A big, messy post this month as I catch up on the new releases and some of the covers I missed over the summer. I expect the next couple of month’s might be a bit like this as I work towards my round-up of the year, so feel free to let me know about stuff that you think I’ve overlooked in 2021.
For some reason, I was reminded of this saucy Jacob Covey cover, which I thought was killed in favour of something more (ahem) traditional, but it still exists on Amazon, so who knows? (Jacob probably knows; I do not).
I didn’t blog much this year. It felt strange to be posting about something as trivial as book covers during a deadly pandemic. 2020 has been a tough year. I feel lucky that my family are safe and well, and I have kept my job and my health. I know others have not been so fortunate.
It has been hard.
I haven’t read much and I’ve struggled to keep track of new work. Toronto has been in lockdown for most of 2020. Browsing bookstores hasn’t been possible, and I didn’t spend as much time as usual trawling for covers online. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of covers in this year’s post are featured here for the first time.
Looking back at last year’s post, I was apparently feeling gloomy about the state of things in 2019 too.1 If I remember correctly, I was — in the midst of everything — trying to get through sales conference, wrap up a big project before the holidays, and feeling more than a little stressed. Somehow I still managed to write a little bit about the trends I was seeing. A few things — painterly covers for example — seem to have continued into 2020. Lydian certainly hasn’t gone away. It felt so common, in fact, I stopped keeping track of individual examples. On the other hand, I did see less Avant Garde for which I am quietly grateful (although I’m not sure that’s a popular sentiment).
At The Literary Hub, Emily Temple declared 2020 to be “the year of enormous pink lady faces on book covers.” While at Spine Magazine, Viki Hendy collected together examples of covers with type around the edges. I don’t know that I have a lot to add that. There were a few new meta, books on book covers this year, which is always a delight. And I think perhaps collage might be having a moment too, which is fun. Although we may be overdoing the half-face compositions.
Suppose A Sentence by Brian Dillon; design by Katy Homans; art by John Stezaker (NYRB / September 2020)
The Lightness by Emily Temple; design by Ploy Siripant; art by Beth Hoeckel (William Morrow / June 2020)
There is, of course, a lag. Trends always bleed over from one year to the next. One of this year’s “big books”, Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid, which featured a bright and bold cover designed by Vi-An Nguyen, was published in the US on December 31, 2019. A lot of 2020 books have been delayed until 2021. But I wonder how the changes in the way we work and consume brought on by the pandemic — designing in isolation for an audience that is now browsing predominantly online — will change things in the next couple of years. Will we see more experimentation or less? Will there be demand for beautiful tactile objects, or will we more fully embrace digital reading experiences? There’s a lot to ponder…
Anyway, thanks to all the folks who have supported the Casual Op this year and encouraged me to keep it going. I’m sorry that I have not responded to all the emails I have received. I’m going to try to be a bit better with that in future. Hopefully there have been some silver linings for you in 2020, and you can still find some joy in a few good book covers…
Afterland by Lauren Beukes; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / July 2020)
Also designed by Lauren Wakefield:
The Driftwood Girls by Mark Douglas-Home; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / April 2020)
The Honey and the Sting by E. C. Freemantle; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / September 2020)
We Are All the Same in the Dark by Julia Heaberlin; design by Lauren Wakefield (Penguin / August 2020)
Sadly, Adalis unexpectedly passed away in July 2020. I only knew Adalis through her work, but she is such a huge a loss to our community. There is a GoFundMe page if you wish to donate to her family.
Also designed by Adalis Martinez:
losi by Molly Ball; design by Adalis Martinez (Henry Holt & Co / May 2020)
Dominicana by Angie Cruz’ design by Adalis Martinez (Flatiron / August 2020)
Love is an Ex-Country by Randa Jarrar; design by Adalis Martinez (Catapult / February 2021)
You can find a short interview with John in which he discusses his cover for Red Pill at Bear Books, and you can read about his design process for Weather by Jenny Offill at Spine Magazine.
Sisters by Daisy Johnson; design by Suzanne Dean; photograph Simon Kerola (Jonathan Cape / August 2020)
The cover of the US edition of Sisters, published by Riverhead this month, was designed by Jaya Miceli. The painting is by Jeremy Olson. (Thank you to the folks on Twitter who helped me with this!)
Hey. Here are the book covers that have caught my eye online this month. I hope that they bring a little joy in this very grim time.
