Somehow it is the end of July, and I am once again rushing to get this done. I think it’s a decent mix of covers this month though, with some big books, some indies, a few type-only covers, some nice art, and a couple of trends to watch out for. I’m glad it’s all come together, even if it is last minute!
Thanks to everyone who took time to help me with cover images and design credits over the past couple of weeks (days!) — it’s really, really appreciated! I hope everyone is having a good summer.
It’s been another busy month here, so apologies for the slightly scattered post. It includes a few covers that I missed earlier in early in the year, and a few other bits and pieces. I hope everyone is doing OK. Here are the covers…
It looks like this was actually the cover of the editions originally available in New Zealand and Australia in 2023, so apologies for being so late to it.
They are obviously very, very different books, but the cover Bear Witness reminded me of the cover for Going Home by Tom Lamont designed by Jared Bartman published by Knopf earlier this year.
Are green covers with pink type a thing now? There’s also the cover of All the Parts We Exile by Roza Nozari designed by Lisa Jager for Knopf Canada which came out in February…
Another (mostly) green cover, with some pink type here!
Sarah’s (also mostly green with some pink!) cover for Rosa Mistika by Euphrase Kezilahabi, published this month by Yale University Press, also caught my eye, but I couldn’t source a hi-res image for it in time for the post…
Both this and the cover for Disappoint Me were featured in a New York Times piece about recent books that are part of a painting + bold sans-serif cover trend.
The Longest Way to Eat a Melon is also an addition to the yellow type trend. The cover of The Slip by Miriam Webster designed by Typography Studio, out next month in Australia from Aniko Press, hits both trends too… (Do paintings of animals count as a separate trend from painting of people?)
This made me think of transferring newspaper print with pink silly putty, which probably hasn’t been possible for decades. I am ancient and made of dust.
Spine Magazine has brought back its round-up of recent university press covers too if you’re interested.
Weepers by Peter Mendelsund; design by Thom Colligan (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / June 2025)
This reminded me of the cover of The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane designed by Na Kim for FSG a few years ago (the colour palette of which is similar to a lot of Na’s paintings funnily enough!).
Peter Mendelsund‘s memoir/monograph Exhibitionist is available from Catapult this month too. I think Peter designed the cover for this one himself (with Corbusier inspired stencil type?).
The Washington Postrecently toured Peter’s apartment and talked to him about the book.
Hey, sorry, just sliding in under the wire with another slightly rushed post this month. I hope everyone is safe and well (all things considered). Let’s just get on with it shall we?
Also, the cover of Matt Wesolowski’s book Six Stories designed by Mark Swan was featured here way back in April 2017 (which was a pretty good month for covers!)
Jenny has a new portfolio site so go check that out. (Also, if anyone has a higher res version of the cover for The Holy Innocents, please send it over! I’d love to have a better one. Thanks!)
I am a sucker for good photo selection on a cover. This photo is from Ed Templeton’s series/installation (and book) Teenage Smokers. Although it is kind of interesting to me that a book with such a British title uses a photograph by an American photographer, but it does have incredible 1990s vibes.
The cover of the UK edition, published by Daunt Books, was designed by Kishan Rajani. It’s interesting to see the differences in two covers with a similar approach…
Hey, I hope you’re all keeping safe and well. Apologies for a slightly rushed post this month. It’s been kind of a busy time, and I’m travelling for work next week, so I’m sure I’ve missed a few covers and connections. I’ll try to catch up over the summer if/when things quieten down. Anyway… there are still lots of great covers in this month’s post — some from the usual suspects for sure, but also a few indies, a university press, a couple of covers from the UK and Ireland, and one from Canada…
The Odyssey translated by Daniel Mendelsohn; design by Monograph (University of Chicago Press / April 2025)
I was reminded of Matt’s 2017 cover for David Ferry’s translations of the Aeneid from University of Chicago Press. It sticks in my mind at least partially for it’s use of Sandrine Nugue’s typeface Infini.
The Aeneid by Virgil (University of Chicago Press) Design by Matt Avery
Notes to John by Joan Didion; design John Gall; photograph by Annie Leibovitz (Knopf / April 2025)
The photo feels very appropriate given how Didion would probably have felt about this book being published.
The cover of the US edition, published by Knopf this month, was designed by John Gall (the art is from Portrait of a Boy with a Falcon by 17th century Flemish painter Wallerant Vaillant, which is part of the Met’s collection in NYC if you’re curious)
I love the bold movie-posterness of this design, but I also like to think it’s secretly the completes the cover for Mothers by Chris Power designed by Grace Han…
Typefaces with dots are apparently a thing at the moment. The cover of Bad Friend by Tiffany Watt Smith from Faber, also out this month, uses type that has dots for counters too. Please let me know who the designer is and I’ll happily add the credit.
