There not really the same, but the phases of the moon reminded of the cover of How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu designed by Will Staehle for William Morrow & Co. from a few years back.
Thanks to Sarah Wasley at Granta for providing the credits for their recent covers. I probably should’ve guessed this particular photo (‘Annie Morton, Forte dei Marmi, Italy, 1995, No.2’) was taken by Juergen Teller, especially given the book is set in the London art world of the 1990s.
This reminds me of something but I can’t remember exactly what. Maybe the cover of Rabbit Islandby Elvira Navarro designed by Gabriele Wilson? I don’t know.
Some of my favourite covers this year were series designs. I loved the Julio Cortázar Vintage Classics editions with covers illustrated by Stephen Smith, AKA Neasden Control Centre. I was lucky enough to meet art director Suzanne Dean for coffee when she visited Toronto this summer, which was lovely. Her Haruki Murakami designs for Vintage Classics and Harvill are always a delight too.
The typographic covers for the ‘Penguin Archive’ designed by Jim Stoddart triggered my curiosity. Published in April to celebrate 90 years of Penguin Books, the designs use typography to evoke the different eras of the publisher. You can read more about the series and the design process at Creative Review. But which historic Penguin covers inspired type choices in the first place?
There was some really nice series design from independent publishers this year too. I really liked Luísa Dias‘s covers for Wild Hunt Books’ Northern Weird Project. I wanted to feature them here when the final book of the series, Turbine 34 by Katherine Clements, came out last month, but time was not on my side. Fortunately, Zachary Petit talked to Luísa about the series for PRINT in April.
In Solvej Balle’s On the Calculation of Volume septology a women repeats the same day over and over again, and Matt Dorfman‘s covers for the New Direction editions are a really creative take on loops and repetition. The first two books came out last year and were featured in my October 2024 post so they’re not on this year’s list even though the third book was published in November. There are, however, two covers from a different Danish septology included below.
In terms of trends, Alban Fischer noticed that there have been a lot of close-ups of lips recently, something which I Need A Book Cover also picked up on.
One strand of the ‘trend you’re seeing everywhere’ was paintings of women in various states of repose. There was a lot of elegant ennui and it almost felt like an art school version of well-dressed and distressed covers at times.
Disappoint Me by Nicola Dinan; design by Rachel Ake; art ‘After the Ball’ by Ramon Casas i Carbo (Dial Press / May 2025)What a Time to be Alive by Jenny Mustard; cover art by Shannon Cartier Lucy (Sceptre / April 2025)These Days by Lucy Caldwell; design by Ploy Siripant; art ‘Woman in the Window’, by Alberto Morrocco (SJP Lit / April 2025)Hungerstone by Kat Dunn; design by Alicia Tatone; art ‘The Nightmare’ by Henry Fuseli
Another strand was historical paintings of animals, which fits with the “old-timey animals” covers Patrick Redford wrote about for Defector last year.
I think the success of these covers largely depends on the image selection and the cleverness of the crop. I’m sure we will see more of them going forward, but doing it well is probably harder than it looks.
I don’t have a good name for this next trend, but in my mind I’ve been referring to this as “corner type” because of the way the text seems to turn the corners the cover. I guess what it is really doing is framing the central image. I don’t know if this is new, but I noticed it a lot this year.
Culpability by Bruce Holsinger; design by Rodrigo Corral (Spiegal & Grau / July 2025)The True Happiness Company by Veena Dinavahi; design by Rachel Ake (Random House / May 2025)The Ten Year Affair; by Erin Somers; design by Emily Mahon; cover art by Shannon Cartier Lucy (Simon & Schuster / October 2025)Palaver by Bryan Washington; design by Na Kim; art by Keita Morimoto (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / November 2025)
I mentioned a wave of retro-nostalgic horror and suspense covers back in 2023 (I could’ve sworn it was last year until I checked!), but it feels like designers are still having fun with it as the genre as a whole gets more mainstream attention.
And speaking of nostalgia, I feel like covers inspired by 1980s advertising and airbrush art are suddenly a thing. There are a few examples from 2025, but it might be something we see more of next year as well.
