What's your favorite 1980's book cover?

What’s your favorite 80’s book cover?

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I can’t think of one single cover from the 80s that stands out but I would have to say anything by Louise Fili would have been noticed.

I agree. There aren’t many covers that stand out in my mind from the 80s (maybe I was too young to take notice). But looking back, the work of both Louise Fili and Carin Goldberg comes to mind.

Specifically, Fili’s cover design for The Lover by Marguerite Duras, Goldberg’s repackaging of the Kurt Vonnegut paperbacks, and Ulysses by James Joyce.

Jacket design by Louise Fili (Pantheon Books, 1985)




Cover design by Carin Golderg (Dell, 1989)




Cover design by Carin Goldberg (Random House, 1986)

You’re right Karen. Carin Goldberg is an outstanding designer and anything from her is thoughtful and gorgeous. I’ve had the pleasure of working with both Carin and Louise and they are superb designers. In Louise’s case I merely paid her to pick up a jacket design for a paperback edition when I was in-house art director at Mariner Books, so technically I didn’t “work” with her. But she was gracious and professional all the same.

I did get to actually “work” with Carin while at Mariner Books when I commissioned her for a couple of covers. By coincidence, one of my early book covers and hers appeared opposite each other in an edition of Print’s Best Covers from the early ‘90s way before I was in a position to hire her.

It wasn’t a fabulous era for book design, but there are some standouts: I’d have to say the Faber and Faber covers done by Pentagram, particularly William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, can still hold their weight in a bookstore today.