Tenterhoooks by Claire-Lise Kieffer; design by Jack Smyth (Banshee Press / February 2025)
Jack’s conversation with Steve Leard on the Cover Meeting podcast is really great if you haven’t listened to it yet.
Well, I don’t know about you, but I certainly didn’t miss the ceaseless chaos and constant anxiety. It is exhausting.
Anyway… I hope you’re keeping safe and well despite it all. I don’t know where March has gone, but this month’s post is another bumper edition with lots of great covers. I’m happy to have a bit more nonfiction in the mix, and there are lots of covers from indie publishers and even a university press along side the usual suspects. There are also a couple of Canadians if you’re keeping score.
Disposable by Sarah Jones; design by Keith Hayes; photograph by Susan Goldstein (Avid Reader / February 2025)
On Giving Up by Adam Phillips; design by Alex Merto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / March 2024)
Yes, this is from March 2024, so I am precisely a year late posting it. Either I didn’t see it last year or I couldn’t find the credit at the time. Anyway, Alex posted or re-posted this cover relatively recently and it spoke to me.
I also thought it went quite well with this cover…
The slightly less bonkers, but also fun cover of the US edition (published by Scribner this month) was designed by Math Monahan. I’m also quite partial to the definitely bonkers Polish(?) cover designed by Tomasz Majewski.
Hey, I hope you’re safe and well. This month’s post is a big one so I’m pretty much going to let you get on with it, but before I do, I just wanted to mention that I’ve included a gallery of all this month’s covers as the bottom of the post so you can click through them all. This is in response to a reader email about the size of the covers on screen. I think the gallery looks nice, but I am worried that it’s going to play absolute havoc with the RSS / email so apologies in advance if that’s case. Anyway, enjoy this month’s covers, and let me know what you think.
Hey, I hope you’re keeping safe, well and warm (or cool!) wherever you are.
If you missed it, my first post of 2025 was a look back at some of last year’s YA covers. You can find my 2024 list of notable literary covers here. Both posts got me thinking more generally about these lists. Do I need to change things up? Or stop altogether? Several other sites are posting lists that do much the same thing mine, and they are all starting to feel too alike. I don’t have answer, and I don’t really know I would do differently. I’m struggling to post once a month as it is. For now at least I’ll keep posting the covers that interest me. It’s just something that’s on my mind, and I have other projects I’ve been neglecting, so I’m curious if you have opinions.
Anyway, this month’s post is a bit of a short (but good!) one, and includes a couple of covers that I missed in 2024 for one reason or another. Enjoy!
Eurotrash by Christian Kracht; design by Sinem Erkas (Profile Books / November 2024)
I do really like this cover. It looks great! But it also looks a lot like non-fiction, especially when compared to the cover of the US edition (Liveright, October 2024) designed by Jason Heuer. They look like completely different books!
And speaking of Jason Heuer, he’s made a series of fun videos talking about embarrassing moments from his early graphic design career. You can find them on YouTube and Instagram. In the second episode Jason talks about his first book design credit…
It is the time of year for lists and I should’ve been done weeks ago, but I am late and already well behind the pack. Apologies for that.
I admire Matt Dorfman‘s ability to whittle his list down to a dozen covers for the New York Times. I imagine it takes him a lot less time for one thing, but I’m sure Matt still agonizes over every cover. It requires a level of discipline and restraint that I do not possess to keep it that tight year after year.
PRINT’s list of best book covers of 2024, compiled by editor-at-large Zachary Petit, is also long. It’s a 100 covers. Last year it was 50.
I’m not trying to throw stones here. We are all seeing more covers than we used to. There are more books for one thing. But they’re not just something we just experience in print in anymore. You don’t have to go into a bookstore or read the newspaper or magazine to see them. They’ve become something we see and share all the time online. Designers are promoting their own work and (slowly) getting more credit for it (although there is a lot more to be done in that area. Publishers — credit your designers!). My monthly round-ups are now one of several you can choose from.
And it is not like my list is short. This year it features work by 48 designers — more than half of them women — and 86 covers (plus a couple of supplementary images).
The consensus seems to be that it was a decent year for covers, and it’s hard to argue with other people’s selections even if I don’t love them all.
It is telling though that 100 of LitHub’s selections were individual picks. There are covers on my list that are not on the anyone else’s despite their length. So while I think we agree there were lots of good covers, I’m less certain we entirely agree on which ones were actually the outstanding ones.
A recent article Spine argued that there is a battle between minimalism and maximalism going on (you can find Spine’s end of year list here by the way). I think that could be true. Different approaches work for different audiences. But I also think it’s messier than that. I get the sense that publishers are less sure of what they want and what sells (certain genres notwithstanding).
It has been a rough year for a lot of publishers, so there is undoubtedly a lot of uncertainty, and no small amount of anxiety. I could go on about why that it is (and the publishing’s self-inflicted wounds) but, in short, what I think we’re also seeing with book covers is more meddling and less direction.
