Cover revealed for new James Bond novel,
Solo
As anticipation builds for the publication of the new James Bond novel,
Solo
by William Boyd, Jonathan Cape is delighted to reveal the official
cover today, Thursday 1 August 2013. They have also announced that
British actor
Dominic West will be the narrator of the audiobook edition of Solo.
The
cover, which has been designed by renowned Random House Creative
Director Suzanne Dean, features a stunning retro-inspired die-cut design
including, amongst other things, bullet holes. Dean took her
inspiration
from the 1960s setting of the book and design heroes including Saul
Bass, who was also the inspiration for Random House’s Vintage Classics
Ian Fleming series.
In true
James Bond style, the primary colours and bullet holes of the dust
jacket hint at danger, adventure and espionage – whilst removing the
outer dust jacket playfully reveals a red hardcover printed with bullet
burns and a gecko, a reference to James Bond’s African mission in the
book.
Suzanne Dean, who has been praised by authors including Julian Barnes and whose other work includes the covers of Ian McEwan’s
Atonement and Mark Haddon’s
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, commented on her design:
‘A new
Bond cover needs to do a lot of things at once. It needs to appeal to
literary and commercial audiences, both fans of the original 14 Fleming
books and film fans. It needs to reflect both the content of the
novel and capture the reader’s imagination.
‘William Boyd has chosen to set Solo in
1969, and achieving this period feel was one of my core aims when
designing the cover, whilst also ensuring that the book retained a
fresh and contemporary lay-out. I didn’t want just to depict a
cinematic image, but rather to try and reflect the essence of Ian
Fleming’s original novels as well William Boyd’s own take on
James Bond.’
A version of this cover will also be featured on the audiobook edition of
Solo, read by Dominic West. West is perhaps best-known for his roles in the HBO series
The Wire, BBC Two series The Hour and, most recently, BBC4’s biopic
Burton and Taylor, where he played the title role of Richard
Burton opposite Helena Bonham Carter. Richard Cable, Managing Director,
Vintage Publishing, comments:
‘We are thrilled to have such a distinguished actor as Dominic West reading
Solo. It’s the perfect combination of reader and text. Audio listeners are in for a real treat!’
Suzanne Dean’s full statement on the design of
Solo
‘A new
Bond cover needs to do a lot of things at once. It needs to appeal to
literary and commercial audiences, both fans of the original 14 Fleming
books and film fans. It needs to reflect both the content of the
novel and capture the reader’s imagination.
William Boyd has chosen to set Solo in 1969, and achieving this period feel was one of my
core
aims when designing the cover, whilst also ensuring that the book
retained a fresh and contemporary lay-out. I didn’t want just to depict
a cinematic image, but rather to try and reflect the essence of Ian
Fleming’s
original novels as well William Boyd’s own take on James Bond.
Inspiration
came from my design heroes Paul Rand, Alvin Lustig and Saul Bass, all
of whom were practicing in the sixties and whose style evokes a sense of
the time. Saul Bass, a graphic designer and filmmaker,
was perhaps best known for his design of film posters and
motion-picture title sequences, including Psycho, The Man with the Golden Arm, and North by Northwest.
He once described his main goal for his title sequences as being to
‘try to
reach for a simple, visual phrase that tells you what the picture is
all about and evokes the essence of the story’. Alvin Lustig rejected
the typical cover
design that summarised a book through one general image.
His method was to read a text and get the feel of the author's creative
drive, then to restate it in his own graphic terms.
I used the title of the book – Solo –
as my starting point. In the book, Bond goes on an unauthorised solo
mission, recklessly motivated by revenge. I had always been keen, since
finding
out the title, that there might be a way to use the two o’s within Solo and
link it to the zeros in 007. I used the font Folio, a sans-serif font
designed by Konrad Bauer and Walter Baum in 1957 which became popular
during the sixties. It has a strong
circular ‘o’ in its bold version, which formed an important feature
within the design. In my design, the shadows thrown by the overlaying
letters suggest hidden danger and tension, whilst the final ‘o’ in Solo suggests
a door, or an escape route. The
die cut holes in the dust jacket are an abstraction of bullet holes,
and represent a pivotal part of the novel. The holes on the Solo cover
reveal a flash of the red binding below; when you remove the
dustjacket, the binding playfully reveals a gecko
– a reference to Bond’s African mission in the book – and burn holes
from the bullets, giving drama and an interactive expression to the
whole package.’
Ian
Fleming and writer Jack Whittingham on a script for the very first James Bond screen adventure in
the late 1950s - the trio formulating a generic 007 script titled " James Bond of the Secret Service " , which Fleming would then use as the main basis of his novel ' Thunderball ' ( omitting to mention the input of his two colleagues, and thus leading to a legal action which will ultimately cause his own death ) . 
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