I've talked now about Discworld's original hardbacks, and their original paperbacks. To briefly recap, both used the same two illustrators for the entire run.
Original paperback publisher of the series Corgi originated theuse of Josh Kirby as illustrator and housed his artwork with design choices so solid they stayed in place for two decades. Kirby's work was also used, though a little less consistently successfully, on the hardbacks. When Josh Kirby passed away in 2001 and his mantle was passed on both fronts to Paul Kidy, who was already long associated with Discworld. Around the same time the styling of of hardback and paperbacks became much more unified with each other.
This necessary change in artists happened to come a time when the Discworld publishing rights were also passing to a different company, and at a time when the original covers had finally started to show signs of wanting to evolve the style laid down in 1983. In this way, it suited the new publishers to be able to pick a new illustrator in the form of Kidby. However, it didn't solve the problem of what to do about the existing books that used Kirby's work.
Comissioning new artist Paul Kidby to re-cover all of these would not only be costly, troublesome and somewhat tacky (at least if done too quickly after Josh Kirby's passing), but also unlikely to go down well with fans who had spent so long with the Kidby identity for the series.
So to this day, Josh Kirby's remains in place as the illustration on the standard mass-market paperback editions of the series up to and including Jingo. As for how this work has been handled, I have written on that here.
Alongside the continued publication of editions utilising Kirby and Kidby's original art, though, there have been one or two other sets of the books.
Corgi's photographic paperbacks
Back in 2004 we saw a new set of paperbacks starting to publish, and in a format that was also new to Discworld.
In my above-linked post I’ve talked about the two most common sizes of paperback, which are a-format and b-format, and the shift that happened during the earlyish 2000s towards most paperback publishing being b-format. To quickly recap, commercial fiction had classically ben published in the smaller a-format, also known as mass-market format. B-format is a little bigger generally, and proportionally taller, a more elegant dimension previously reserved for more literary and non-fiction publishing to hold some distance from commercial and genre associations. But in the new millennium paperback publishing started shifting more and more towards b-format everywhere. Initially it would have represented a bit of a market advantage, to literally be bigger than the other books, and also to signal an extra edge - the sense that this fantasy book or children's book or whatever was good enough to 'transcend' its genre and match in with the literary paperbacks. I've also heard it said Waterstones were a major influence in this shift, since they found the larger b-format better for display, and finding uniformity of book size easier for tessellating on tables.
The Kirby/Kidby editions have themselves gradually migrated to the latter format. But before that shift there was a set of editions introduced to be ‘the’ b-format.
As noted b-format is not just a different size but positioned or a different sensibility or market appeal. It’s positioned as the classier, more literary format.
The early 2000s was when geek and fan culture was on its way to exiting its position as a looked-down-upon subculture and becoming mainstream culture. It seemed less ridiculous now than it would have ten years previously that Discworld might wear the clothes of prestige publishing.
By 2004, of course, we were living in the world that Harry Potter made and these covers feel influenced, if not outright prompted, by the fact that the same year Bloomsbury had come up with the ingenious idea of putting the Harry Potter books out in 'adult editions', thus capitalising on a grown-up audience eager to read the books but equally eager to pretend that they were something other than kiddie books.
Some other 'crossover' series followed suit, like His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.
Though the Discworld books weren't children's books, they too came with a stigma - that of not just being fantasy (and for anyone much younger than me who doesn't remember a pre-Game-of-Thrones time this really was a very derided genre) but funny fantasy.
The b-format paperback editions of Discworld that Transworld started putting out in 2004 follow the model set out by the Harry Potter adult editions closely, like those a format of using photographic vignette set against a very dark background, with a restrained typographic approach.
As is standard, no matching edition was produced for The Last Hero, and neither was one produced for the final Discworld book The Shepherd’s Crown. Furthermore no edition of Eric was printed, but it did get a matching cover that adorns the audiobook.
I didn’t like these covers at all at the time but I’ve softened towards them since. They really do make a handsome set and I like the black-and-white-plus gold palette.
However, my original criticism still stands: that these covers are so wrapped up in trying to look respectable they frequently don’t perform the function of ‘book cover’ very well.