Anyway, I don’t want to end this on a bleak note. This year was shit enough. Despite it all, there genuinely were a lot of good covers in 2024, and some that I did think we’re outstanding. A couple of them made me laugh, which was no small thing. It was a strong year for several individual designers in particular and, despite the pressures, many produced work that was recognizably theirs. I thought there were more interesting covers coming out of the UK and Ireland (that mercifully wasn’t just about the inks or the finishes!), and there were some fun Canadian covers too.
Thanks, as always, for reading, and I hope you’re all keeping safe and well. Happy Holidays!
Holy Winter 20/21 by Maria Stepanova; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / October 2024)My Beloved Life by Amitava Kumar; design by Oliver Munday (Knopf / February 2024)
Mammoth by Eva Baltasar; design by Anna Morrison (And Other Stories / August 2025)
MILF by Paloma Faith; design by Jack Smyth (Ebury / June 2024)
Also designed by Jack Smith:
Lobster by Hollie McNish; design by Jack Smyth (Little, Brown / March 2024)Neu Klang by Christoph Dallach; design by Jack Smyth (Faber & Faber / May 2024)
I also have to give a special shout out to the cover for Paper Boat by Margaret Atwood (Chatto & Windus / October 2024). Suzanne commissioned paper art by Nathan Ward to design a template for a paper boat that could be cut out from the dust jacket and stuck together.
Hey, I hope you are good. It’s a stressful time and everyone is super busy trying to hold it together, but here we are at the end of October with another post that is both rushed and yet wordier than ever! As usual, I won’t be doing a covers round-up in November. I have to start working on the massive end of year post so I can get it done in something resembling a timely and relevant manner. I am open to last minute submissions if you think I have missed a cover, or you have something coming out between now and December. I can’t promise to include everything, but it would be especially great to hear from you if you’ve done something cool for a university press or an independent publisher this year. The only requirement is that the book was published and on shelves in 2024. If it was published in a non-English speaking part of the world, be sure to include a link to where people can find out more about the book (and ideally buy it) that isn’t Amazon.
On a related note, I have compiled an annual post of YA covers for, I don’t know, years now (10 maybe?). I don’t read a lot of YA, and it’s not a category I am very involved in professionally, so the posts take quite a long time to compile and I usually end up publishing them early in the New Year, which is less than ideal. So I guess my question is: do you still want a YA round-up? Folks used to ask for them, and now they don’t, which just be general fatigue and the fragmented nature of things at the moment, but the posts don’t attract submissions or much feedback, and interest seems to be waning. Obviously I don’t think I do a great job (if that wasn’t abundantly clear already!), but I haven’t really seen anyone else do one either, so I’ve kept doing it. I don’t know… I’m not a big a believer in clicks or engagement metrics as a measurement of anything useful, so I happy to do it if even just a couple of you say it’s still valuable. Or maybe it is just time to call it quits? Let me know what you think…
Pablo Delcan also designed the covers of the 10th anniversary editions of the previous books in the Southern Reach series, Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance, published by Picador earlier this year.
I’m still quite partial to the original US covers the trilogy (as was) designed by Charlotte Strick with illustrations by Eric Nyquist. The cover of Annihilation reminds me of The Day of the Triffids, which coincidentally has has an introduction by Jeff VanderMeer if you have the Modern Library edition. (The slightly bonkers cover of the Modern Library edition was designed by Cassie Gonzales with an illustration by comic book artist and illustrator Anders Nilson). Anyway, I’m a little sad that I can’t get the prequel to match the rest of my existing set.
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (US); design by Charlotte Strick; Illustration by Eric Nyquist (FSG / 2014)Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer (US); design by Charlotte Strick; Illustration by Eric Nyquist (FSG / 2014)
This feels very familiar, but I can’t put my finger on why. The best I’ve got is that it looks like a poster for a theatre production. It feels very European. The austerity of it gives late 1980s-90s vibes. I don’t know. I think it’s great.
Remarkably, the design incorporates a template for paper boat that can be cut from the dust jacket and stuck together.
The cover of the Canadian edition of Paper Boat, published by McClelland & Stewart, was designed by Kelly Hill using art by Paul Klee. The cover for the US edition published by Knopf was designed by Janet Hansen. The photograph is by Ruven Afanador. It’s interesting to me that it was the US decided to use a portrait on the cover. I mean it’s a beautiful photograph and Margaret Atwood is very distinctive looking, but I would imagine she would be more recognizable to Canadians than to Americans? Anyway, it’s not often you see three entirely different approaches in the UK, US and Canada for a poetry collection.
