A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer

License: All Rights Reserved.

Don't worry, your eyes are fine.

In Penguin by Design, by Phil Baines, this cover appears in a section called "Covers as Poster: Alan Aldridge, 1965." Aldridge was appointed Fiction Art Director in 1965 and made his mark in a variety of styles. His pschadelic 1967 science fiction series pairs his own trippy illustrations with a wild title effect.

James Pardey has a site devoted to Penguin's Science Fiction books. I can't describe the modification to the titles in this series much better than Pardey himself:

Strung out in shrieking white capitals, they splintered the blackness like a banshee's wail.

This would've been an intruguing cover even with Helvetica untouched, but the effect forces a double-take. And the disorientation lingers. Imagine passing by this in a store.

Credit goes to bookseller Chet Ross for tipping me off on this one. Ross, who was a professor of applied design for 30 years, describes the monster like so:

It's the type of monster image a child would dream of … It reminds of the Memphis Milano movement in applied design (short 80s movement out of Milan, Italy) – based on developing form with no preconceived notion of precedence, and often only a slight regard for function …

License: All Rights Reserved.

License: All Rights Reserved.