HarperCollins Publishers Award for Best Cover 2018
Winner
Designer: Aaron Beehre
Title: New China Eyewitness: Roger Duff, Rewi Alley and the art of museum diplomacy
Publisher: Canterbury University Press
Format: 240 x 173mm, 176pp. Hardback with jacket including a diary section printed on a tinted uncoated stock set in both English and Chinese and illustrated with photos from Duff’s original diary. The warm uncoated reproduction of the type and photographs speaks to the nostalgia of the publication. The plate section, illustrating objects collected by Roger Duff, is presented on clean white coated paper and sits in contrast to the rawness of the diary entries. The cover is folded in half and represents the bilingual nature of the book. The use of red overlay, gold foiling and gloss lamination against the matt laminated black and white photography alludes to the meeting of two worlds evidenced in Duff’s diary.
Typography: Goudy, Anaheim Gothic, Courier, Songti, SimSun, SimHei. The diaries are set in courier (English) and STKaiti (Chinese).
Judges’ Comments The cover, with its sumptuous red and gold, is ravishing. When you see it, it stands out and calls to you to pick it up.