American Girl's Home Book of Work and Play

 This is an interesting book cover. It is a very dark cover. It's by Helen Campbell and it was copyrighted in 1883. I like that they have the word "charades, "wax flowers," "woodcutting" and other words in the ribbon coming out of the pocket watch/circle. It tells you a little about the book. I also like the decorative "A" in American. It doesn't look like a girly book at all, but I think because it was made in the 1880's they didn't have much color or printers that we do today, so black was probably one of their few choices. It looks like a lithograph print. There is some typography in the actually title. Even though they used the same font the words are varied. I like how "Home" is curved and how the "y" in play is holding a bag. The only thing I don't like how the title is positioned/angled is that it doesn't read right to me. When I first read it I thought it said "Home of Book Work and Play" or "Home of Work and Play Book." The title is supposed to be read like this "American Girls' Home Book of Work and Play." One solution to fix this problem is to move "of" to the other side of "Book."  It looks like they used 3 fonts, which is usually the maximum for a book cover or poster design. I am currently designing a book cover and I have to design it all out of type. I am playing with angles right now.