Hey. I hope you’re keeping safe and well, especially my friends and colleagues in snowy NYC. Thanks to everyone who helped with images and design credits this month — it’s been a really busy month so I really appreciate it!
Oliver’s own novel, Head of Household, is out from Simon & Schuster in the US this month too. The cover was designed by Christopher Brand, and you can read a conversation between the two about the design process at LitHub.
Favorita by Michelle Steinbeck; translated by Jen Calleja; design by Henry Petrides (Faber & Faber / February 2026)
Well, it’s been a month. I hope you’re all keeping safe and well, especially my friends and publishing colleagues in Minnesota. Stay Strong.
The Aquatics by Osvalde Lewat, translated by Maren Baudet-Lackner; design by Alban Fischer (Coffee House Press / December 2025)
As If by Magic by Edgard Telles Ribeiro, translated by Kim M Hastings & Margaret A Neves; design by Alban Fischer (Bellevue Literary Press / January 2026)
Yes, starting off the year with two covers designed by Alban, but also two books from nonprofit publishers based in Minneapolis, Coffee House Press and Bellevue Literary Press.
Crux by Gabriel Tallent; design by Jaya Miceli (Riverhead / January 2026)
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…
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 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…
Hey. I hope you’re keeping safe and well wherever you are. I’m going to keep this very short as there’s lots going on, but there some great covers, and a couple of tenuous comparisons this month (hey, I can’t help how my brain works!) . Enjoy!
This reminded me of Akiko Stehrenberger‘s poster for the movie Funny Games. They don’t really look alike, and the tone is very different, but I think it was the close crop and the hair that brought it to mind.
Dirtbag by Amber A’Lee Frost; design by Rob Grom (St. Martin’s Press / December 2023)
This brought to mind Peter Mendelsund’s cover for The Woman Destroyedby Simone Beauvoir, published by Pantheon, which in turn reminded me Gunter Rambow‘s Gitanes, Un Hommage à Max Ponty poster…
The image is taken from the 17th Century painting ‘The Torture of Prometheus’ by Giovacchino Assereto (thanks for letting me know, Jason!). The tight crop (which is great!), reminded me of Peter Hujar’s 1969 photograph ‘Orgasmic Man’, which was used on the cover of A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara designed by Cardon Webb a few years ago. Art imitating art, kind of?
Jacket design by Cardon Webb; jacket photograph Orgasmic Man by Peter Hujar 1987
Splinters by Leslie Jamison; design by Gregg Kulick (Little, Brown & Co / February 2024)
The cover of the UK edition of Splinters, published this month by Granta, was designed by Jack Smyth. It’s interesting to see to a torn author photo in both…
I hope you’re staying healthy and optimistic about the new year. As this is the post about new 2024 covers, it inevitably includes a few from 2023 that I missed at the time. There are also a couple of indie covers, one from a university press, and, continuing a theme from last year, one from a Canadian publisher. Keep warm, friends.
Filterworld by Kyle Chayka; design by Oliver Munday (Doubleday / January 2024)
I mentioned Kyle Chayka in the introduction to my post looking back at 2023. I didn’t realize that he had book coming out. I guess I will have to read it now!
Font wizards correct me if I am wrong, but I *think* both of these covers use Manofa from Inhouse Type? (And I think saw it on the cover of a forthcoming book too recently. Maybe a typeface inspired by Lydian is becoming the new Lydian?)
At the turn of the year, writer and activist Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshitification.” Although he was specifically describing the process of online services getting worse for users, it was hard not to see it everywhere in 2023.
In his annual look at the year’s best book covers for the New York Times, art director Matt Dorfman recounts a friend describing 2023 as a “year of survival”, a year of “no growth, no withering, just getting by.”
This year saw a centuries-old business contending with rounds of buyouts and layoffs, alongside an endless news cycle involving two brutal wars from which no authors, friends, enemies or strangers were immune from accountability for any unrehearsed sentiment they might voice in passing. Add to this the ongoing concern about how artificial intelligence will affect a business historically dependent upon human creativity — yet through it all, there was still the matter of making books, and their covers, to get on with.
I read Matt’s piece the same day I read an article by Kyle Chayka in the New Yorkerabout his search foran epochal term to “evoke the panicky incoherence of our lives of late.” The suggestions range from the bland ‘Long 2016,’ to the incredibly ominous-sounding ‘Chthulucene,’ the Lovecraftian ‘New Dark Age,’ and the frankly terrifying and plausible ‘Jackpot’ from William Gibson’s 2014 novel The Peripheral.
This was the context of life and work in 2023.
Matt notes some designers found inspiration in the zeitgeist. He’s not wrong. But, ironically perhaps, I feel less optimistic about the overall picture than he does.
At the risk of repeating what I’ve written in the past couple of years, it’s like we’re stuck in a holding pattern, circling the same design ideas. Trends have stuck around. A lot of covers feel safe. Some of this was the books themselves. I’m not sure exactly how many celebrity memoirs is too many, but I’m pretty sure we reached that point and sailed right past it in 2023. No doubt some of it is sales and marketing departments sanding down all the edges and demanding the tried and true (see Zachary Petit’s alternative best of 2023 piece on killed covers for Fast Company). But I would not be surprised if it designers were just getting caught up in the churn — too many books, too many covers, and too much other stuff to worry about.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Rouge by Mona Awad; design by Oliver Munday (Simon & Schuster / September 2023)Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia; design by Regina Flath (Del Rey Books / July 2023)Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez; design by Donna Cheng (Hogarth / September 2023)
One of the themes of the year was nostalgia, which I’m sure can also be put down to the present being pretty fucking awful. It was apparent across almost all genres, including literary fiction, but nowhere more so than in the resurgent supernatural suspense and horror categories. There were creative stylistic mashups with retro vibes, along side fastidious Stranger Things-like homages to the 1980s and Stephen King.
Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward; design by Katie Klimowicz (Tor / August 2023)The Only One Left by Riley Sager; design by Kaitlin Kall (Dutton / June 2023)Come Closer by Sara Gran; design by Caroline Johnson (Soho Press / September 2023)
One genuinely pleasant surprise was the number of interesting covers from Canadian publishers this year. They’ve been quietly risk-averse in recent years, so it was nice to see a few bolder design choices getting approved. I was happy to see a Canadian cover was one of the top picks on Literary Hub’s (very, very long) list of the best covers of 2023.
There were other things to cheer this year too.
The Lights by Ben Lerner; design by David Pearson (Granta / September 2023)Total Reset by Sinéad Brady; design Steve Leard (HarperCollins / March 2023)How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney; design by Zoe Norvell (Biblioasis / November 2023)
Spine continued to give space to designers to talk about their work in a way I’ve never been able to do consistently here. You can find their 2023 cover picks here.
David Pearson started the Book Cover Review, a website for short reviews of book covers.
Zoe Norvell’s I Need A Book Cover, a resource for book cover inspiration as well as place for authors and publishers to connect with designers, also went live.
Steve Leard launched Cover Meeting, a podcast series of in-depth interviews with cover designers (including David and Zoe among others). As Mark Sinclair notes in his piece on book cover design this year for Creative Review, Steve’s conversations shed light on wider concerns in the industry as well as each designer’s individual process. Have a listen if you haven’t already.
Berlin by Bea Setton; design by Emily Mahon; cover image by Nataša Denić (Penguin Books / May 2023)
Also designed by Emily Mahon:
Lost Believers by Irina Zhorov; design by Emily Mahon (Scribner / August 2023)Do Tell by Lindsay Lynch; design by Emily Mahon; illustration and lettering by Studio Martina Flor (Doubleday / July 2023)
B.F.F. by Christie Tate; design by Ben Wiseman (Avid Reader Press / February 2023)
The Illiterate by Ágota Kristóf; design by Oliver Munday (New Directions / April 2023)
Also designed by Oliver Munday:
The Guest by Emma Cline; design by Oliver Munday (Random House / May 2023)Life on Delay by John Hendrikson; design by Oliver Munday (Knopf / January 2023)
Sublunar by Harald Voetmann; design by Jamie Keenan (New Directions / August 2023)
Also designed by Jamie Keenan:
The Dimensions of a Cave by Greg Jackson; design by Jamie Keenan (Granta / October 2023)Dr. No by Percival Everett; design by Jamie Keenan (Influx Press / March 2023)
Hey. I hope you’re safe and well and caught up on your podcasts, shows, and TBR pile.
I thought this was going to be a short post this month, and then it turned into a long one — or longer than expected at least. I don’t have too much to add to the covers. I’m busy, you’re busy. It’s almost October, literally no one has time for this! But there are some lovely covers this month. There’s a bit autumnal orange and ennui, some nice type, and a couple of Canadian covers (for those keeping count), and a couple of appropriately off-beat ones from our friends at New Directions.*
American Gun by Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson; design by Rodrigo Corral (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / September 2023)
Fear by Robert Peckham; design by Tom Etherington (Profile / September 2023)
Goth by Lol Tolhurst; design by Timothy O’Donnell (Quercus Publishing / September 2023)
This whole thing is ridiculously in my wheelhouse. The cover photo is by the author (of course!), and there’s a fun note about trying to source the type in Timothy’s Instagram post about the design.
Grand Tour by Elisa Gonzalez; design by Na Kim (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
I’m not sure it was the intention, but I like the trippy film title / goth art project quality of this.
The Lights by Ben Lerner; design by David Pearson (Granta / September 2023)
Hopefully you’ve all had chance to listen to David on the Cover Meeting podcast by now. It’s really good!
The cover of the US edition published by FSG was designed by Thom Colligan. It’s interesting that they’re similar and yet different. I wonder if it was brief or just a creative coincidence?
I’m sure I’m not the only one to get Edward Hopper vibes from this cover.
The cover of the UK edition was designed by Suzanne Dean with a cover illustration by Anna Morrison.
*A bit of admin from last month: I finally managed to spend some time browsing a bookstore and I was able to ascertain that the cover of the US edition of Bridge by Lauren Beukes was designed by Kirin Diemont. Apologies to Kirin for not crediting her at the time in last month’s post. It’s updated now)
Sam by Allegra Goodman; design by Donna Cheng; photograph by Mariam Sitchinava (Dial Press / January 2023)
I’m not sure exactly why, but I just assumed this was a UK cover when I first saw it (despite it literally having “New York Times Bestselling Author” in all-caps at the top!).
Sing, Nightingale by Marie Hélène Poitras; translated by Rhonda Mullins ; design by Ingrid Paulson (Coach House / February 2023)
For some reason this makes me think of the ‘weird nature’ (including animals with human eyes!) in Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer, which is still one of my favourite novels of the last 10 years…
True Life by Adam Zagajewski; design by Jeff Clark (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / February 2023)
I also saw Pete Garceau’s cover for School House Burning by Derek W. Black recently, which snuck past me when it was published by PublicAffairs in September 2020 but still seems terribly au courant…
Wolfish by Erica Berry; design by Keith Hayes; illustration by Rokas Aleliunas (Flatiron / February 2023)
