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Design Category
Book design, 1997
Design firm
MIT Press Design Department (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
Collection
(1998) 50 Books/50 Covers of 1997
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I still don’t understand what the book is about. It’s heavy-duty computer science theory. Fortunately, I didn’t need to understand the content to design the book jacket. In the interior, the authors use finite-state graphs to help illustrate the tech talk. I used the same style of graph on the cover. “Incomplete states” (white circles that mean nothing alone) are connected by lines (yellow squiggly) to form “complete states” (a bunch of white circles that mean something when connected).
I’ve taken some standard elements on a book jacket and merged them into a complete state that means something. The squiggly lines add some playfulness to an otherwise dry subject.