One of the basic starting points for designing a functional book cover is to consider the book title. The title will of course be going on the cover (and especially these days is fairly likely to be dominating it) and is at least one of the first things a browser is going to take in. Imagery ought not to redundantly repeat information the title already makes clear. For example, if a book is called The Apple then it is more than a waste of time to simply depict an apple on the front, it makes the book look flat and dull. At the same time, one doesn’t necessarily want to have imagery which is opaque in its connection to the title and creating a confusing overall message. I like to borrow the term from improv of ‘yes and’ to position where imagery should be in relation to the title.
All in all, you want to create a cover which gives enough information clearly to be intriguing, to create clear questions.
Now some of these covers do indeed hit that sweet spot and it’s worth having a closer look at those partly to give praise where it’s due, and also to better understand how the others are failing. So here are some examples of perfectly good or even excellent covers from the set:
Reaper Man's wheat/scythe visual pun is more than clever, it’s something that speaks to the ideas and themes central to the book. Paired with the title, the overall idea that the cover conveys is clear in its subject both literally and emotionally.
Monstrous Regiment has imagery that both links to and adds to the title information. Imagery and title agree that this is a military story. The title adds the note ‘monstrous’ and the imagery additionally tells us about the ‘girl passing for a boy to join up’ idea. The synthesising action of the viewers brain with automatically start playing with how those ideas of 'monstrousness' and gender might connect.
Hogfather again helps us locate the meaning of the title by presenting imagery that clearly evokes Father Christmas but also subverts it, with the pie left out ‘for Santa’ being a pork pie rather than a mince pie, both clarifying and raising interesting questions in good balance.
Mort is also perfectly effective. The death imagery is obvious but it works to confirm a particular interpretation of a punny title. However the imagery is awkwardly crowded by the text, which looks odd on a cover with so much empty space.
Carpe Jugulum implies the specific subject matter of the book, i.e. vampires, and thereby gives us the key we need to unlock the meaning and joke in the pig-Latin title. But it's also a bit lacking in the specifics. The imagery of false fanged teeth is a visual joke of course, but it's not an especially relevent joke with regards to this book which is not after all about elderly vampires or anything. The other problem is that the strict black-white-and-gold colour scheme makes the liquid dripping from the fang a confusing element. Presumbly it’s meant to be blood, but the gold colour leaves it looking like mustard which, like the 'old age vampires' signal is a bit of a blind alley of a hint.
Other covers from this set are less hardworking but still function pretty well. E.g. The Fifth Elephant commits the sin of simply repeating information the title already contains, especially egregious here since the titular elephant is only ever a metaphor in-text (not that this has stopped literally any other cover designer depicting a literal elephant when it comes to this book). But it’s a very handsome image with lovely framing.
But most of the covers feature imagery which is somewhat limp, unimaginative, which either adds nothing to the title or even actively works against it, and even occasionally spoils the answers to central mysteries as with the candle on Feet of Clay.
The Discworld Collectors' Library
In 2013 Gollancz embarked upon the publication of new editions.
Gollancz (an imprint of Hachette) only own the publishing rights for hardback editions, and only for the first 21 books of the Discworld series, but it's possible they had worked out an arrangement in advance with the HB rights owners for the remaining books (Doubleday, an imprint of Penguin Random House), because that publisher did eventually complete the run with matching editions to which we'll come presently.
Standard modern hardback editions of novels generally come with a dust jacket. The dust cover is a commerical tool at least as much as a protective one. It allows detailed art and text to be printed on to package the book whereas the cloth casing on the book itself can only take relatively simple flat shapes in a limited palette.
So a popular approach to producing 'gift' or 'collectors' editions is the delibertae step away from this commercial tool - forgoing the dust cover and embracing the vintage, decorative vibes of a clothbound book. Penguin, for instance, have a well-known and handsome line called 'clothbound classics'.
The printing surface being slightly textured and very ink-absorbent compared to paper also somewhat dictates the kind of design than will look good. The illustration or decorative style suited to this form is bold in line and form, limited in palette and with at least a slight retro influence.
The artist commissioned to work on the clothbound Discworld covers was Joe McLaren. A veteran of book cover design, he had specialised in projects like Faber Poetry collections and Penguin Great Ideas; prestige-projects of design-led publishers with little commercial pressure, his work evoking, often very deliberately, mid-century book design.
