Suzanne Dean

Since Julian Barnes big-upped Random House creative director Suzanne Dean in his Man Booker speech, a welter of stories on jacket design have popped up in the Sunday supplements. The articles have roughly followed Barnes' line that: "if the physical book is to resist the challenge of e-books, it has to look like something worth buying". This, quite frankly, is something of a hoary old media angle, dredging up an "e" versus "p" conflict which most trade publishers resolved about three years ago (academic publishers about 15 years ago). Besides, "cover" design is just as, and arguably more, crucial