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Wednesday Cover Story: Art Noveau

Wednesday, September 7th, 2011

I saw this book, Art Nouveau, by Norbert Wolf, advertised in The Bookseller and I had to admire the cover.  I am a fan of book cover designs that break the mould – not adhering to the usual format where the title, author name and image take up all the available space on the cover, in some uniform way or another.

With this cover, the image of the women sits in the lower half,  neatly enclosing the title Art Nouveau. But then, rather than balancing this lower section with the author name splashed across the top of the cover, Norbet Wolf is tucked to the side (indeed the author is not the selling point). Effectively this leaves a big blank gap at the top, something you don’t see very often in traditional book cover design.  And so, for a book about Art Nouveau, it is perfect! Art Nouveau: the avant-gardist movement that broke traditional artistic moulds.  And seeing as the movement is usually defined by geometric lines and often features femminine figures – well this sleek design embodies that too, with its silhouetted women and the layout accentuating the geometric shapes of a circle within a square.

I am not an art connoisseur by any means, and I’m not likely to ever buy a copy of this book, but I think it is certainly beautifully and cleverly presented.

Chiara Priorelli, Publicty & Online Marketing Manager

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