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ABCD X

Founded by designers Jon Gray and Jamie Keenan, the Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD) held its first book cover design competition in 2014. To celebrate its tenth awards ceremony this year (where does the time go?), the Academy has decided to allow regular folks to vote for a ‘Winner of All Winners’ from the last nine years – ABCD X.

Committed to making the awards to be as inclusive as possible, ABCD includes categories that frequently get overlooked by other competitions, and the work itself is judged by book cover designers themselves, so there is a diverse selection of winning cover to choose from including children’s books, science fiction and fantasy, series design and non-fiction.

Entries to this year’s regular competition, ABCD’23, are also now open.

The winners of both ABCD X and ABCD’23 with be announced at an awards ceremony on the 23 March.

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ABCD Award Winners 2019

The winners of the 2019 Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD) Awards were announced earlier this month and, as in previous years, the winners are an eclectic mix of styles. It is always interesting to see the covers that the designers themselves vote for. Only a couple of the winning designs have been featured here before. 

Young Adult


Run, Riot by Nikesh Shukla; design by Michelle Brackenborough (Hodder Children’s Books / June 2018)

Sci-fi/Fantasy


Folk by Zoe Gilbert; design by David Mann (Bloomsbury / July 2018)

Non-fiction


Money by Laura Whateley; design by Jack Smyth (Fourth Estate / October 2018)

Series Design

Miriam Toews; design Jonathan Pelham (Faber & Faber / September 2018)

Classics/Reissue


Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier; design by Hannah Wood; embroidery by Hand & Lock (Virago / February 2018)

Children’s 0-5


Helping Hen by Claudia Ripol and Yeonju Yang; design and illustration by Claudia Ripol and Yeonju Yang (Owl and Dog  Books / November 2018)

Children’s 6-12


The Boy at the Back of the Class by Onjali Q. Rauf; design by Thy Bui; illustration by Pippa Curnick  (Orion Children’s Books / July 2018)

Literary Fiction


Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata; design by Luke Bird (Portobello Books / July 2018)

Crime/Thriller


That Old Black Magic by Cathi Unsworth; design by Leo Nickolls (Serpents Tail / March 2018)

Mass Market


When Katie Met Cassidy by Camille Perri; design by Sinem Erkas (Piaktus Books / June 2018)

You can find my previous posts on the ABCD Award winners here: 2018; 201720162015 and 2014.

And while we’re on the subject of awards, the Australian Book Design Association have announced the shortlist for this year’s awards.

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ABCD Award Winners 2018

I am unfashionably late to the party here, but the winners of the 2018 Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD) Awards were announced last week. 

The ABCD Awards are always pleasantly surprising. Every year the shortlists include at least two or three covers I have never seen before, and I find it strangely reassuring that the winners picked on the night are not always the covers I would’ve chosen — somehow that makes it feel more democratic. 

The awards have a brand new website (designed by Joseph Bisat Marshall) where you can find this year’s shortlists and archive of the previous awards, but you will find all the winning covers from last week below… 

Young Adult

Surrender by Sonya Hartnett; design by Jack Noel; illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love (Walker Books / May 2017)

Sci-fi/Fantasy

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; design by Suzanne Dean; illustration by Noma Bar (Vintage / October 2017)

Non-fiction

Riot Days by Maria Alyokhina; design by Tom Etherington (Allen Lane / October 2017)

Series Design

Pan 70th Anniversary collection; design Justine Anweiler and Stuart Wilson (Pan / September 2017)

Classics/Reissue


The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; design David Pearson (Pluto Press / January 2017)

Children’s 0-5

 

Jill and Lion by Lesley Barnes; design and illustration by Lesley Barnes (Tate Publishing / March 2017)

Children’s 6-12

Think and Make Like an Artist by Claudia Boldt and Eleanor Meredith; design by Shaz Madani; illustrations by Jay Daniel Wright and Ola Niepsuj (Thames & Hudson / May 2017)

Literary Fiction

The Blot by Jonathan Lethem; design by Gray318 (Jonathan Cape / February 2017)

Crime/Thriller

Dark Pines by Will Dean; design by Mark Swan (Oneworld / January 2018)

Mass Market

The Invisible LIfe of Euridice Gusmao by Martha Batalha; design by Sinem Erkas (Oneworld / September 2017)

You can find my previous posts on the ABCD Award winners here: 201720162015 and 2014.

