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De Profundis (2012). The title is nothing to do with Oscar Wilde’s famous epistle from prison, but then that should be obvious looking at my latest piece of tenebrous artwork. “De Profundis” means “From the depths” which in this case is applied to another piece with a Cthulhu theme. I made a decision earlier this [...]

Now that Angry Robot books has revealed the cover design which kept me busy throughout July I can do the same here. The Bookman Histories is an omnibus reprinting of Lavie Tidhar‘s steampunk trilogy which comprises The Bookman, Camera Obscura and The Great Game. The stories are frenetic, crowded with incident and feature a huge [...]

This animated short by Anthony Lucas isn’t exactly obscure but I’ve only just noticed that the distributor has the whole film available for viewing on YouTube. The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello blends silhouetted characters and decor with elaborate steam-powered machinery in a manner that looks like the kind of thing Lotte Reiniger might have [...]

Despite appearances I’m still doing bits of design and layout work for various musicians. In the past week I’ve been trying to reorganise this sprawling website a little so it’s easier to add new work quickly and easily. One recent job was more layout than design, a CD and vinyl package for a Roly Porter [...]

Kafka (1991). This week I completed the interior design for a new anthology from Tachyon, Kafkaesque, edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly. It’s a collection of short stories either inspired by Franz Kafka, or with a Kafka-like atmosphere, and features a high calibre of contributions from writers including JG Ballard, Jorge Luis Borges, [...]

Things I was working on late last year continue to percolate or, if you prefer, build a head of steam. My cover for KW Jeter’s Morlock Night appears in a short piece by Rick Poynor in July’s Creative Review. That feature is prompted by the British Library’s Out of the World exhibition. Nice to see [...]

Cover and interior designs by Galen Smith. Arriving in your book emporia this week is The Steampunk Bible by Jeff VanderMeer & SJ Chambers, a comprehensive guide to the sub-genre which is now a thriving sub-culture. I contributed some bits of graphic design as well as a bespoke dirigible illustration (see below). The book also [...]

Annie Duels The Sun (2010) by Angie Wang. I’m interviewed again, this time by James at Cardboard Cutout Sundown. Covering familiar subjects for {feuilleton} readers: art history, design, Lovecraft, the genre/mainstream seesaw, etc. Related: Jeff VanderMeer previewed my design for the forthcoming Steampunk Reloaded. • Battle over legacy of father of Art Nouveau. Prague authorities [...]

Mysterieux retour du Capitaine Nemo. This week has been incredibly hectic work-wise but I’ve managed to keep these posts going, so here’s the last one devoted to an appreciation of the Cités Obscures of François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters. A week of posts barely scratches the surface of their vast and involved creation of alternate [...]

L’enfant penchée. We’re at the penultimate post in this week-long tribute to the Cités Obscures series of François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters, and there isn’t enough space left to cover some of the more recent volumes in detail. What follows is a quick skate through three more major works. L’enfant penchée. L’enfant penchée (1996), or [...]

Ferdinand and Hella look down on the skyscrapers of Brüsel. La route d’Armilia (1988) by François Schuiten and Benoît Peeters is the next substantial story in the Cités Obscures series after La Tour; there was also a book about transportation in the Obscure World, L’Encyclopédie des transports présents et à venir, published the same year. [...]

Paris au XXieme Siecle by Jules Verne (1994). Following a comment I made last week in the post about the Temples of Future Religions by François Garas I’ve decided it’s time to give some proper attention to one of my favourite comic artists, François Schuiten, a Belgian whose obsession with imaginary architecture resembles the earlier [...]

Reineke Fuchs, Einband der Ausgabe des Versepos von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1846). From Wikimedia Commons’ stock of images related to the medieval trickster hero, and another great cover showing the 19th century art of the blocked binding. In a similar vein, don’t miss these marvellous illustrations at BibliOdyssey. Reineke als Sieger by Wilhelm von [...]

The Art of Illuminating As Practised in Europe from the Earliest Times by WR Symms (1860). From the days when blocking was an art. One of a number of lavish board designs which can be found at Fromoldbooks.org. Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The book covers archive Previously on { feuilleton } • Decorated [...]

Previous posts about book covers or cover design. • Alembic and Ligier Richier • Covering Joyce • The Eighth Court • On self-imitation • In the Key of Blue by John Addington Symonds • Design as virus #15: David Pelham’s Clockwork Orange • Tentacles #1: The Boats of the ‘Glen Carrig’ • Chute libre science [...]

Inspiration (1949). Karel Zemen (1910–1989) is a filmmaker I’m often telling people about but whose work isn’t easy to see. So it’s good to find that YouTube has gained some clips of his animations and examples of the partly-animated adventure films he made in the Fifties and Sixties. Zeman was yet another great Czech animator [...]

An unmade high-concept from Hammer Films’ early Seventies dalliance with pulp adventure, if you must know. Via Boing Boing via Jess Nevins via Airminded where we learn: The story was along the lines of THE LAND THAT TIME FORGOT, with a German Zeppelin being blown off-course during a bombing raid on London and winding up [...]

Le Voyage dans la Lune (1902), directed by Georges Méliès and loosely inspired by the works of Jules Verne and HG Wells. Hard to believe this inventive little film is now over a hundred years old. Méliès made over 500 shorts like this, many of them just as clever and beguiling.

Elsewhere on { feuilleton } • The book covers archive