Riggs Partners

Can’t Judge a Kindle by Its Cover

Recently, while roaming the aisles of Barnes & Noble, I came across a shelf of beautiful leather bound books, foil stamped to perfection and classically styled with a timeless design. The edge of every page was painted to compliment the well-purposed colors of the cover. The vintage marbled endpapers looked as though they could have been torn straight from the walls of my grandmother’s circa-1970′s bathroom. The type was exquisitely crafted by hand, subtly extending into gorgeous swirling swashes shifting and flowing in space, creating shapes that even Mondrian couldn’t have arranged with much ease. Bordering patterns evenly embellished every edge and corner, giving balance to the frame of the book.

There was no New York Times quote, no rave review, no, dare I say it, Oprah Sticker; just a beautifully crafted piece of literature (or art, really) that enraptured me. I knew I had to have one—if not to read, then to keep on my bookshelf so that I could one day show my future grandson what a real book looks like, hopefully inspiring in him a nostalgic longing for the preservation of the past. Because after all, that’s what they’ll become. With the invasion of the electronic book—they even sell them in bookstores now—I fear that the real books so many of us love and cherish are soon to be forgotten.

However, as long as there are people writing books, I get the feeling there will be people like Jessica Hische (the illustrator of these brilliant book covers) to design them into something beautiful and lasting. If you ever find yourself roaming the aisles of a bookstore and you find a beautiful book, pick it up and admire it for the weight of its cover, the design on its face, the smell of its pages, and the spot on your bookshelf that it will soon take.

-Kevin Archie, Design Apprentice