Random House redesigns Chatwin’s back catalogue

Publisher Random House has redesigned travel writer Bruce Chatwin’s backlist, with a striking series of coloured, vertically striped cover graphics.

Designer Michael Salu, who is part of Random House’s CCV design team, came up with the concept for the cover of Chatwin’s In Patagonia. The vivid design is a reference to the patterns used on fabric in Chile and southern Argentina.

‘The patterns are vibrant, colourful and employ simple geometry. I wanted to evoke the diversity of the Argentinian landscape by grouping horizontal coloured lines in a variety of shapes and sizes,’ he explains.

‘Then I applied the concept to the other Chatwin titles, evoking different features within each book. The black-and-white bars across The Viceroy of Ouidah represent the slave trade, while the colourful stripes on Utz recall a Meissen harlequin – a reference to the protagonist, who is a devoted collector of Meissen porcelain,’ he says.

CCV is one of two divisions of Random House in the UK, which, along with CHA, has its own stable of imprints. The New Vintage Classics imprint specialises in publishing classic and out-of-copyright works.

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