound to have a beautiful cover. Find many editions of Pearson's work on AbeBooks, all for affordable prices.