If you have the means to buy books at the moment (and I appreciate that is not going to be the case for everyone), please consider supporting your local bookstore. I know a lot of stores are taking orders by email even if they are not answering the phone, and many are offering local delivery if curbside pick-up is not currently an option. The situation seems to be changing daily, so if a store wasn’t accepting orders yesterday, they might be today. We are all figuring this out on the fly.
If you are in the US and don’t have access to a local bookstore, there is Bookshop.org who are trying to provide some financial support to independents. If there are similar initiatives elsewhere, let me know — I’m happy to share the link.
Afterlife by Julia Alvarez; design by Jaya Miceli (Algonquin Books / April 2020)
I wonder where the eye — particularly the combination of the colour red and the eye — as a symbol of Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four originated? Does it go back to the 1960s and the Penguin paperback designed by Germano Facetti?
I understand that the eye is a short-hand for the surveillance state. But it is almost as if that is now considered the only element of the book worth visualizing (David Pearson’s cover is in an interesting exception in that it cleverly focuses on censorship rather than surveillance).
I haven’t read Nineteen Eighty-Four in years, but my memory is that the infamous “Big Brother is Watching You” poster is a face whose eyes seem to follow you when you move — something I think Matt’s cover above captures quite nicely — not an all-seeing, omniscient eye. The first time I read the novel, I imagined Big Brother looked something like Lord Kitchener / Uncle Sam in the recruitment posters. I was more traumatized by Room 101 to be honest… Has anyone put rats on the cover of Nineteen Eighty-Four?
I actually read Godshot in manuscript form last year and liked it a lot. It is set in drought-stricken California, but I had Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to Paris, Texas playing in my head the whole time I was reading it.
I also wanted to give a quick shout-out to Nicole who was diagnosed with breast cancer at the end of last year and bravely shared her story on social media recently. Stay safe, and get well soon, Nicole. :-)
Griefby Svend Brinkmann; design by David A. Gee (Polity Press / April 2020)
David has designed the covers for a number of books by Svend Brinkmann, including Standpoints, which featured on the blog back in March 2018.
The cover of the UK edition of A Luminous Republic, which Granta is publishing in a couple of months, was designed by Luke Bird. It’s a really interesting contrast!
2019 has felt interminable. It has also felt like there are never enough hours in the day to keep up. You can’t talk to me about TV shows or movies. I haven’t seen any.
When it comes to books, I’m fortunate enough to work in the industry. But what hope do casual readers have of finding the good stuff when the same few titles dominate the conversation and there is so much else competing for their attention?
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Caroline Teagle Johnson (Ballantine / March 2019) Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Lauren Wakefield (Hutchinson / March 2019)
Daisy Jones and the Six had a glamorous, louche 1970s look. The US and UK editions, designed by Caroline Teagle Johnson and Lauren Wakefield respectively, took slightly different directions with the type, but the photograph (a stock image apparently) felt ideally suited to social media.
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood; design by Noma Bar (Chatto & Windus / September 2019)The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood; art direction by Christopher Moisan; illustration by Patrik Svensson (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt / April 2017)
The Testaments was everywhere and, like the recent Vintage Classics reissue of The Handmaid’s Tale, the cover illustration was unmistakably by Noma Bar. We live in an age where every cult movie and TV show gets a ‘minimalist’ poster now, and I found that The Testaments looked too familiar for me to find it engaging. It didn’t help that the cover of the 2017 US reissue of the The Handmaid’s Tale by Swedish illustrator by Patrik Svenson had already featured a similar 3/4s silhouette. Nevertheless, it was perhaps a bolder cover choice than I’m giving it credit for. If nothing else, it showed that bright green on book covers — once cursed and reviled — is suddenly all the rage!
In terms of trends, 2019 felt more like a continuation of previous years rather than a break with the past. There was a kind of conservatism to a lot of the covers I saw. My sense was that highly polished designs that looked comfortingly familiar were being approved over riskier ones that stood out from the crowd. The most interesting covers often came from small publishers, especially New Directions who seem to be giving a bit more creative license to the designers they work with (some of whom have 9-5s at much bigger publishers!).
Big centred blocks of utilitarian white type over elaborate backgrounds continued to be a mainstay. It’s the book cover as poster, and it works at any size, so I don’t think it’s going away any time soon.
Handwriting and hand-lettering remained popular too, although my sense is that enthusiasm is starting to wane as publishers are opting for greater legibility and designers are turning back to vintage type styles to give a sense of authenticity and craft. (I’m willing to admit the evidence might not back me up on this, however!)
