The Books That Can Be Judged by Their Covers

Whenever anyone drafts a hit list of familiar things that are likely to be rendered obsolete by digital technology, the printed book is almost always near the top.

And why not? Who can justify wasting paper to print bulky books whose pages are prone to staining or tearing, when the digital and electronic versions are so much more convenient to use and store? But even though we don’t need printed books as much as we once did, we can always be persuaded to want them, if they are cleverly designed.

If a designer produces a printed book that is compelling, possibly because it is luscious to look at, or presents its contents in an unusually ingenious or lucid way, we will still long to read it. Here are four recently published books on art and design whose designers have done just that.

Whenever Paul Neale and his colleagues at the British design group Graphic Thought Facility mentioned that they were designing a book about the work of their French counterparts, Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak of  (Paris), the response was the same. “Everyone said: ‘Why aren’t they doing it themselves?”’ Mr. Neale recalled. “Designing a book for other graphic designers is always tricky. We wanted to avoid producing a pastiche of ’s work or a neutral response. Our guiding principle was to make their work look great and as digestible as possible.”

Written by the British design historian Emily King, “M to M of  (Paris)” is organized around the particular alphabet, a defining theme of ’s output, though this alphabet runs from “Mi” for Michael, to “Ma” for Mathias. The book begins with Mr. Amzalag’s interview with Ms. King on page 311, and ends with Mr. Augustyniak’s on page 310. Placed in alphabetical order between them are visual depictions of each design project and interviews with ’s collaborators, with page 1 falling near the middle.

When Valeria Napoleone decided to make a book of the recipes she had learned from her mother and grandmother as a child in Lombardy, northern Italy, she determined to combine her favorite family dishes with another love, contemporary art. Now based in London, Ms. Napoleone has an extensive collection of work by women artists and chose to illustrate her book with relevant works by them, including Tomma Abts, Spartacus Chetwynd, Aleksandra Mir and Francis Upritchard.

“The book has over 180 recipes and over 150 images, but I didn’t want the connection between them to be literal,” Ms. Napoleone said. “I wanted the designers to act as curators by orchestrating the location and lay-out of each image in a fresh and unexpected way. When I looked into different designers, I felt that Ab?ke really got the book.”

Ab?ke, which is also based in London, wanted the book to reflect Ms. Napoleone’s character and the personal nature of the project, and devised bespoke typefaces for the cover and inside pages. The former is inspired by the font used in the video game Pac-Man, and the latter based on the elegant typography designed by Giambattista Bodoni in northern Italy at the turn of the 19th century. The cover is bound in cloth like old-fashioned cookery books (though this cloth, called “Pepperoni,” shimmers) and the paper is one that will age beautifully, especially if splattered with food.