Even moreso than with Josh Kirby, then, it was something of a stroke of expert intuition to trust him with a commission that would rely on those sensibilities but also require something funner and lighter than his work had previously shown.
It's as good a time as any to note I adore the covers Gollancz and McLaren produced together absolutely, and I so admire the expertise that brought them together.
Covering funny books is one of the hardest, and most frequently miscalculated, areas of book design that I know of. I think a common failing is in designers or art directors failing to see past the comedy of a book. They have in mind the thin criteria of 'funny artwork' as if all other vibes, associations and emotions stop mattering once comedy is in the mix.
I criticised the minimalist photographic paperback covers for being humourless, it's true, but that feels like the same problem bouncing a different way. The decision makers there were reacting against the idea of 'funniness' rather than having anything specific they wanted to communicate about the books themselves.
But McLaren turned out to be a perfect choice.
His medium might look at a glance like linocut or woodcut printing, but in fact it's the more unusual medium of scraperboard. I think this slight unidentifiability of technique adds something to the work. It's artwork that is obviously and vitally handcrafted, but not quite sliding into neat retro reference points around reduction method printing.
As per his style, each cover employs a very limited palette - usually taking the form of two shades of a single colour (e.g. light and dark blue) with some highlights of either white or cream. Some covers use a fourth colour as well (e.g. the The Light Fantastic cover uses a dark green, a bright green, a cream and a bright mustard yellow). Finally all covers also employ foiling of either gold or silver, which is used generally very sparingly.
The title on each book is given a simple treatment, with small letters in a bespoke font which consists of blocky, very slightly serif upper-case-only letters.
The titles have deliberately quirky placements within the art, further making the covers feel lively and jaunty by having these text-blocks off-centre..
These cover designs match Pratchett's strengths, actually feeling - as the minimalist paperbacks didn't - as if these are covers which appreciate and take seriously Pratchett's ability to engage new potential readers with an honest presentation of his ideas and tone rather than just some kind of legacy brand.
There are lots of ways to be a great writer, but Pratchett happens to be one whose strengths speak well to modern sensibilities in cover design. With the growth of internet selling the need has arisen for covers to read very clearly and persuasively even when seen at thumbnail size. It rather helps when a book is founded on a great, clear, intriguing hook, or when it has a great title. Discworld abounds with both.
I am still waiting for the editions that capitalise on the latter strength, centring beautiful typography to bring out these clever, funny, poetic titles.
But until these covers, it did not feel as if Pratchett's hooks had been much exploited either, or (in the case of the minimalist covers) trusted.
But ideas like 'Death takes an apprentice', 'Macbeth told from the witches' point of view', 'the Grim Reaper picks up Santa's duties' require no prior investment in Discworld to be hooked by.
Whereas the original Kirby covers obscured their central ideas (by modern design standards) with baroque detail, and the photographic minimalist covers felt like they had no real engagement with what made the book at hand worth reading, these covers clear the weeds from around those compelling images without losing touch with the tonal, emotional context that they exist within.
A good half of the covers above contrive to be my favourite all at once (The Lights Fantastic, Equal Rites, Mort, Guards! Guards!, Eric, Moving Pictures, Reaper Man, Men at Arms, Soul Music, Feet of Clay and Hogfather). Then there are ones which look good as digital thumbnails but look really gorgeous in real life, notably Lords and Ladies whose soft grey colour scheme paired with gold foiling is really magical.
As I mentioned, Gollancz only have the right to publish the Discworld books up to Jingo. However evidently the owners of the hardback rights to the rest of the series, Doubleday, felt it was worth their while to continue the editions, and Gollancz felt it was worth their while to allow them to.
So Doubleday picked up the series from The Last Continent onwards.
The half of the Discworld books that Doubleday own the rights to also happens to be the less straightforward half of the set to approach.
This groups contains six novels for adolescent readers, five of which form the Tiffany Aching series. As paperbacks these have their own styling separate from the main Discworld style and of course live over in the '9-12' section of the bookshop rather than the 'SF and Fantasy' section with the others. Doubleday did though choose to include these in this edition run, matching the wider look but also giving these books thei own specific series markers.
In fact, though it's outside the remit to include here Doubleday have chosen to extend this look across its non-Discworld Pratchett publishing, and you can find the Bromeliad trilogy, Nation and Dodger in this styling too. I should also note that Gollancz published non-Discworld, not-only-Pratchett book Good Omens in this style too.
