About the Book Design

Harvard University Press is pleased to present the winning design for the Murty Classical Library of India (MCLI), concluding a three-month contest that attracted more than 160 entries from India, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Northwest-U.S.–based independent designer Andrea Stranger will receive $10,000 as well as jacket credit on all books in the series.

The Winning Submission

Sample book jacket treatment

The new series logo and book jackets as envisioned by winning designer Andrea Stranger. (Click image to launch slideshow.)

“Gravity, History, and Sense of Seriousness”

Stranger’s text-driven design employs colors, patterns, and graphic devices drawn from Indian architecture and textiles. Book designer Peter Mendelsund, a member of the judging panel, said Stranger’s design was “a classic typographical approach that could stand the test of time.”

Stranger, who was alerted to the contest by the owners of San Francisco’s Alexander Book Company, where she worked while attending the Academy of Art University, said she sought inspiration in Indian visual art for a type-driven design that was “gorgeous” but at the same time conveyed the “gravity, history, and sense of seriousness” of the works in the MCLI.

“A Repository of Extended Memory”

A small, stylized elephant will serve as the series logo and mark the spines of the book. Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design & Planning and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning & Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, said that he was struck by the logo’s “elegance and sense of the ancient.” “The abstraction of the elephant symbolizes a repository of extended memory, a fitting and timeless symbol for the series,” Mehrotra said.

“These books are inspired by the long history of facing-page translations in the West. Yet this new series also seeks to be innovative and be true to its South Asian context. Andrea Stranger’s winning entry combines elegant typography and restrained Indian design elements with a subtle touch of modern whimsy. It is a design that is aware of its past, is thoroughly rooted in the twenty-first century, and will hopefully be relevant to young generations of readers in India and elsewhere who will encounter the wealth of Indian Classics for the first time in the coming years.”—Rohan Murty

Sheldon Pollock, General Editor of the MCLI and Arvind Raghunathan Professor of South Asian Studies, Columbia University, noted that the design met a challenge presented by the scope of the library. Stated Pollock: “The MCLI will publish the greatest works of literature composed in South Asia prior to 1800 from across the entire spectrum of languages, religions, and communities. Stranger’s entry captures at once the beauty of the literature we want to share, its classicity and dignity, its pluralism, but also something of its difference, or what makes it unique in world letters.”

Rohan Narayana Murty, whose endowment gift established the MCLI, said that Stranger’s design succeeds in furthering the goals of the library: “It is a design that is aware of its past, is thoroughly rooted in the twenty-first century, and will hopefully be relevant to young generations of readers in India and elsewhere who will encounter the wealth of Indian Classics for the first time in the coming years.”

You can read more about Andrea Stranger’s creative process and see some images that inspired her final design at the Harvard University Press Blog.

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