We recently completed the design of the memoir Adventures in China: What I Learned While Building a New Bank in Shanghai. The book’s themes include the influence of the Chinese Communist Party over every aspect of commerce; a lack of transparency in how decisions are made; and the sense of inscrutability experienced by foreigners doing business in China—in this case an American banker.
The design evokes these themes via a gloss black on matte black title treatment; mirrored letterforms; and a spine delineated by a glimpse of the front page of the People’s Daily from 1949, the day the People’s Republic of China was established.
We set the book title in Garage Gothic, a display typeface by Tobias Frere-Jones. The subtitle and author’s name are set in E13B, a Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (MICR) font used in the printing of checks and banking documents. The book was printed and bound by Oscar Printing, San Francisco.
See other book covers we’ve designed under Design is Play Covers.