Apart from the issue of whether and how differently to treat the adolescent fiction that crops up in this half of Discworld publishing, the other question that arises is that of The Last Hero. That volume is technically the 27th Discworth outing but is generally left out of new editions because it is by nature quite tied to a single form - i.e. it's an illustrated novella featuring Paul Kidby's work throughout and so it doesn't make a lot of sense to move away from a Paul Kidby cover. There is no Joe McLaren edition of The Last Hero, then.
(Interestingly Eric has a similar background. It too started life as an illustrated novella, in its case featuring the work of Josh Kirby throughout. However, this origin is barely remembered as it is generally sold as just another Discworld novel (if an unusually short one) with no illustrations.. It does get a McLaren edition)
Thus, below is the Doubleday half of the Discworld books in these editions:
There are a couple amongst these which I would count amongst the strongest of the whole Collectors Library run, namely The Truth, Thud! and Unseen Academicals. I also include Going Postal as a favourite, especially for its really gorgeous palette, but I must admit the slightly uncentred arrangement of the subject bothers me.
A further couple might not be personal favourites but are, I think consistent with the very high quality of the first half - The Fifth Elephant, Thief of Time and The Last Continent whose inclusion of Australian Aboriginal influences is a nice touch.
However, across the Doubleday half of the series unfortunately I find the standard of the covers to be not as high as those of Gollancz.
Most importantly I think they are let down by a few breaks in the previously locked style-guides:
To start with the breaks which are the smallest and most forgivable, on Thud! and Snuff the titles' letters are italicised while no other titles are. On The Truth the title is incorporated into the perspective of the image which works very well for the cover but is a slightly bothersome break from the wider pattern. Other covers have title treatments which seem to break tacit rules about title handling or maybe it's less a matter of rules and more that they simply look less good and less confident than was consistently true of the Gollancz covers. I'm not sure, for instance, why Night Watch has the words of its title arranged like that.
Getting into bigger breaks with the 'rules' which actually spoil the overall look of both cover and series, most inexplicably, there is one cover which seems to forget what font and styling to use for the title - Making Money, alone amongst the series, has a title treatment that uses upper and lower case letters.
Meanwhile on Snuff the byline lockup has been shoved to one side where on all covers in has a central placing.
Talking of the byline lockup, whereas on all the Gollancz covers it was exactly the same - both names on a single line, placed in the same size and place - the Doubleday covers start swapping in a version on two lines instead of the previously standard one.
It's fine for the Tiffany Aching books. It makes sense for this sub-series to have its own particular variation on the wider style-guide. But then it also pops up on Making Money and Raising Steam and feels less like a deliberate choice and more like the artwork hasn't been planned well enough to accomodate the standard element.
Coming to the artwork itself in several cases it feels less consistently impressive than that on the Gollancz covers. As mentioned, I find a few of the Doubleday covers every bit as excellent as the standard set by Gollancz, but there are other covers in this Doubleday set which feel much sketchier and less like fully-worked-through layouts optimised for the context.
There is less variety of composition. It makes sense and works for the Tiffany Aching books to have matching layouts, but then Making Money also uses the same composition to them. Cape Jugulum, Night Watch and Snuff all have small foreground figures with their back to the viewer, facing into a scene.
With regards to Snuff, that figure also feels particularly disconnected from the wider design, as if it has been added latterly. The fact that this figure's placement forces the byline lockup to be moved also makes me wonder if the inclusion of the character really was a last-minute dictate.
Meanwhile the technique on Night Watch feels almost more like a rough procreate sketch for a final piece than a full realised piece of McLaren artwork itself, the sketchy background details of the Tower of Art and the rising steam/smoke are stylistically inconsistent with the rest of the series. Making Monkey too has a more basic look, and Monstrous Regiment and Snuff which do have fine work on the subjects leave a lot of 'undeveloped' areas compared to any previous covers. It's not necessary or desirable to fill every part of the cover area with detail, of course, but if one looks at a cover like Monstrous Regiment alongside a compositionally comparible one from the Gollancz run, such as Reaper Man, I think it's noticeable that the artwork for the later book is just less perfectly composed to fill the space than the earlier one.
