2022. Twenty twenty-two. Two thousand and twenty-two… “Where did it go?” Or, sobbing, “ are we done yet?” It feels like both. It’s been a year that’s simultaneously dragged on interminably and disappeared in a cognitive blur.
I’m glad other people have already written about it.
At Creative Review, writer and editor Mark Sinclair picked his favourite covers of 2022 and reflected on industry trends in the UK, including the Design Publishing & Inclusivity mentorship program for under-represented creatives launched this year by Ebyan Egal, Donna Payne, and Steve Panton.
Literary Hub posted the best covers of the year as chosen by 31 designers. With a comprehensive 103 covers on the list, it tacitly poses the annual question “what do I have left to add to this conversation?” LitHub have been posting these lists for seven years apparently. I am an ancient desiccated husk.
Fast Company and the Washington Post asked slightly smaller groups of designers to write about their favourites covers.
Jason Kottke, back from sabbatical, posted his selections for 2022. I gather that Spine’s list is imminent.
Designer and art director Matt Dorfman chose the best book covers of 2022 for the New York Times, and empathized with the plight of the designers:
Most often, any personal stylistic expressions in their work are swallowed up in service to the multiple masters — editors, marketing directors, sales teams — who sign off on a book’s cover. There is also the matter of adhering to any one publisher’s dos and don’ts, which can inform mandates about typography, color palettes and production flourishes like embossing or metallic inks. For people employed in a theoretically creative pursuit, designers’ talents are often defined by how effortlessly they can make themselves disappear to serve the book.
Matt Dorfman, New York Times
No one captured the prevailing mood better than this Tom Gauld cartoon. A reminder, if one were needed, that nobody knows anything.
Earlier in the year, Australian reporter Rafqa Touma called out the trend of ‘well dressed and distressed’ young women on covers. As designer Mietta Yans notes, the covers often reflect their books’ stylish and sad protagonists, so I’m not sure this one is on the art departments.
Last year we had book blobs; this year we got more “ominous blobs” just to add to everyone’s existential dread.
Some of the trends I’ve talked about before spilled over into 2022. Collage, painting (contemporary, and historical — often tightly cropped), big skies, landscapes and seascapes, black and white photography (not just for LGBTQ+ trauma!), retro-ness, idiosyncratic display typefaces. Orange. Pink was in vogue too. The Instagram-ish combination of both pink and orange (sometimes with deep purple-ish blues too) seemed to be very much a thing this year. I suspect this is what happens when you ask designers to make things “pop” one too many times.
It is hard to know if these are genuine trends, or if it is just the stuff I notice. I’m sure there are things going on with commercial covers that I don’t pay enough attention to (although I will not be sad to see the popularity of that flat illustration style — the one that Slate pointed out in TWO THOUSAND AND FIFTEEN! — eventually fade away). I certainly don’t get the sense that everything looks the same, which is often the criticism. There is still room for a little weirdness and that can only be a good thing…
Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie; design by Lauren Peters-Collaer (Riverhead / September 2022)
Also designed by Lauren Peters-Collaer:
Boy Friends by Michael Pedersen; design by Gray 318; illustration by Nathaniel Russell (Faber & Faber / July 2022)
Brother Alive by Zain Khalid; design by Jo Walker (Grove Press UK / August 2022)
A Calm & Normal Heart by Chelsea T. Hicks; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / June 2022)
Carnality by Lina Wolff; design by Tyler Comrie (Other Press / July 2022)
The Bloater by Rosemary Tonks; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / September 2022)
Also designed by Oliver Munday:
The Ghetto Within by Santiago H. Amigorena; design by Mike McQuade (HarperVia / August 2022)
A Girlhood by Carolyn Hays; design by Mel Four (Blair / September 2022)
The Haunting of Hajji Hotak by Jamil Jan Kochai; design by Zak Tebbal (Viking / July 2022)
How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu; design by Will Staehle (William Morrow & Co. / January 2022)
I Want to Keep Smashing Myself Until I Am Whole by Elias Canetti, edited by Joshua Cohen; design by Alex Merto; illustration Ian Woods (Picador USA / September 2022)
Also designed by Alex Merto:
Joan by Katherine J. Chen; design by Holly Ovenden (Hodder & Stoughton / July 2022)
The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid; design by Ahlawat Gunjan (India Hamish Hamilton / August 2022)
The Last White Man by Mohsin Hamid; design by Chris Bentham (Hamish Hamilton / August 2022).
Lessons by Ian McEwan; design by Suzanne Dean; illustration by Tina Berning (Jonathan Cape / September 2022)
Also designed by Suzanne Dean:
The Julian Barnes cover also came in blue, and under the die-cut jacket is a beautiful photo from René Groebli’s photoessay The Eye of Love.
A Little Piece of Mind by Giles Paley-Phillips; design by Tree Abraham (Unbound / June 2022)
Tree had her own book, Cyclettes, published this year. You can read about the process of designing her own cover over at Spine.
No Land in Sight by Charles Simic; design by John Gall; photograph by Michael Kenna (Knopf / August 2022)
Also designed by John Gall:
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / September 2022)
Also designed by Tristan Offit:
Offended Sensibilities by Alisa Ganieva; design by Emily Mahon (Deep Vellum / November 2022)
Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield; design by Ami Smithson (Picador / March 2022)
I also really liked Ami’s cover for the UK edition of New Animal by Ella Baxter.
The Pink Hotel by Liska Jacobs; design by June Park; (MCD / July 2022)
Also designed by June Park:
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2022)
Also designed by Na Kim:
The Raptures by Jan Carson; design by Irene Martinez Costa (Doubleday UK / January 2022)
The Red Zone by Chloe Caldwell; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull Press / April 2022)
Sacrificio by Ernesto Mestre-Reed; design by Dana Li (SoHo Press / September 2022)
Also designed by Dana Li:
Shit Cassandra Saw by Gwen E. Kirby; design and illustration by Lydia Ortiz (Penguin Books / January 2022)
This is like hallucinatory nightmare vision of the Francis Cugat illustration on the cover of The Great Gatsby first edition.
Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu; design by Anna Jordan (Deep Vellum / October 2022)
The Status Game by Will Storr; design by Steve Leard (William Collins / July 2022)
True Biz by Sara Novic; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / April 2022)
Jack did a lot of great covers this year. I could easily have posted a couple more with no dip in quality:
Trust by Hernan Diaz; design by Katie Tooke (Picador / August 2022)
The New York skyline was printed onto the edges of the books and then photographed for this one.
Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan; design by Elizabeth Yaffe (Viking / May 2022)
The Waste Land by Matthew Hollis; design by Jamie Keenan (Faber & Faber / October 2022)
Watergate by Garrett M. Graff; design by Alison Forner (Avid Reader Press / February 2022)
Weasels in the Attic by Hiroko Oyamada; design by Luke Bird (Granta / November 2022)
Also designed by Luke Bird:
White Bull by Elizabeth Hughey; design by Alban Fischer (Sarabande Books / January 2022)
Also designed by Alban Fischer:
You can read about Alban’s design process for Till the Wheels Come Off at Spine.
Worn by Sofi Thanhauser; design by Janet Hansen (Pantheon / January 2022)
Also designed by Janet Hansen:
Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2022)
Also designed by Rodrigo Corral:
You Have a Friend in 10A by Maggie Shipstead; design by Kelly Blair; illustration by Toby Leigh (Knopf / May 2022)
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi; design by Anna Morrison (Faber and Faber / May 2022)
Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart; design by Christopher Moisan; photograph by Kyle Thompson (Grove Press / April 2022)
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