Gallery: 30 Years of Iconic Criterion Covers Collected in One Beautiful Book
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*Criterion Designs* ($80) is like a highlight reel of the publisher’s most famous covers. The book includes supplemental art, never-before-seen sketches, and a gallery of every cover since the collection’s first laserdisc in 1984.
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__*The Killing*, Stanley Kubrick, 1956__ Connor Willumsen’s moody pencil drawings are a perfect complement to Kubrick’s racetrack noir.
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__*House*, Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1977__ Sam Smith originally created the main image for Nobuhiko Obayashi's horror film as a short-run silk screen to advertise a midnight showing. These are some of the color variations. It's since become one of the most recognizable Criterion covers ever produced.
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__*Eraserhead*, David Lynch, 1977__ Criterion wanted to find a way to make this Lynch classic fresh again, so it enlisted painter Sam Weber to produce a faithful rendering of the iconic original poster. Somehow Jack Nance looks even more freaked out.
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__*A Hard Day’s Night*, Richard Lester, 1964__ How do you come up with an original design for a group that’s been documented to death? Rodrigo Corral’s design successfully conveys the excitement of the Beatles bursting into the American consciousness.
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__*Rushmore*, Wes Anderson, 1998__ Who better to do cover illustrations for four Wes Anderson Criterion releases than his brother, Eric Chase Anderson.
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__*The Man Who Knew Too Much*, Alfred Hitchcock, 1934__ Illustrator Bill Nelson incorporates the curtain and gun from this movie’s most famous sequence, along with Peter Lorre’s face.
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__*Scanners*, David Cronenberg, 1981__ This is one of my favorite Criterion covers of all time. Connor Willumsen dismantles portraits of the two main characters in the film and recombines them into this grotesque image. It’s also obviously a nod toward the most visually stunning special effect in the movie. Willumsen’s preliminary work can be seen on the right.
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__*Repo Man*, Alex Cox, 1984__ Designer Rob Jones and illustrators Jay Shaw and Tyler Stout team up to produce some inspired punk rock images for Alex Cox’s cult classic film.
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__*World on a Wire*, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1973__ Using typography that’s based on an original theatrical poster, Sam Smith successfully captures the two world’s in Fassbinder’s science fiction classic, *World on a Wire*.
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__*Diabolique*, Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1955__ Using the film’s water motif, David Plunkert also draws a nice parallel between Clouzot and Hitchcock with a Saul Bass-inspired design.
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__*Three Colors* Trilogy, Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993-1994__ Sarah Habibi uses an image from Kieślowski’s *Red* of an electric current running through a telephone as the basis for the Color trilogy cover.
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__*Slacker*, Richard Linklater, 1991__ Austin graphic designer Marc English is responsible for some of my favorite Criterion covers, including those for *Naked* and *Dazed and Confused*. For *Slacker*, he manages to incorporate Austin itself (the film’s setting) into the design.