Lastly, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who supported the blog this year, especially the folks that helped out with cover images, credits, and corrections. I really appreciate you taking the time to reach out, and I’m sorry if you sent me a note and didn’t hear back. I try my best to read and reply to everything, but this is a one man show and sometimes life has other plans.
Unfit by Ariana Harwicz, translated by Jessie Mendez Sayer; design by Erik Carter (New Directions / October 2025)Into the Sun by C. F. Ramuz translated by Olivia Baes &, Emma Ramadan; design by Erik Carter (New Directions / August 2025)
Zone Rouge by Michael Jerome Plunkett; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / September 2025)Open Up by Thomas Morris; design by Jaya Nicely (Unnamed Press / April 2025)
Alex also designed the cover of Jimmy Juliano’s previous book Dead Eleven. I confess I have mixed feelings about the current nostalgia for all things 1980s/90s…
This Here is Love by Princess Joy L. Perry; design by Keith Hayes (W.W. Norton / August 2025)
I was reminded, looking back at the posts from 2018, that someone really should collect Keith’s photos into a book…
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.
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.
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.
I hope you’re safe and well wherever you are. What do we have this month? A few British covers for a change, a bit of Canadian content, a couple of indie presses, and even something from a university press, not to mention covers from all the usual suspects. Enjoy!
Anam by André Dao; design by Tiana Dunlop (Pan Macmillan / August 2023)
I like the cover of the US edition of Bridge published by Mulholland Books too. Let me know if you know who designed it and I’ll add in the credit! It was designed by Kirin Diemont.
Jonny also re-designed the previous books in this series to match. They’re a lovely set that somehow feel very British, and very Faber. They sort of remind me of postwar pub signs and vintage lettering on canal barges. Anyway, I like them a lot.
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.
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.
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…
Ghost Music by An Yu; design Suzanne Dean (Harvill Secker / November 2022)Elizabeth Finch by Julian Barnes; design by Suzanne Dean (Jonathan Cape / April 2022)
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.
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2022)
Also designed by Na Kim:
Present Tense Machine by Gunnhild Øyehaug; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / January 2022)Run and Hide by Pankaj Mishra; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / March 2022)Either/Or by Elif Batuman; design by Na Kim (Penguin Press / May 2022)
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:
A Country of Strangers by D. Nurkse; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / April 2022)Sedating Elaine by Dawn Winter; design by Janet Hansen (Knopf / April 2022)
Yoga by Emmanuel Carrère; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / August 2022)
Earlier this year, a Canadian magazine asked me what the latest trends in book cover design were. I don’t think I had a very satisfactory answer. 2021 felt very much like a continuation of 2020, which itself felt like a year on hold.
The trends that came to mind were not exactly new. In no particular order: big faces (big sunglasses!); cropped faces; hands; mouths; postmodern typefaces;1 big skies; rainbows; gradients; the colour orange; psychedelia; collage; contemporary painting.
A lot was made of “blob” covers this year. I’m not sure that anything has really changed since Vulture published this article about “blocky” covers in 2019. They seemed like much the same thing.
Design is about the constraints and, as it turns out, the constraints around designing commercial literary fiction covers that have to work just as well online as in bookstores can lead to similar design solutions — large, legible type, and bright, abstract backgrounds. 2 The surprising thing is not that a few covers look the same when you squint; it’s that more of them don’t.
There were a lot of good covers (that didn’t look alike) in 2021. LitHub posted 101 of them. Still, it didn’t exactly feel like a vintage year.
Do I say that every December? Possibly.
A few years ago I worried that covers were moving in a more conservative direction, particularly at the big publishers. I’m not sure this has come to pass, at least not in the US. There are plenty of covers from the big, prestigious American literary imprints in this year’s list, as there were last year, and every year before that.
There are fewer covers from the UK in this year’s list than in previous years though, and I feel less confident about the situation there. From a distance, things seem a little sedate. I may be mistaken. It’s quite possible I haven’t see enough covers — or perhaps enough of the right ones — from British publishers to get a good sense of the overall picture.3
It would not be a surprise, however, if publishers were feeling a little risk-averse at the moment. We are two years into a global pandemic, experiencing a major supply chain issues, and living through a seemingly endless series of sociopolitical crises.
