55 Covers of Vintage Philosophy, Psychology & Science Books Come to Life in a Short Animation

We all know that toys come alive at night, but what about mid-cen­tu­ry vin­tage paper­back cov­ers, such as you might find in the psy­chol­o­gy or phi­los­o­phy sec­tions of a dim­ly-lit used book­store?

Watch­ing 55 min­i­mal­ist cov­ers from graph­ic and motion design­er Hen­ning M. Led­er­er’s 2200 title-strong col­lec­tion begin to spin, drift, and seethe in the short ani­ma­tion above, I got the impres­sion that they were the ones dic­tat­ing the terms. Or per­haps Led­er­er is the ves­sel through which the inten­tions of the orig­i­nal design­ers—Rudolph de Harak and John + Mary Con­don to name a few—flow. Cov­ers is not an act of reimag­i­na­tion or crowd-pleas­ing irrev­er­ence, but rather one log­i­cal motion, ele­gant­ly applied.

Habitués of used book­stores may find their usu­al brows­ing habits slight­ly altered by the hyp­not­ic results.

Led­er­er makes no bones about judg­ing books by their cov­ers. Strong graph­ics, not con­tent, are the pri­ma­ry deter­min­ing fac­tor as to which titles he acquires. The state­ly geo­met­rics set in motion here are relics from anoth­er age, but the unclut­tered abstracts so favored by 60s era pub­lish­ers are not the only genre to catch his eye.

Shame Drifter, Dusky Desire, and Sin­sur­ance are some of the decid­ed­ly non-min­i­mal­ist titles spic­ing up his collection’s online gallery. After all of those arrows, angles, and spheres, Led­er­er might have craved ani­mat­ing some­thing with a bit more…personality.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Artist Ani­mates Famous Book Cov­ers in an Ele­gant, Under­stat­ed Way

Illus­tra­tions for a Chi­nese Lord of the Rings in a Stun­ning “Glass Paint­ing Style”

Loli­ta Book Cov­ers: 100+ Designs From 37 Coun­tries (Plus Nabokov’s Favorite Design)

83 Years of Great Gats­by Book Cov­er Designs: A Pho­to Gallery

135 Free Phi­los­o­phy eBooks

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy Cours­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Her post-dig­i­tal, pre apoc­a­lyp­tic dark com­e­dy, Fawn­book, is now play­ing in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday