THERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU SHOULDN’T MESS WITH…

There's a specific kind of fear that the original Jaws cover produces. The woman at the surface, oblivious. The shark rising from below, enormous beyond comprehension. The vast, indifferent dark between them. It's a cover that doesn't just sell a book. It gets under your skin and for me, it simply stayed there so long, I might as well have had it tattooed. People who encountered it in the 1970s still feel a flicker of unease when they swim in open water. That's not marketing. That's myth-making.

What makes this story irresistible to anyone who cares about book design is that nobody planned it that way. The iconic Jaws cover, the one by illustrator Roger Kastel that became synonymous with the Spielberg film (and shark-related terror in general) was the product of rejection, compromise, executive panic, a $17 necktie offered as a peace offering, and a spectacularly candid admission that the image everyone finally approved "looked like a penis with teeth."