Going Polish: Redesigning the Book Cover

This week 50 Watts, a blog site by Will Schofield on book cover design and illustration, announced the winners of its Polish Book Cover Contest. The contest asked contestants to take their favorite books and create a “Polish design,” or fake book cover inspired by the style of existing Polish book designs.

Judges Aleksandra and Daniel Mizieliński, Peter Mendelsund, and Will Schofield himself chose Ben Jones as their winner with his design of George Orwell’s classic 1984, awarding him $400 and bragging rights for his remake of the classic. “Polish artists seem to use the atmosphere of the narrative to carry the artwork forward,” Jones said. “This is what I tried to do with my 1984 book cover.”

Second place went to Paris-based comic author Singeon (Nicolas Gallet) for his The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino and third place went to Bas Alberts of Amsterdam for Mark Z. Danielewki’s House of Leaves. Other judges’ favorites included remakes of Lord of the Rings books, Alice in Wonderland, Lord of the Flies, and To Kill a Mockingbird.

While not as taken with the first place choice as the judges (perhaps it’s the feeling of being watched) I did enjoy the third place choice by Bas Alberts and the Alice in Wonderland rendition by Ada Buchholc. The designs are simple and clean, but then I’m a simple girl.

Check out the other contest submissions here.

Check out 50 Watt here.