Hey, I hope you’re keeping safe and well wherever you are. Apart from the weird Toronto weather, it is definitely FALL here with the kids back in school and days of seemingly endless pre-sales calls and shortlists. It is also the time of year for “big” books of course, and there are more covers from the conglomerate publishers in this month’s post than I would generally like. My sense is that independent publishers try to avoid releasing their books in September if they can these days, but maybe I just haven’t seen the right ones? Anyway I guess we should be glad the big guys still care about fun covers, right?
Hey, I hope you’re keeping safe and well. I feel like I just finished July’s post and now it’s the end of August. There are a few more covers from earlier in the year in this month’s post. I’m still catching up. But there’s some Canadian content, a few covers from the UK, some indie presses, and a university press, which is always nice. Enjoy the last few weeks of summer!
1974 by Francine Prose; design by High Tide (Harper / June 2024)
Thanks to Robin Bilardello and AD Milan Bozic at Harper for their help on the credit for this one! :-)
Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson; design by Keith Hayes (Penguin Press / July 2024)
This was published last month, but I had it in my August folder. If I had to guess it was because of the author’s name. I am easily confused.
I think this came out in July too, but it looks like Faber used the ISBN of the existing 2017 edition even though there is a new cover so I don’t know for sure when it was updated (publishers: don’t do this).
Burn by Peter Heller; design Kelly Blair; painting ‘Boat Building in Maine’ (detail) by Paul Dougherty (Knopf / August 2024)
Coexistence by Billy Ray Belcourt; design by Kelly Hill; photography by Steven Beckly (Hamish Hamilton Canada / May 2024)
Because I am of certain age (old and mouldering like an ancient vampire hiding from the sun of contemporary pop culture) this reminded me of the cabinet art for the original Space Invaders arcade game. Hilariously, if not surprisingly, there is a Fonts in Use post about the typography of the original promo materials and cabinet art of Space Invaders. If anyone knows of a good article about the artwork itself I would love to read it.
Speaking of all things retro, Henry has posted some photos of his Letraset experiments for this cover on Instagram.
Hair for Men by Michelle Williams; design by Greg Tabor (House of Anansi / August 2025)
There is something ‘early 2000s Canlit’ about this cover. If you’d told me this was designed for Anansi by Bill Douglas in like 2004 I would’ve believed you, and I mean that in the best way. (I appreciate that only the grizzled Canadian publishing folks like me will get this reference but hey…)
Mammoth by Eva Baltasar; design by Anna Morrison (And Other Stories / August 2025)
Anna also designed the covers for two previous novels by Eva Baltasar published by AOS, including a pink special edition of Permafrost (which is possibly my favourite).
I was trying to think what this reminded me of and I think it’s either Ed Emberley’s Great Thumbprint Drawing Book or possibly the current cover of Design as Artby Bruno Munari, which (IIRC) uses drawings of faces from inside the book (but no thumbprints!).
I don’t know how you would describe this particular shade — salmon pink? Financial Times pink? (Are those variations of the same thing, actually?) — but it feels like a pink covers are still a bit of thing. (Did I mention pink covers already a couple of months ago? I think I did…? Sigh. I am repeating myself. It might be time to give this up)
I like this cover a lot, but is the disembodied hug also becoming a thing? I think I mentioned this a while back too! (Pictured: the cover The Nursery by by Szilvia Molnar designed by Hayley Warnham from May last year, and a poster by Vasilis Marmatakis for the 2015 movie The Lobster)
Obviously the details of the designs and the approaches are quite different, but the cover of A Termination reminded me of the cover of Anxiety by Samir Chopra designed by Karl Spurzem for Princeton University Press from March this year. I think it’s an interesting compare and contrast?
The Wisdom of Sheep by Rosamund Young; design by Darren Haggar (Penguin Press / August 2024)
I wonder what it is like to live in uninteresting — boring, even — times? It must be nice. While I continue to ponder that, here are this month’s book covers….
If I was good at blogging I would have posted this last month when the book was actually published and before the finals of Euros and Copa America, but here we are. Better late than never I guess, and politics never goes out of sport however much some people pretend they are unconnected. (I’m still thinking about doing a post of covers from books about sport, but haven’t got any further than that. Again, if I was actually smart and organized, I would have had it done in time for the Olympics. Cover suggestions still welcome by the way!).
Anyway… The author’s surname and the book’s subtitle were actually printed on to the shirt for the cover and Steve made or bought actual buttons to decorate it. He kindly sent over these shots of the work in progress…
(If anyone in the UK can tell me who designed the red and green cover of Liars for Pan Macmillan — and send me a hi-res cover image! — I would to love to include it next month’s list when it’s released)
The cover of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s previous novel Fleishman is in Trouble was designed by Kelly Blair. I feel like these work together despite being quite different? Maybe it’s as simple as the combination of really big type for the title and handwriting of “a novel”?
Neu Klang by Christoph Dallach; design by Jack Smyth (Faber & Faber / May 2024)
