05 February 2010

Ex Libris: The Leitchs



Another fine example of the New Canadian Library's incredibly ugly second series design. Thirty-two years ago, this book belonged to neighbours of the Cohen family on Westmount's Belmont Avenue. I bought it in 1991, just as prices for things LC were on the runway about to take off.


2 comments:

  1. I always wondered if the covers of this series were some kind of "Producers"-like joke on publishing. What's the opposite of eye-catching? Is there some way we can made sure no casual reader ever picks up these books?

    You're working waaay to hard to with this type face to make me not read this Clark Blaise. You had me at helvetica.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The whole thing looks like it was designed for the production line, doesn't it? Slap a short quote in the middle of box #1, then the title and author in box #2. The graphic is contained in box #3, meaning there's no danger of it interfering with any text (or vice versa).

    And, while we're on the subject of graphics - they represented nothing, meaning each could be used on any book. In fact, I'm pretty certain that a few were used more than once.

    A friend remembers them as Rorschach tests. He's not far off.

    ReplyDelete