Book covers are hard to design and nice to look at. An effective book cover manages to catch human's eye and convey the idea behind the book on one single page. However, it's getting even harder: to make a book really hard to forget, designers need to design the cover in a unique, creative and striking way. That's not that different from Web where it's important to build a sound information architecture upon a rather restricted design layout.
The main idea of this post is to provide you with some creative, expressive and appealing book covers. You won't like all of them, but you'll definitely find some designs which are worth pondering upon.
You may be interested in the following posts we've published earlier:
- Breathtaking Typographic Posters with over 50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters as well as a number of further references.
- Award-Winning Newspaper Designs with examples of outstanding newspaper designs collected from dozens of countries.
- Data Visualization and Infographics showcases spectacular data visualizations and infographics which manage to combine a strong visual appeal with the effective presentation of information.
- Data Visualization: Modern Approaches presents interesting modern approaches to data visualization as well as related articles, resources and tools.
Please keep in mind: there are thousands of excellent book covers; we've selected only few ones which are excellent in our humble opinion. Although this selection is definitely subjective, we've tried to do our best to find interesting designs which make the book cover hard to forget. If you have further suggestions please comment on this post. All covers posted are the copyright of their respective holders.
Book Covers
A Clockwork Orange
Meet Alex. Simple, but so memorable. Designed by David Pelham.
Brave New World
Designed by Gregg Kulick.
Christopher Moore, "The Dirty Job", 10/07
Disorders of Memory and Learning
Effective and creative. 1968. Cover Design by Martin Bassett.
Jordan Crane’s Book Covers
Crane's illustrations are beautiful and memorable. That's what makes a good book cover.
Paul Rand’s Book Covers
Paul Rand: one of the most influential modern graphic designers. Simple and effective.
The End Of Inequality
Cover design by Peter Stone.
Incomplete Manifesto
Just a sketch. This book doesn't exist.
Soviet Science Fiction book cover
A Penguin Special - A Suitable Case for Treatment
1964 Sex and Society - Alex Comfort
1970 War Gaming - Andrew Wilson
5ПЯТИЛЕТКА
A Soviet book cover from 1930.
John Gall's Book Covers
Gall's covers always take a look at the book content from a quite unusual perspective. Masterpieces.
Magical Thinking
The book cover is attractive and conveys the idea of the book.
1982 Know Your Own Personality.
ВЧЕРА И СЕГОДНЯ (1935)
"The Art of a Book"
Interesting conceptual solution.
Understanding Media
Interesting use of symbols.
Exile and the Kingdom
Eye-catching. Designed by Helen Yentus.
House of Meetings
Designer: Peter Mendelsund.
Dutch paperback book cover design
Hans Kleefeld book cover design
Grabink Book Covers Decoration
Book bindings by gner-artists Chris Enock and David Enock.
Minimalism
Typography
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance
The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual
House of Leaves Book Cover
Designed by Joe Paul.
Change the Way You See Everything: Through Asset-Based Thinking
Kidney For Sale By Owner
Designed by David Drummond.
About Face: Reviving the Rules of Typography
All the Sad Young Literary Men
