Cover Designs, Shopping, and False Nostalgia

First came, it seems, Spacesick's "I Can Read Movies" series with covers reminiscent of Penguin Classics paperbacks from the 1960s.

How reminiscent? Consistent series design. Two-color printing. Graphics designed to strike the eye at a distance while evoking the story within. And, most powerful of all, the cream cover stock, browning at the edges like lightly toasted bread. The results really do look like volumes one would expect to find squeezed onto a shelf of a college town's used-bookstore.

Inspired with the same admiration for book covers past, M. S. Corley posted new designs in the same style for:

• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.
• Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black's The Spiderwick Chronicles, first cycle.
• J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, final volume shown here.
• Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.

In much the same spirit, Blaze Danielle has posted her interpretation of childhood favorites in another medium: personal-shopping for literary girls after they grow up, in two posts on Storybook Fashion. Danielle appears to have chosen currently available garments, but of course she was looking at past depictions of those characters.

I suspect that Spacesick and Sorley aren't as old as the paperbacks they're using as models. They probably came upon those books after the Penguin Classics had already evolved to orange, blue, or black spines and full-color photos on the front. (Or, in the case of P. G. Wodehouse, delightful Ionicus illustrations.) Like Danielle's largely clothing choices, these retro looks seem to be a form of false nostalgia, not for the things of our own youth but for old things we encountered in our youth.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

(Hat tips to Betsy Bird's Fuse #8, Alison Morris's Shelftalker, and Ryan Wilson's ArtCow.)