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Two book covers by Jack Kerouac featuring soft, blurred gradients of colour on a white background. The first is purple and pink for “The Dharma Bums”, and the second is green and teal for “Lonesome Traveler”.

Torsten Lindsø Andersen's redesign of Jack Kerouac's back catalogue

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Date
20 August 2014

Google Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and almost every book cover design that appears either depicts someone hitchhiking or it has the aesthetic of a grotty travel diary of someone who’s been “finding themselves” along a motorway for a month or two too long. Kerouac’s novels don’t even need covers, right? They’re stand-alone pieces of literary genius. Big applause is needed then for Copenhagen designer Torsten Lindsø Andersen who has taken the rulebook of second-rate Kerouac book design and thrown it out the train window on to the track where it belongs. These ambient, sterile designs he’s proposed for the author’s back catalogue are the perfect fit to the words within: weird, unpredictable, drunk and unique.

A book cover for “Lonesome Traveler” by Jack Kerouac. A soft, blurred gradient of bright green and turquoise glows against a white background. The Penguin logo appears in the bottom right corner.
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Torsten Lindsø Andersen: Jack Kerouac book covers

A book cover for “The Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac. A soft, blurred gradient of pink and purple glows against a white background.
Above

Torsten Lindsø Andersen: Jack Kerouac book covers

The back cover of a book featuring a summary of Jack Kerouac’s “Lonesome Traveler”. The text is set in a bold, all-caps sans-serif typeface against a plain white background.
Above

Torsten Lindsø Andersen: Jack Kerouac book covers

A book cover for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road”. A soft, blurred gradient of orange, purple and green glows against a white background. The Penguin logo appears in the bottom right corner.
Above

Torsten Lindsø Andersen: Jack Kerouac book covers

An open book showing two pages of printed text. The left page features the headings “Lonesome Traveller” and “Slobs Of The Kitchen Sea”.
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Torsten Lindsø Andersen: Jack Kerouac book covers

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About the Author

Liv Siddall

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Liv joined It’s Nice That as an intern in 2011 and worked across online, print and events, and was latterly Features Editor before leaving in May 2015.

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