Tuesday, April 18, 2006

US / UK

11 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Which do you like better?

4/18/2006 1:50 PM  
Blogger Arkady said...

The US version is too pinched for me, and looks like they gave it to a layout newb.

4/18/2006 3:24 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

yes, the US one looks like it took a page - literally - from the NYRB or something. And, no whorehouses, no "class combat," no "dying regime," no most evil man. killjoys.

4/18/2006 9:52 PM  
Blogger Arkady said...

They've also, upon review, put Dick "Dick" Cheney in the Happy Tutor's dumpster. The grasping of the man knows no boundaries.

Juke Moran gave me the courage to say when things look like deliberate efforts to belittle or make less attractive, on their face, that may very well have been the intent. The US cover says, "I'm dull".

4/19/2006 1:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yes. I would suggest if questioned further, it would say it is striving to say, "I'm respectably dull, and so are you."

4/19/2006 8:26 PM  
Blogger Ray Davis said...

The USA one reminds me of the studio-modified jacket for The Electric Spanking of War Babies. (The original. Speaking of the Tutor.)

4/20/2006 9:36 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ray, a paper I used to work for would, every few years, put itself through months of agonizing makeover artistry. Bold strokes were rumored that were going to have a revolutionary effect on layout, design, reader experience, the total "gestalt" heh of the Product. When parturition was complete, the Redesign invariably had all the radicality of Dick Minim's rug.

4/20/2006 11:02 PM  
Blogger Roger Gathmann said...

Now, I know mr. scruggs will call me oldfashioned, but why not build on real madhouse pics? For instance, this famous pic of Goya's (badly, badly reproduced): www.wga.hu/art/ g/goya/7/711goya.jpg Among other things, the first picture in the canon to show a man jerking off, but you can's see it due to the gross way the delicate shadows are digitalized.

Anyway, madhouse. The white house as the madhouse doesn't work as a metaphor if we see it, right away, as a metaphor and ignore what the metaphor is of...

Uh, did I just write that sentence? Yes I did, and I'm proud of what it says, even though even I don't know exactly what it means.

In any case, what the world/needs now/is Goya and more Goya.

4/26/2006 7:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

roger, yes, goya, whose "voice" could transform US media in a heartbeat. that wga thing has changed its database or something - old links just reset to the home page. I like this too.

4/27/2006 5:48 AM  
Blogger Arkady said...

I'm even more old fashioned, Roger, as my taste undoubtedly reveals.

4/27/2006 3:33 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I know which art department I would hire for Wealth Bondage, the Book. Timid satire is an embarassment. Only when it goes way too far is it funny, and only when funny can it be excused. I think the lower cover might be safer, actually, because it draws a smile. The top one seems guilty as charged.

4/28/2006 9:03 AM  

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