Nine years ago, book designer Charlie Orr came up with a brilliant idea: why not make covers for books that do not (or do not yet) exist. The covers could quicken the composition of the book, thus totally reversing the usual order of things. Or the cover can exist as a piece of conceptual art that has the virtue of giving us a reproducible image instead of existing as merely an abstraction.
Charlie got me to buy into the project in a big way, and he created three book covers for books that I can imagine myself writing.
Here's what Charlie says: "Lehman’s project for the The Hypothetical Library would be an ambitious one, were it to be fulfilled. Vowing to write two volumes a year for the next five years, he promises to lift the veil away from historical events to reveal the hidden facts. Sadly we will never get the actual stories since this library is only hypothetical, but I hope you enjoy the three interpretations of what could have been, what might have been, and What Really Happened."
For Charlie's post of March 8, 2009, including the covers for "What Really Happened at Yalta" and "What really Happened on November 22, 1963," click here
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