Redesigning Cormac McCarthy’s Brutal ‘Blood Meridian’. To keep his design skills sharp, Bobby Solomon takes a crack at designing a cover for Blood Meridian. I love what he came up with.
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Discussion 4 comments
I really liked Bobby's book covers for this too! He's so good at spacing and tone.
This is timely. I'm currently reading Blood Meridian now and almost finished with it. I love McCarthy and have read many of his books but never made it to Blood Meridian which is unusual as it's regarded as his magnum opus.
It's a difficult read. It's at times lyrical and poetic. It's also the most brutal and violent book I've ever read--even by McCarthy's standards. It's hard to get through at times.
The color and typography of the book cover is fine. The picture of cattle as the book cover? No! Sure it's a western. But it ain't about ranching or cattle so don't just use a western trope image. The guy says he didn't read the book. If design a cover, it's a requisite to read the book!
I agree: it's a nice cover for a book, but it's not a good cover for this particular book, or even an American Western. Not to nit-pick, but the cattle in the photo he chose are African, I believe, and not even native to the Americas.
There's a lot about what the designer "likes" in fonts and in colors and in pictures of cattle (pictures of cattle???). But very little that expresses the nature or content of the book itself.
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