Designer info to come

I’m the last person to say anything about glamour — trust me on this one. So I’m wondering what you think about the photo selection here. I’m thinking funereal and glamorous aren’t mutually exclusive, but again, you tell me.

Creativity and Penguin Books sponsored a contest to design the cover of The Island at the End of the World by Sam Taylor, author of The Amnesiac. Thanks to reader Tanya for bringing it to my attention.

Here’s a synopsis of the book from the Creativity Online site:

A chilling novel about the near future, where most of the world has been destroyed by catastrophic floods. As a father and his three children begin to rebuild their lives alone on an island, his youngest son Finn begins to question how they arrived there and why they alone have been spared. Finn’s search for understanding takes an unexpected turn when a strange man named Will swims ashore, and he appears to know quite a bit about this family and the circumstances that surrounded the floods. But Finn’s father is determined to keep him silent and is willing to do anything to prevent Will from disturbing his family’s idyllic life on the island. Sam Taylor’s The Island at the End of the World is a riveting post-apocalyptic tale that explores the darkness that lies within the hearts of men.

There’s some pretty nice work here; out of the 25 final designs, these are the four that caught my eye. See all of them here. Winner announced September 25; I’ll try to post the winning design shortly afterwards.

The fantastic LA Times Jacket Copy blog discusses “an admiring, amusing, perhaps disturbingly well-researched catalog of all things Shatner,” recently released in a “millenium edition:”

This is delightfully cheesy and exactly what it should be — what, you expected a picture of him from the TJ Hooker days? The 1998 original edition takes a stab at humor that gets tired very quickly:

Design by Amy C. King

I hereby announce that The Book Design Review will bestow its first annual “This Takes Balls” award in 2008, and that we’ve got a clear frontrunner:

Bloomsbury USA, take a friggin’ bow.

UPDATE: My new favorite reader James points us to an article discussing the use of this image on more than one jacket. Hey, it happens:

An interview with David Foster Wallace (around the time of A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again).

A conversation with David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen and Mark Leyner.