Hot off the Presses: Our Collab with Riverhead Books Is Here!

Big Magic by Riverhead Design Labs Author: Elizabeth Gilbert 10"x8" ($24) | 14"x11" ($60) | 20"x16" ($240) | 30"x24" ($1200)

The Mothers by Riverhead Design Labs Author: Brit Bennett 10"x8" ($24) | 14"x11" ($60) | 20"x16" ($240) | 30"x24" ($1200)

"Don't judge a book by its cover” is a well-worn adage, and it’s worn as well as it is for good reason: There's no shortage of eye-catching, delectably designed book covers out there. Go forth and judge. We all do it, and in doing so we’re giving the hard-working artists and designers who have created them their due. Today’s editions transform the striking covers that Riverhead Design Labs created for three much-lauded titles into gorgeous prints. Each print is a work of art in its own right, as well as an homage to the books themselves and the beloved authors who wrote them: Brit Bennett’s The Mothers, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic and Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings.

We're a book and design-loving group here at 20x200, so it's super exciting to get to collaborate with Riverhead Books and the creative geniuses of their Design Labs group. Apart from publishing incredible literature, Riverhead Books has a well-established reputation for creating beautiful, thoughtfully designed covers.

Keen-eyed collectors will spot the respective book title and author name in the bottom right hand corner of each print. That information is a key component of these editions, as it interacts with and anchors the covers themselves. It was important to us (and the Riverhead Design Labs team) to incorporate the titles and authors as elements in the final piece. In the instance of Big Magic, the title lettering was actually built by hand and made a focal point of the creative process—the design team cut each letter from wood, mounted them on a backdrop, and pelted them with various vividly-hued Holi powders, while photographer Henry Hargreaves captured the explosive, colorful scene. As Riverhead Design Labs director Helen Yentus told us, this turned out to be "the perfect metaphor to communicate what creativity feels like," a subject central to Gilbert's book.

There's a whole raft of associations with the storylines to be found in each of these prints, of course, but the creative forces behind the texts that brought about these book covers are hugely inspiring in their own right. The women who wrote these novels are word-wielding heroes whose talent and tenacity (and frankly, existence) is excellent fodder for a motivational morning. Having one of these prints on your wall not only keeps these author’s stories alive in your everyday, it keeps the inspiration they evoke within easy reach. Hanging in an entryway, a living room, or an office, they're a powerful reminder of the books that inspired them, and the meaning readers have found in those texts. With these Riverhead Design Labs prints, we hope to create a souvenir of sorts for the stories themselves, something to honor them and an essential, inspiring element of our collectors’ everyday.

With art for everyone,
Jen Bekman + Team 20x200