Pedro Lomba diz que a revista do NYT é «talvez a melhor revista do mundo». Cá está: a sempre arreliadora gralha. Quer dizer, a revista do Financial Times é certamente uma das melhores do mundo. Estou de acordo com ele. O FT magazine, que ainda não percebi há quanto tempo existe nem com que periodicidade sai, aparece de vez em quando com o jornal de sábado (não confundir com o suplemento How to spend it). Inclui muitas das secções do magnífico caderno de todos os sábados, Life&Arts, designadamente ótimas recensões, a entrevista ao almoço, a coluna Dear Economist, etc. Mas é em formato revista, é um magazine, como esses que ao domingo os jornais publicam, só que em bom, bem escrito e com boas ideias. «How to judge a book by its cover» é talvez a secção de que eu gosto mais: vejam, por exemplo, este texto sobre esta capa.
The cover of The Year of Magical Thinking is much like Didion's prose: austere, elegant and direct. On an ivory background, seven words appear in slender black capitals, arranged in five lines.
The font, Hoefler's version of Didot, adds to the sense of refinement.
Look again and a few of the letters emerge as blue, not black: the J in Joan, the O in Didion, the H and the N in thinking. The ghostly trace of Didion's beloved husband John Gregory Dunne - whose death and its aftermath are the subject of this memoir - haunts the cover as much as it does the pages that follow.
The designer, Carol Devine Carson, told me that this was her first and only concept («The JOHN letters were grey at first, but Joan wanted a bit of colour»). When I mentioned how miraculous it was that the letters of the name happen to fall in this order, she said: «I just saw the name unveil itself, like someone speaking to me.»
Graphic designers need great visual instincts, but they have to be word people too. Carson's cover is brilliant, yet risky. Many people don't see it.
As Carson said: «There are still a few people in this building who may have just found out the secret message. Subtle, yes. But I think that fits the book, really.»
