I never tire of reading Franz Kafka’s work. And now, I’ll never tire of seeing his work, owing to Ross Benjamin’s new translation of Diaries, the latest in a series designed by Peter Mendelsund. With a slight tip of the hat to Raul Rand, these early 21st-century designs explode with a Midcentury Modern aesthetic. They also come at a time when any trip to the bookstore (Rizzoli is in my hood) brings a melange of monotonous and formulaic type and image designs.
Below, Mendelsund tells us more about this metamorphosis.
My sundry copies of Kafka over the years had various cover designs by different artists. What was the inspiration for developing a unified stylistic scheme? And is your format the current standard?
Kafka has been packaged in any number of ways down the years. Generally speaking, other designs I’ve seen tend to fall back on particular well-worn Kafka visual tropes, specially: images of a lone man pitted against a faceless bureaucracy, or ground under the wheel of some other fascist/totalitarian entity. Or just nods towards generic, early 20th-century expressionism. It’s always the symbology of contemporary anxiety—nefarious, crooked or otherwise askew, frightening, disorienting. These designs reflect particular readings of Kafka’s work.
What was your influence for this decidedly unique approach?
Simply put, the readings of Kafka I mentioned above are not … wrong … they just don’t capture the whole picture. They ignore the humor and humanism in Kafka’s work. I never read Kafka’s books and imagine, say, a dark palette. I always think of bright color. His books can be bleak and, sure, frightening. But his style is so surreal, whimsical, gnomic and often outright funny (I always think about how, in The Trial—one of his most obvious apologues for the powerlessness of 20th-century man in the face of new systems of control and governance—there is a scene in which the protagonist meets a woman, Leni, who has webbed hands. “What a delightful paw!” he says of her.) That is to say, I didn’t want Kafka to seem overly bleak or off-putting to potential readers. Especially first-time readers. Incidentally, there is an account of Kafka giving a reading of his work to his friends, and being so doubled over with laughter at his own words he could barely go on. So, color. Whimsy. And designs that are highly stylized, to match his allegorical preoccupations.
The eyes are the common (or iconic) visual element. What made you seize on them?
I’ve always loved books that look back at you (don’t all books look back at you one way or another?). The eyes all began with The Trial, and the image that came to me of a wall of scrutiny. A jury, or panel or synod. That cover came first. The rest followed pretty naturally from there.
It’s funny, those specific eyes of mine (there is a long history of stylized eyes, from the hieratic ancient Egyptian eyes to Paul Rand’s) have now become a commonly used design element. I have no understanding as to why. But I see these eyes all the time now. I saw them in a poster in the background of a new movie, I saw them advertised as a “Bauhaus” poster on Instagram, but especially in contemporary book design: I saw two new novels in the window of McNally Jackson this month that use them on the cover. Not just any eyes, but the exact proportions of mine, as if traced. It’s strange. My eyes served a very particular function. I don’t quite understand how they’ve become so modular. Except that editors do tend to ask designers to make something that resembles something else that worked in the marketplace.
Typographically, the informal script ties the covers together.
The script is a typeface based on Kafka’s handwriting, designed by the brilliant Julia Bausenhardt. Seemed the most apt face to use.
Did you plan out the series all at once, or did you allow each added title to organically come together?
The editor-in-chief at Pantheon at the time (the late, great Dan Frank) and one of the world’s foremost editors and translators of the time (the late, great Carol Janeway) approached me independently (but simultaneously) about taking this on. Redesigning all of Kafka. It was my second day as art director of Pantheon books. Dan and I initially conceived of these as hardcovers, though it ended up being too expensive a proposition, so they ended up as paperbacks. Which is sad, because my initial conception of the books was to have them be printed in two different heights, alternating, so when lined up on a shelf they would be crenellated, like a castle; like Kafka’s Castle. A place that one approaches, but never truly arrives at. When I used to design, I always tried to find ways to justify the use of any medium or surface I had to design to. I never really loved just slapping a design on a surface. So, the idea of making something metaphoric out of this collection of objects (books) felt important. Alas.
Are there more to come?
I’m not sure! I kind of doubt it. At least until new translations pop up.
When I look at them together, I have the desire to read Kafka all over again. Was this the intent? Or just a natural consequence of doing such a successful “brand”?
This was most definitely the intent! I wanted to say to readers: “Read Kafka, re-read Kafka, re-examine Kafka; but have fun.” I don’t think it hurts though that the designs speak so well to one another.
