Caustic Cover Critic interviews Michael Salu. Salu just did the Vintage Classics’ Italo Calvino and Raymond Carver reissues. His blog here.

In Calvino and Carver, he uses words as his images, as his play. He seems sly and knowing. Much of the body finds its sensibilities on the cover. An author wants that, the way they want an interviewer to have read the actual book. To have questions that extend, echo, fold. Form=Function. Since I worked recently with students to design a lit mag cover, this issue and more basic ideas of unity and other design elements have snagged my attention. Most useful is to view and discuss hundreds of covers. To mine designer heads. To look and listen.

Be sure to scroll down the interview to see some amazing Vonnegut, Dostoevsky covers (among others). Oh hell, I must throw in two more. They kept catching me: