, as our publisher first described to me, is an artful essay collection exploring the nature of artificial intelligence and our complicity with technological capitalism. Through a blend of memoir and cultural criticism, the author Vauhini Vara uses the tools of Big Tech (namely ChatGPT) to critique Big Tech itself, while revealing her own deeply personal digital footprints. As the art director of Pantheon Books, I see my job as a collaboration, commissioning designers and illustrators whose unique perspectives befit each title.
I knew this book would demand an unconventional approach. In an early email, Vauhini shared her reluctance about going in an overly “internetty” direction. It feels to me like there’s a thing in the book zeitgeist where, when a book is meant to be about the internet, the cover itself takes on a kind of internetty aesthetic, with Apple-like sans-serif typeface, computer-y iconography, Instagram-friendly imagery, and so on.
And because the book is in part a critique of the totalizing aesthetic of Big Tech, I’d be really interested in any cover ideas that very consciously push back against that aesthetic. – * I was excited to take a more subversive approach, and thought of Pablo Delcan, an artist whose recent work approaches AI in a subversive way. In his project, , Pablo invites visitors to submit text prompts that he then illustrates using a brush and black ink on paper—what he describes as the “first non-A.
I. generative art model.” In a.