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Design Category
Book design, 2004
Design firm
Peter Mendelsund Design (New York, New York)
Collection
(2005) 50 Books/50 Covers of 2004
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The challenge was to design a jacket for an authoritative history of fascism that would stand out in a marketplace burdened with many similar history titles. I did not want this particular piece of historical nonfiction look like every other piece of historical nonfiction. At Knopf, we produce a ton of these kinds of books, and they all have similar black-and-white photos on the front. I didn’t want a swastika on the jacket, or a photo of Mussolini or Franco; no Hitler youth or Nuremberg rallies. So, what did that leave? I pretended I was Albert Speer and created this all-type thing from whole cloth.