Nor would it be a surprise if designers were personally feeling the effects too — I’m not sure we are talking about this enough, and I’m not sure I know how to.
Thank you to everyone who has supported the blog in 2021. It means a lot. Here are this year’s book covers of note…
Na Kim talked to PRINT about her career and the designs for the Ditlevsen series in February. If, like me, you were wondering about typeface on the covers, it’s Prophet from Dinamo apparently.
If you’re wondering about the Super-Seventies Sally Rooney typeface, it is Ronda designed by Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnese (I only know because I asked).
Thank you to everyone who has supported the blog in 2021. It means a lot.
I am not convinced that the term “postmodern” quite captures what I mean here (and/or worse, implies something different in the context of typography), but it’s the best I’ve got. I’m not talking about the kind of experimental typography you might associate with the likes of Wim Crouwel or Emigre, or the aesthetic of someone like David Carson. What I am trying to get at is idiosyncratic type that purposely exaggerates or plays with letterforms, and doesn’t conform to function-first modernism. To my mind, this would include some typefaces from the 1960s and 70s, as well as some more contemporary type. In a sense what I am describing is display faces — and I think the eclectic, innovative use of type in Victorian advertising might be an inspiration to designers here — but I don’t think it is just about size. ↩
This will be the last of the monthly cover round-ups for 2021 because I have to turn my attention to the year as a whole, but there are some really top-notch covers in this month’s post so it feels like a good place leave off…
The cover of the UK edition, publishing next year I believe, was designed by Jack Smyth:
Jacket Weather by Mike DeCapite; design by Michael Salu (Soft Skull / October 2021)
I was reminded of the cover of The Empty Chair by Bruce Wagner designed by Gregg Kulick from what seems like an age ago (2013 I think?) . It’s very possible I have been doing this for too long…
They look very different, but I was reminded of another sunset sky cover designed by Lauren from earlier this year. It’s interesting to see the (presumably) coincidental themes in a designers work.
I quite enjoy seeing contemporary painting being used on book covers. A couple of other recent examples that come to mind are Jennifer Carrow’s recent cover for Lorna Mott Comes Home with art by Barbara Hoogeweegen, and Stephen Brayda’s cover for last year’s The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde with art by Scott Naismith (another sunset sky cover! I guess After the Sun could also be included in this trend broadly speaking. It is not quite the kind of painterly art I am thinking of though…).
I’m drawing lots of unnecessary comparisons today, but I was reminded of this Oliver Munday cover from a while back if only for the similar-ish colour combinations (I was going to say palette, but… ). It reminds me of something else too, I just can’t quite put my finger on it…
If I didn’t already know who the publisher was, I would not have been able to tell you if this was an American or British cover despite the subtitle and very American imagery. I don’t think it would like out of place on the Allen Lane list for example.
Pure Flame by Michelle Orange; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus and Giroux / June 2021)
In the ongoing game of books I think look alike but actually don’t when you put them side by side, the cover of Pure Flame brought to mind Peter Mendelsund‘s design for Civil Wars by David Armitage from a few years ago. Of course they don’t really look anything alike, but that’s how this game works…
Civil Wars by David Armitage; design by Peter Mendelsund (Yale University Press / February 2017)
A read an ARC of A Shock earlier this month and thought it was extraordinary. A recent review in the Observer described it a collection voyeuristic vignettes, which I suppose is accurate. The book is made up of interconnected and intimate stories, often about loneliness and confinement of one kind or another (particularly resonant during the pandemic). They are prying and unsettling… stories about seeing and been seen (or not). But in a wider sense, A Shock is about the telling and retelling stories (myths even!), and the way that is revealed in the novel itself is what elevates it above and beyond the usual fare. Anyway… I liked it. It won’t be for everyone.
The cover of the US edition, available from New Directions next month, was designed by the one and only Mr. Keenan:
