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Gender-Specific Covers Are Dominating the Market

The View From Here magazine features an article on "The Integrity of Book Jackets." Here's an excerpt:

So, whilst publishers and designers will say their ambition is to create stylish and innovative covers, the reverse seems to be true. Stereotypical jackets are increasingly the norm – and one can clearly see why publishers and retailers would want to continue with a formula that sells books, but couldn’t they be selling a whole load more by not alienating half their potential audience? ...

The book jacket has morphed into something that conforms to perceived stereotypes – blokes read books about war and action heroes and women about love and sex. Ultimately there is nothing wrong with jackets being genre specific – one only has to look at the original Penguins which were differentiated by colour and are now considered to be classics of their kind. Though it does seem silly to pigeon hole authors by cover image alone.

Read the rest, and see sample covers, here.

Australia: Book Design

The Brisbane Times describes the winning designs at the Australian Publishers Association Book Design Awards.

SQUIGGLY lines, wobbly handwriting and childish drawings were winning features at the Australian Publishers Association Book Design Awards last night. A reaction to electronic publishing, environmental concerns and hard financial times, perhaps? ...

Simplicity, naivety and a handcrafted feeling ran through many categories.

Utility in Bible Design

"Design Problem: What is the Bible for?" That's the question J. Mark Bertrand, author of the Bible Design blog, tackles in this Cardus entry:

For the book designer, the Bible presents a two-fold challenge.

First, over the centuries, the Bible as a physical artifact has come to be associated with a distinctive look—double columns, small type, chapter and verse divisions—and deviating from that look can be a risky proposition for the Bible publisher. Second, if form can indeed be presumed to follow function, the inevitable conclusion drawn from this traditional format is that the Bible, like the dictionary and the phone book, must be meant not so much for reading as for looking things up.

Of course, there's a reason why Bibles are formatted like oversized reference volumes: the sheer number of words. To fit them all between the covers, designers use miniscule type, shoving as many words onto the page as possible, printed on the thinnest of papers, all in an effort to keep the potentially mammoth proportions of the book in check.

Read more here.

Chinese Design

The Frankfurt Book Fair newsletter features an interview with Professor Lu Jing Ren discussing design in China, who says,

Over the last 20 years, Chinese designers have made increasing efforts to develop a Chinese design language of [their] own. In the process, more and more designers are calling to mind traditional Chinese book art and on that basis, are creating new ideas and designs. But that does not exclude continuing to learn from other countries.

Read more about contemporary Chinese design trends here, and then take a look at photos displaying 12 beautiful Chinese books in this gallery.

Cover Design Gallery

The covers of Penguin's science fiction titles can be seen all together on one page. Click on each title to see more details about the book. Click on the contents page to learn more about the different eras and styles represented by the cover designs, including an initroduction to the site, classic cover design, the vertical cover format, the transition from typographical to pictorial covers, modern art, pop art, and more.

If you were to do this with your titles, what  impression do you think your readers would form about your cover designs and your company's products?

Improve Designer/Client Partnerships

Fast Company interviews Adrian Shaughnessy, author of Graphic Design: A User's Manual, where he recommends that people who want to be better designers become clients of designers also:

By becoming a client we discover that as designers we have a pretty one-sided view of the design process. I can't deny that in the case of certain strong willed designers this singularity can produce wonderful results. But it is also dangerous, and can lead to conflict and misunderstandings. Personally I prefer the notion of an equal designer/client partnership. Yet this doesn't happen naturally. It has to be worked at. And it was only when I become a paying client that I realized how best to achieve this ... being a client taught me more about being a designer than anything else I've ever done.

India: Book Cover Design

How book covers are selected by different Indian publishers:

Karthika V K, chief editor of publishing, HarperCollins, explains, “We have an elaborate cover brief. It’s a brief by the editor of the book, in consultation with the author, on what the book is about. Then the designer is made to read a few chapters marked by the editor. The author and the designer don’t meet, unless the author wants to.

Nowadays, the author looks at the design through e-mail, sends across suggestions and so on. Sometimes, if the writers do have any designers on their mind, we take a look at their work.”
Whereas in the case of Tara Books, things function a little differently, stemming from the fact that their books are design intensive. I recently overheard someone say, “Oh Tara books, their work is an art by itself.” Gita Wolf, editor of Tara Books, says, “Our designers do more than the cover. The design concept is evolved together with the designer and they have a great say in how it will look finally.”
In some cases, they even consider the designer as a co-author to the illustrator.

Read the rest of the article here.

Design Grab Bag

What should a publishing house's logo look like? Check out thoughts on the matter in Design Week's "Branding Concepts in Publishing." 

Fonts matter. Designers know this, and some have mounted a worldwide campaign to ban the use of Comic Sans, a font described by the Ban Comic Sans movement's manifesto as "showing up for a black-tie event in a clown costume," according to this Wall Street Journal article.

Want to see how a magazine cover photo shoot? Check out "Brain Dance," a video on the making of the March 2009 cover on for the New York Times Magazine.

Might A Mook Work For You?

C Scout Japan Global Trends Research explains:

... a “mook” [is] the curious Japanese word for a cross-between a book and magazine. More casual than a book, but not as disposable as a magazine, mooks usually enjoy an initial display on the magazine shelves at the bookstore before retiring to the appropriate book section.

While the format is most popular in Japan, publishers in other countries are experimenting with it as well, with subjects such as death (Australia), fiction for young adults (China), or public speaking instruction (USA). The Bible itself has received magazine-like treatment from publishers in Sweden and in the USA.

So, might a mook work for you?

Jewish Designers' Perspectives on the Bible

At Haaretz.com, Jewish designers provide their reactions to the newspaper's request that they conceive a design for a contemporary cover of the Bible. They discuss cover concepts, illustrating Bible stories, comic book formats, fonts, color, binding, and much more. Here is just one observation, from Dr. Ruth Calderon, a researcher of Judaism and the founder and executive director of the Alma College of Hebrew Culture:

The entire Bible is written as a chronicle of events; at no point is the landscape described. In the Garden of Eden, on the way to the sacrifice of Isaac, at Mount Sinai - there isn't one single scenic description. We don't know what Abraham or Moses or God look like - nothing. Instead, there is an abundant use of verbs - he said, he went, the two walked together and so on. This is an interesting artistic choice of silence. And all this is happening in an ancient Middle East that is both a visual and a sensual culture of graven images.

See more here.