In case you wondered …

… Here’s Why John Updike Designed His Own Book Covers. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Updike was deeply invested in the form his words would take. In a speech accepting the National Book Foundation medal, he described the dizzy happiness of seeing his words in print and credited Harry Ford, the designer of his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair, for the “delicious striped jacket and an elegant page format, in the typeface called Janson, that I have stuck with for over forty books since.”