Source: http://chips.nycTeddy Blanks / CHIPS. License: All Rights Reserved.
Ike Zimmerman’s Some People Are Decent, all set in ITC Bernase Roman.
Fictional book covers designed by Teddy Blanks (CHIPS) for Listen Up Philip, a movie that refers to the late Philip Roth, who repeatedly published with pseudonyms during his career. See also this post about the movie poster and David Haglund’s feature for Slate, and make sure to head over to the CHIPS website to watch some movie excerpts (with a lot more book covers) in their case story.
Listen Up Philip is a dark comedy about a young writer named Philip (Jason Schwartzman), his photographer girlfriend Ashley (Elisabeth Moss) and Ike Zimmerman (Jonathan Pryce), the respected older author who becomes his mentor. CHIPS worked closely with director Alex Ross Perry to design believable (and subtly satirical) book covers not only for Philip’s relatively recent releases, but for Zimmerman’s entire back catalog.
The style of each book conforms to design trends and tropes of the era it was supposed to have been published, using typefaces that would have been widely available at the time. The covers feature prominently in several key scenes. –– CHIPS
Source: http://chips.nycTeddy Blanks / CHIPS. License: All Rights Reserved.
Airbrushed lettering and Futura on Ike Zimmerman’s Audit. Blanks: “Audit is a direct rip-off of the first edition cover of Martin Amis’s Money, which I love.”
Source: http://chips.nycTeddy Blanks / CHIPS. License: All Rights Reserved.
Madness & Women, set in Pistilli Roman (or Didoni or Eloquent?)
Blanks: “The Cinch and The Shrug are both attempts at Raymond Chandler-esque detective novels featuring the same private eye character. I loved the idea that Zimmerman, for all his literary clout, harbored a secret desire to write popular genre fiction, but couldn’t quite cut it because he was too pretentious or whatever. Ialso loved the idea that they would have the same exact cover, as if the publisher had decided to market them like a Sue Grafton series.”
Teddy Blanks / CHIPS. License: All Rights Reserved.
Blanks: “A Woman’s Point of View is from 1988, which is right around the time everyone was switching to digital type, and for whatever reason, there’s a style of cover from around then that is self-consciously “classic”—small type centered on the page, an evocative vintage illustration, muddy, muted colors.”
Teddy Blanks / CHIPS. License: All Rights Reserved.
Too Much Everything, in a light italic cut from Archer.
Blanks: “Bad Eating is Zimmerman’s most recent novel, from 2008, and I was going for a bright colors, big sans-serif type [Interstate Bold], extremely cropped photo, Chip Kidd-ish kind of thing, or almost a slight nod to a Jonathan Franzen cover.”
Philip Lewis Friedman’s Join The Street Parade, in outlined Gill Sans caps.
Source: http://chips.nycTeddy Blanks / CHIPS. License: All Rights Reserved.
This cover for Obidant is set in caps from Knockout (probably the No. 47 weight). Blanks: “… the cover for Philip’s new book, Obidant, with its giant type in the clouds, was absolutely meant as a reference to Infinite Jest.”
Source: http://chips.nycTeddy Blanks / CHIPS. License: All Rights Reserved.
Philip Lewis Friedman’s Obidant, a novel published with six different covers that look more like non-fiction. From top left to bottom right: Bembo, a bold condensed Bodoni, Futura Maxi, Caslon 224 (with its compressed f), ITC Franklin Gothic ExtraCompressed, and Bodoni Egyptian.
From the end titles: When the Chips Are Down. Collected stories by Ike Zimmerman, in Palisade Graphic (or Fast Freddy NF?).The title was chosen in reference to Blanks’ design studio CHIPS. Credits in Cabernet.