 

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ABCD Award Winners 2017

The winners of the annual Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD) Awards were announced at a glittering ceremony London in last night. The dashing Danny Arter has a posted a full report on the proceedings at The Bookseller. You can see all the winning covers below… 

Young Adult

The Memory Book by Lara Avery; design by Sinem Erkas (Quercus / January 2017)

Sci-fi/Fantasy

Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente; design & illustration by Nathan Burton (Corsair / August 2016)

Non-fiction

The Genius of Birds by Jennifer Ackerman; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / April 2016)

Series Design

Vintage Virginia Woolf; design by Suzanne Dean; illustration by Aino-Maija Metsola (Vintage / October 2016)

Classics/Reissue

The Birds and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier; design Jamie Keenan (Virago / October 2016)

Children’s

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne & illustrated by Oliver Jeffers; design by Dominica Clements; illustration by Oliver Jeffers (Doubleday / October 2016)

Women’s Fiction

Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler; design by Kris Potter (Hogarth / June 2016)

Literary Fiction

The Start of Something by Stuart Dybek; design Suzanne Dean; cover art by Marion de Man (Jonathan Cape / November 2016) 

Crime/Thriller

Maestra by L.S. Hilton; design by Blacksheep (Zaffre Publishing / March 2016)

Mass Market

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / May 2016)

All of this year’s shortlisted covers can be found on the ABCD website. Last year’s winning covers can be seen here; the 2015 winners here

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Making It Up: The Bookseller Interviews Mr Keenan and Gray318

Mr Keenan and Gray318

I love this Bookseller interview with designers Jamie Keenan and Jon Gray, co-founders of the Academy of British Cover Design (among other things):

ABCD tends to recognise and reward brave, striking and fresh approaches, rather than more “conventional” cover aesthetics. I ask the pair whether they feel designers have more freedom these days; whether, as books become imbibed with more longevity and are seen as less disposable, publishers are more amenable to the idea of cover art as art, rather than as a marketing tool. They are reticent; Keenan responds: “It’s strange, because when you do see a weirdo cover – for a reason, not just for the sake of it – quite often they are really successful. If you think of a book as an actual package and compare that to other forms of packaging, its really old-fashioned in a lot of ways.

“Imagine a poster for, say, the next iPhone, and it has a quote on it like you’d see on a book cover – ‘this is the best phone I have ever had!’ – you just think, this is so old-fashioned, that kind of endorsement idea. On a book cover it’s the norm. A lot of advertising you see, you aren’t really sure what it’s for but it draws you in, whereas a lot of book covers are really overt – they tell you exactly what the book is about. We’re supposedly becoming more and more visually literate, but book covers are still, in some ways, quite naïve.”

Gray concurs: “It feels like a real nervous habit, the quote on the front. Is that really helping a book to be sold? Can [shoppers] not just read that on the back and get the same idea…on the front, is it really making someone think: ‘aha!’?”

“The greatest and the worst thing about book cover design is that no one really knows if it’s incredibly powerful or a complete waste of time,” Keenan says. “Quite often when you get a brief, you’ll be sent other covers that the [client] likes and some of them will look absolutely terrible…but it was a bestselling book! So that automatically becomes, in their eyes, a sort of ‘good cover’.”

“There’s no science to it,” Gray agrees.

You can almost hear them sipping their pints.

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ABCD Award Winners 2016

Congratulations to all the winners and shortlisted covers at the third annual Academy of British Cover Design Awards! Make sure you read Daniel Benneworth-Gray‘s report on last night’s “shindig” at the Creative Review, but in the meantime, all the winning designs are below:

Children’s
fox and the star

The Fox and the Star, written, illustrated and designed by Coralie Bickford-Smith (Particular Books / August 2015)

Young Adult

Asking For It design Kate Gaughran
Asking For It by Louise O’Neill; design by Kate Gaughran (Quercus / September 2015)

Sci-Fi / Fantasy

a-man-lies-summer
A Man Lies Dreaming by Lavie Tidhar; design by Ben Summers (Hodder / March 2015)

Mass Market

hausfrau-UK
Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum; design by Jo Thompson; illustration by Maricor/Maricar (Mantle / March 2015)

Literary Fiction

Memoirs of a Dipper design by Gray318
Memoirs of a Dipper by Nell Leyshon; design by Gray318 (Fig Tree / June 2015)

Crime / Thriller

9780241972762
Whisky Tango Foxtrot by David Shafer; design by Richard Bravery (Penguin / June 2015)

Nonfiction

egg design by Clare Skeats
Egg by Blanche Vaughan; design by Clare Skeats (Wiedenfeld & Nicolson / March 2015)

Series Design

Great Northern design James Paul Jones
Great Northern? by Arthur Ransome; design James Paul Jones; illustration by Pietari Posti (Vintage / March 2015)

Classics / Reissue

Far From the Madding Crowd design Sinem Erkas
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy; design by Sinem Erkas (Orion / September 2015)

Women’s Fiction

I Love Dick design by Peter Dyer
I Love Dick by Chris Kraus; design by Peter Dyer (Profile Books / November 2015)

You can see all last year’s winners here.