I cannot attribute these perceived shifts in consistent quality to Joe McLaren himself. Apart from anything else he worked during the same period on Discworld illustrations outside of the book covers and there, produced only the highest standard of work.
Moving on from these notes of slight disappointment about the Doubleday run, I think it's worth pulling out the Tiffany Aching books to view as their own series.
Some of the issues I noted feel more like a deliberate and successful choice across these covers as the existing styling is adjusted to suit a lighter, looser, more youthful, more character-focused sensibility.
I like the composition and how it allows for such strong consistency as well as unique character and details for each book. It's subtle but impressive how Tiffany grows up a little in each portrait without breaking the continuity of design or character.
The border on the first book is fabulous, and the cover of A Hat Full of Sky is extremely pretty, and particularly impressive in how McLaren manages to capture a sense of transparency using only the flat colours of a very limited palette (he did similarly impressive work with shadows on Thud!).
Overall, I think these Joe McLaren covers are the best set Discworld has ever had.
The lastest paperbacks
I talked about the fact that a major reason the Discworld books have had so few editions is because of the trouble and expense involved in reissuing 40+ books at once.
The lastest editions employ one technique that presumably mitigrates both this expense and, in theory, some of the risk of new covers: they employ existing illustration alongside new work.
Leo Nickolls was comissioned across the series to produce new work, but work which would incorrporate existing examples of Paul Kidby's Discworld character art. In theory, a smart way to use a great resource to fresh effect.
Rather than in original publication order, I'm going to show this set grouped into their sub-series.
This is the order these editions published in, grouped according to strand. The set we've just discussed, the McLaren-illustrated 'Collectors Library' ones, actually also did that. They also were the first editions to have any reference on their jackets to a Discworld book belonging to any particular strand - in that case additional text on the spine to denote a book as belonging to 'Discworld: the City Watch Collection' or 'Death Collection' etc.
But beyond that those editions didn't put much emphasis on visually creating the sense of distinct sub-series within the books. Only the Tiffany Aching books are given their own matching sub-styling to group them.
But these steps towards an increased emphasis on the Discworld books as being made up of various sets and series rather than one single continues melange has been taken further in the latest editions, which definitely use design choices to try and divide the books into sets:
I would say presented altogether, there's an undeniable strength in these covers. En masse they give the impression of richness and vibrancy. Once you look at all closer, I think the picture becomes far more mixed.
First up, the Witches and Wizards books:
Things don't start out well, with these sets demonstrating the most consistent problem with these covers across the board, here at it's worst: i.e. a lack of clarity and readability.
The imagery suffers consistently; it's not always clear what's happening in the illustrations at all, much less glean many extra useful hints about the book's content from it. Worse, the text is also generally somewhat obscured, and sometimes its readability is really obliterated as on the covers of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic. The choice to give each sub-series its own distinct colour identity has manifested as individual covers which struggle for the contrast and variation in themselves needed to make a cover clear or interesting.
If I strip out the colour we can see how little contrast or clarity there is, and how these covers tend to become universally mid-grey rectangles:
And yet this over-enthusiasm on the palette front is somehow also fairly weak in its purpose of strongly unifying each sub-series, and defining them against the others. For instance, Sourcery and The Last Continent are obviously both dominated by red but the big bright blue area of the latter makes it feel stylistically distinct from the former. The difference in styling outside the colours are just too weak to create strong identity within covers, or within sets. For instance the lettering approach of the Witches books is different to that of the Wizards books, but the differences are too fiddling to really register enough to create a distinct impression. Both lettering styles are of exactly the same weight and size, and both are serif letters with a 3D effect.
Next come the Death books:
These suffer from all the above-described problems, more frustratingly than ever. The unifying layout is clever, using a shape that is both that of Death's head and shoulders and that of an hourglass at once. But it fits badly into the uncompromising layout that all these books share with the large byline at the top and title typography in the middle. Death's face is consistently obliterated by the byline type, and the space in the bottom 'bulb' of the hourglass shape is so small that the secondary illustration placed there disappears into confusion.
Again, a lot of these problems are caused or at least exacerpated by the lack of tonal variety. Death's face would work better set behind the byline if the face was really shadowed and dark and the text really bright. But these covers are lacking in real darks or real lights and where they are there thery're not really distributed very artfully to clarify and steer the eye.
