From the Talking Covers blog, here’s a memorial tribute to the trend-setting Vintage Contemporaries line of original paperback books that led the publishing pack in visual freshness during the 1980s. Jay McInerney, Mona Simpson and Raymond Carver all looked great in these uniform cover designs, which vaguely referenced Roy Lichtenstein and emphasized splashy colors and art deco fonts.
This Talking Covers blog post tells the whole story of the Vintage Contemporaries design, which was (it turns out) the work of a graphic artist named Lorraine Louie. These cover reproductions sure do bring back memories for me! The books were not actually “vintage” when they came out, but many of them are today.
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If one enjoys this site, here
If one enjoys this site, here’s another fun site to peruse – http://www.coverjunkie.com/
These are beautiful book
These are beautiful book covers indeed. I love covers like these.
These covers, and the whole
These covers, and the whole line of Vintage Contemporaries were designed by Lorraine Louie, but the illustrations shown here were illustrated by me. I illustrated about 50 covers for Vintage in the 80’s and it was a high honor to do so, and I and all of the other artists who created cover art for the series owe Lorraine a debt of gratitude for creating such an iconic and recognizable series of books.
Great to meet you here, Rick
Great to meet you here, Rick Lovell!