Fun, swishy 1970s-inspired serifs like Benguiat Caslon revival Cabernet are back. People keep trying to make ITC Avant Garde — another iconic 1970s typeface — happen again too. I don’t think it works for the most part, but I can see why designers think it’s cool in a coked-up New York way. Warren Chappell’s earnest calligraphic sans serif Lydian, originally released in 1938, continued its unlikely rise as a go-to literary typeface. It even got an explainer at Vox.
Black and white portrait photography has been the staple of biographies and classics for years, so it was interesting to see closely cropped black and white photographs used on the covers of a couple of new literary novels this year. This isn’t entirely new obviously. Black and white photography has long been used to signify that something is “art” (as opposed to, say, “pornography”). But I think the latest iteration of trend was started by Cardon Webb‘s 2015 cover for A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara which used a black and white photograph by the late Peter Hujar.
Coincidentally the cover of the US edition of Garth Greenwell’s new novel Cleanness, publishing early 2020, was designed by Thomas Colligan and uses contemporary black and white photograph by Jack Davison. (The UK edition, designed by Ami Smithson fits this trend a little less neatly, but features black and white photograph by Mark McKnight)
Something that I didn’t anticipate was the use of contemporary landscape and figure painting on the covers of some the big literary releases of the year. Like black and white photography, it felt almost pre-digital — a grasp at traditional values of craft. I don’t know if I would go as far as to say it is a rejection of post-modernism. But maybe it is? I don’t know. Discuss amongst yourselves.
The Innocents by Michael Crummey; design by Emily Mahon; art by Diana Dabinett (Doubleday / August 2019)The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott; design by Laywan Kwan; art by Fahamu Pecou (Liveright / August 2019)Inland by Téa Obrecht; design by Jaya Miceli; art by Tamara Ruiz (Random House / August 2019)
Thank you to all the designers and art directors who’ve been in touch and helped me identify covers for my posts. I’m sorry if I haven’t replied to your message. It’s been a year.
Aug 9 — Fog by Kathryn Scanlan; design by Na Kim (Farrar Straus & Giroux MCD / June 2019)
Also designed by Na Kim:
Lie With Me by Philippe Besson; design by Na Kim (Scribner / April 2019)Mother Winter by Sophia Shalmiyev; design by Na Kim (Simon & Schuster / February 2019) High School by Tegan & Sara; design by Na Kim (MCD / September 2019)
Muscle by Alan Trotter; design by Gray318 (Faber & Faber / February 2019)
Also designed by Gray318:
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie; design by Gray318 (Jonathan Cape / August 2019) Grand Union by Zadie Smith; design by Gray318 (Hamish Hamilton / October 2019)Salt On Your Tongue by Charlotte Runcie; design by Gray318 (Canongate / January 2019)
What We Really Do All Day by Jonathan Gershuny and Oriel Sullivan; design Matthew Young (Pelican / September 2019)Artificial Intelligence by Melanie Mithcell; design by Matthew Young (Pelican / October 2019)
One Day by Gene Weingarten; design by David Litman (Blue Rider / October 2019)
Oliver Munday wrote about designing the cover for New Directions at Literary Hub earlier this year.
He also designed a lot my favourite covers this year…
Riots I Have Known by Ryan Chapman; design by Oliver Munday (Simon & Schuster / May 2019)The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead; design by Oliver Munday (Doubleday / July 2019)Thick by Tressie McMillan Cotton; design by Oliver Munday (The New Press / January 2019)White Flights by Jess Row; design by Oliver Munday (Graywolf / August 2019) Harbart by Nabarun Bhattacharya; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / June 2019)
The Revolutionaries by Joshua Furst; design by Tyler Comrie (Knopf / April 2019)The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; design by Tyler Comrie (Pantheon / August 2019)Someone Who Will Love You in All Your Damaged Glory by Raphael Bob-Waksberg; design by Tyler Comrie; illustration Justin Metz (Knopf / June)
The Volunteer by Salvatore Scibona; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019)
Also designed by Rachel Willey:
The New Me by Halle Butler; design by Rachel Willey (Penguin / March 2019) The Need by Helen Phillips; design Rachel Willey (Simon & Schuster / July 2019)
It’s almost the first day of spring, the snow and ice have just about melted in Toronto (for now!), and everything is still awful, so it must be time for March’s book covers of note!
Bangkok Wakes to Rain by Pitchaya Sudbanthad; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / February 2019)
This is the Turkish edition of Men in Space by Tom McCarthy. I like how the composition and colour palette echo the cover of the US edition published by Vintage, designed by John Gall:
It also reminds of the golden leaf cover for ‘True Faith’ by New Order designed by Peter Saville.