Fortunely there was a sharp improvement in the next batch.
The next 'set' put out were the more standalone novels, and one decision I would like to immediately praise is that the emphasis on dividing the Discworld books into sub-series isn't overdone. In the Collectors' Library every Discworld book was assigned to a theoretical series, and some felt quite crowbarred. It makes sense to flag with text and design choices to new readers that these books sall into series sets, where they actually do. But I don't see that anything is to be gained in pretending that this means all Discworld books belong to some particular strand.
Perhaps because they're freed from the palette-led demands of the Witches, Wizards and Death books, these more standalone novels are much more attractive and successful in communicating much of anything about the books. Moving Pictures is very clear in its inclusion of the themes of film and Lovecraftian horror. Monstrous Regiment is very clear of its evocation of both of the two themes it engages with - the battlefield and the feminine.
As well as the better use of colour in this collection, the other major advance is the typography. I've talked about how I'd love to see really typography-led covers for Discworld and here we have something approaching that. I criticised the Witches, Wizards and Death books for having type that looked more or less the same in style across all three series. But in this set we suddenly see great boldness and variety in the typography, helping each book to feel truly distinct and clear in its tone and subject.
Sometimes the imagery can be a bit one-note, adding nothing much to the title just like those minimalist photographic covers we discusssed at the top. The Moist Von Lipwig books - Going Postal, Making Money, Raising Steam - are pretty flat in their imagery, especially consideing how explicitly those titles name their subject matter. But they are still markedly more attractive than the previous books in this run.
Talking of the Lipwig books, those are included here as part of the 'standalones' collection though they are of course their own series. This feels sensible to me. The trilogy is not a collection in the way the Death books are, either in number or scope. Here they are visually linked as a series with a matching type treatment across them but each have contrasting instead of matching colours. Despite their slightly uninspired imagery, this is a far more successful example of a set getting a visual identity than anything else we've seen from this run.
Next came the Watch books:
These represent a marked improvement in the approach to series styling. The reliance on palette to unify has been dropped. The layout choices that unify the series are much more clear than on the Witches, Wizards or Death books. The layout pattern is also simpler which is good because the clever ideas of the previous sets, like the hourglass shape, got toally lost in the execution there and just created an overcrowded mess. Here the approach is simply to place a different character who is particularly prominent in that book, in the foreground and in the background a piece of imagery that hints at the particular setting or concerns of the book.
The title treatment is bold and evocative of the crime genre.
These are good enough I can get into more fiddling - but not altogether petty - criticisms. The Feet of Clay cover has the stances of Cheery in the foreground the golem in the background match in a way which inadvertently implies a connection. One of them should have been flipped. Angua on The Fifth Elephant disappears into the background elephant shape in tone and colour. On Snuff the title and foreground goblin feel set weirdly and pointlessly low.
The final set in the run was the Tiffany Aching books:
These are fine. The best of this set - The Wee Free Men and A Hat Full of Sky - are about as good as any other older-middle-grade/younger-YA cover you'll see. The illustration is good but the compositing has aggravating touches that feel like throwbacks to late 90s covers where digital composition could still look a bit awkward and cut-and-paste. The Wee Free Men has a black shape (the silhouette of a Nac Mac Feegle being carried by a bird) which doesn't need to be there and interferes with the title. The Shepherd's Crown has a face photoshopped into the sky in a way that evokes janky 90s digital cover work. A Hat Full of Sky is nicely composed but doesn't tell us much.
Like the earlier series in this run there's a use of a consistent colour palette to group the books, and it's certainly deployed more gracefully here than there. But annoyingly it's not fully consistent. The yellow-orange type on the blue green page holds for three books but varies the arrangement for I Shall Wear Midnight and the orange drops off enitely for Wintersmith.
All in all this set didn't end up being nearly as bad across the board as I feared when those first Witches, Wizards and Death books were revealed. There's such a sharp improvement within the 'standalone' set I'd count a couple of those as amongst the best covers individual titles have had - though it should be remembered that these books have not had very many covers each. This Moving Pictures is second only to the Collectors Library version which to be fair is one of McLaren's very best, and I think I actually like this Monstrous Regiment more than I like the Collectors Library one.
And that covers all the UK editions there have been of Discworld - for now.
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