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ABCD Award Winners 2015

Congratulations to all the winners at last night’s Academy of British Cover Design Awards!

Children’s

shh
Shh! We Have a Plan by Chris Haughton; design by Chris Haughton (Walker Books / March 2014)

Young Adult

9781447250463
Spiders by Tom Hoyle; design by Rachel Vale; illustration by Sam Hadley (PanMacmillan / November 2014)

Sci-Fi / Fantasy

Wolves-tpb
Wolves by Simon Ings; design by Nick May; illustration by Jeffery Alan Love (Gollancz / January 2014)

Mass Market

tigerman
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway; design Glenn O’Neill (William Heinemann / May 2014 )

Literary Fiction

Badmouth-jk
Badmouth  by Alan Wall; design by Jamie Keenan (Harbour Books / January 2014)

Crime / Thriller

The Black-Eyed Blonde
The Black Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black; design by Jonathan Pelham (Mantle / February 2014)

Non-Fiction

plenty-more
Plenty More by Yotam Ottolenghi; design by by Caz Hildebrand and Sakiko Kobayashi / Here Design (Ebury Press / September 2014)

Series Design

city-of-iron-fish
Gollancz Simon Ings; design by Nick May; illustration by Jeffery Alan Love

(Above: City of Iron Fish. Gollancz / April 2014 )

 

Classics / Reissue

Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka; design by Jamie Keenan (W. W. Norton / February 2014)

Women’s Fiction (Joint Winners)

puny-sorrows
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews; design by Helen Crawford-White / Studio Helen (Faber & Faber / June 2014)

burial-rites
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent; design by James Annal ( Picador / March 2014 )

Well done Jon Gray and Jamie Keenan for organizing the awards. All the shortlisted covers — selected by judges Mark Ecob, Yeti Lambregts, David Mann, Richard Ogle, Donna Payne, Rafi Romaya, Henry Steadman, Jim Stoddart, Rachel Vale,  and Claire Ward  —  can be found on the ABCD website.

You can see the 2014 winners here.

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2015 Design Awards

Happy New Year!

Now that all the amateur ‘best of 2014’ lists are out of the way, it’s time for the professionals submit their covers to the actual design competitions. Last week 50 Books / 50 Covers opened for entries. Meanwhile the closing dates for this year’s Australian Book Design Awards and ABCD15 in the UK are fast approaching…

50 Books / 50 Covers

Design Observer announced the opening of the 50 Books/50 Covers competition for books published in 2014. The competition will accept online entries from January 7, 2015 to March 18, 2015. See the guidelines for more details.


View the 2013 50 Books and 50 Covers 

ABCD 15

If you live in the United Kingdom, the Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD) has announced the opening of its second annual cover design competition. Books published between January 1 and December 31 2014 by any designer based in the UK are eligible. All entries must be received by the 31st January 2015.

View the winners of ABCD14

Australian Book Design Awards

The Australian Book Designers Association (ABDA) has also announced the 63rd Australian Book Design Awards. The awards are open to any book designed and published for the first time in Australia between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2014. Entries close on Friday 23 January 2015.

View the winners of the 2014 ABDA Book Design Awards

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ABCD 2015

abcd-logo
As I am still working on my 2014 cover posts, it seems like a good time to let you know that the Academy of British Cover Design (ABCD) has announced its second annual cover design competition.

The competition is open to any designer based in the UK for covers published in 2014. There are ten categories:

Children’s
Young Adult
SciFi/Fantasy
Mass Market
Literary Fiction
Crime/Thriller
Non-fiction
Series Design
Classic/Reissue
Women’s Fiction

You can see the previous winners here.

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The Academy of British Cover Design Winners

The Academy of British Cover Design held its inaugural awards ceremony last night. The competition was open to any cover produced for a book published between January 1 and December 31 2013 by a designers based in the UK. Here are the winning cover designs in each of the 10 categories:

Children’s

charm-and-strange
Charm and Strange by Stephanie Kuehn; design by Sharon King-Chai

Young Adult

Tinder
Tinder by Sally Gardner; design by Laura Brett

Sci-Fi / Fantasy

i-robot
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov; design by Clare Skeats

Mass Market

scent-of-death
The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor; design by Emma Rogers

Literary Fiction


Tampa by Alissa Nutting; design by Gray318

Crime / Thriller

81V5+2E42cL._SL1500_
Tequila Sunset by Sam Hawken; design by Tony Lyons at Estuary English

Non-fiction

football-type
Football Type; design by Rick Banks at Face37

Series Design

tender-is-the-night
 F. Scott Fitzgerald paperbacks; design by Sinem Erkas (pictured: Tender is the Night)

Classics / Reissue


1984 by George Orwell; design by David Pearson

Women’s Fiction

instructions-for-a-heatwave
Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’Farrell; design by Yeti McCaldin

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