FUEL is about to publish a new book on the seedier side of life. Crime, by author and documentary maker Alix Lambert, is billed as a series of “extraordinary interviews exposing the world of crime – real and imagined”. Lambert talked to a range of authors, detectives, even murderers, in her investigation into the true nature of criminal acts – the book's design references the ways that crime has infiltrated our visual culture...

“We’ve always been interested in the crime novels of Chandler, Hammett and Cain and wanted to design a FUEL incarnation of those works,” says FUEL's Damon Murray. “The elements for the cover [above] were taken from half-remem­bered 50s and 60s crime novels and films and then constructed into a ‘scene’. We bought a replica gun and then photo­graphed several scenarios before settling on ‘the lady in the gutter’.

“We made the cover illustration using a scraperboard to give it a hand-drawn feel and immediacy,” he continues. “Inside, we chose a stock close to the ‘pulp’ of the early crime novels. For typefaces we looked at newspapers from the 1940s and 50s, like the LA Times. [Quotes are set in Geometric; body copy in Baskerville]. Overall, we wanted to make an object that was seductive in a hard-boiled way.”

Crime is published by FUEL; £22.95 or £20 from their website.

A special edition of 100 copies are available in a clamshell box at £150 each.

More information on FUEL can be found at fuel-design.com.