BITTERBLUE, Kristen Cashore

This is a beautiful book with gorgeous design. The jacket cover is fairly generic-YA-fantasy, but hidden inside are some of my favourite bits of design in this whole scrapbook.

THE UNFORGIVEN HARVEST and THE LEAD WAIT, Jo Randerson

This book contains two plays by playwright Jo Randerson. It was published by PlayMarket as part of their ongoing New Zealand Play Series. 

Front cover

NEWTONS SLEEP, Daniel O'Mahony

I’m always saddened by books like this. Regardless of quality of writing, poor design puts me off picking a book up, let alone reading it. Unfortunately for Newtons Sleep, the unappealing exterior design continues inside, with cramped typesetting and a lack of footers and headers making both reading and navigating the book difficult.

The front cover

ATHFIELD ARCHITECTS, Julia Gatley

Books about design bear the greatest expectations when it comes to their own design – it’s hard to sell a reader on your subject if you fail to live up to it yourself (and you are a book). Athfield Architects ably lives up to the challenge. This solid coffee-table book has slick design inside and out, with plenty of well-presented images and attention to detail.