The Cook by Maylis de Kerangal; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / March 2019)
(I feel like a Freudian could have a field day with this cover.)
The cover of the US edition published by Ballantine (I couldn’t find an image without the book club sticker… sorry), was designed by Caroline Teagle Johnson. The book is getting a lot of buzz so I’ve seen both versions of the cover a lot online. It’s a pretty striking photo. I’m curious about where it came from…
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Lauren Wakefield (Hutchinson / March 2019)
Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid; design by Caroline Teagle Johnson (Ballantine / March 2019)
I feel like I should at least try to collect some of the best political covers from the past year or so together into a post at some point. On the other hand, I really don’t want to…
I’m not entirely sure why, but cover of Something Great and Beautiful brought to mind the 2014 cover of the UK edition of The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison, designed by Tom Darracott for Granta. They’re really not that similar, and yet…
Son of Amity by Peter Nathaniel Malae; design by David Drummond (Oregon State University Press / October 2018)
The cover of the UK edition, published earlier this year by Picador, was designed by Katie Tooke. You can read about the design process for the UK cover here.
Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce; design by Kimberly Glyder (Scribner / July 2018)
Florida by Lauren Groff; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / June 2018)
The cover of Groff’s 2015 novel Fates and Furies (also published by Riverhead) was designed by Rodrigo Corral and Adalis Martinez:
Florida by Lauren Groff; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / June 2018)
Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff; design by Rodrigo Corral and Adalis Martinez (Riverhead / September 2015 )
Besides using a beautiful photograph, I get the sense this cover is very much on trend, and not just for YA — I’ve seen the cover of a thriller coming out this fall that also uses a close-cropped image of a woman’s face, a similar sans-serif type, and a warm sepia colour palette.
Smile by Roddy Doyle; design and lettering by Nick Misani (Viking / October 2017)
OK, so I am very late to this one. I saw it last year and didn’t know who the designer was — I only found out this week when art director Jason Ramirez revealed that it was one of the TDC Communication Design Competition winners this year!
She Regrets Nothing by Andrea Dunlop; design by Rachel Willey (Washington Square Books / February 2018)
Sunburn by Laura Lippman; design by Elsie Lyons (William Morrow / February 2018)
I included the cover of Sunburn and Elsie Lyons’s cover for The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn (featured last month) in a recent presentation about the differences between US and UK cover design. UK editions of both books have a much more conventional genre covers. They signal very clearly to readers that they are thrillers.
The US covers on the other hand have a much more literary, sophisticated look. They both have a distinctive, individual appearance (although I suspect we may see covers copying the approach of The Woman in the Window very soon!) that suggest that these are not your average thrillers.
It is not that one approach is necessarily better than the other from a marketing perspective (although I can guess which designers might prefer!), but it is an interesting contrast.
I will admit it was the photo-realistic painting that first drew my eye to this cover, but I also like that the blocky typography echoes the cover of the author’s previous novel California.
Woman No. 17 by Edan Lepucki; design by Michael Morris; illustration by Oliver Wilson (Crown / February 2018)
When it comes to choosing the year’s best book covers, it seems that everyone is at it these days…
Against Everything by Mark Greif; design by Kelly Blair (Pantheon / 2016)
Private Novelist by Nell Zink; design by Sara Wood, art by Evgenia Loli (Ecco / 2016)
“These covers are challenging without being impenetrable and playful without being precious — none of which is an easy task for a designer. If good design might lure us into an experience that makes us smarter, then we’ve hit the jackpot when the book allows us to spend time within the head space of a stranger.”
I always look forward to Matt Dorfmann’s selections for the New York Times Book Review. Matt is the NYTBR‘s art director and a cover designer in his own right so he knows what he’s talking about, and his choices are always interesting. If I am honest, I think this is the list the designers (American designers at least) really pay attention to. And it’s worth noting that half of Matt’s choices this year were designed by women.
Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple; design by Kelly Blair; cover art by Geoff McFetridge (Little Brown & Co / October 2016)
I’m Supposed to Protect You From All This by Nadja Spiegelman; design by Grace Han (Riverhead / August 2016)
Welcome to the Universe by Neil Degrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, J. Richard Gott; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / September 2016)
Loving these minimal black and white covers for books about the universe…
Welcome to the Universe by Neil Degrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, J. Richard Gott; design by Chris Ferrante (Princeton University Press / September 2016)
Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space by Janna Levin; design by Janet Hansen(Knopf / March 2016)
Wolf Boys by Dan Slater; design by Grace Han (Simon & Schuster / September 2016)
