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
1. A Clockwork Orange
Meet Alex. Simple, but so memorable. Designed by David Pelham.
2. Brave New World
Designed by Gregg Kulick.
3. A Perfect Mess
4. Christopher Moore, Un lavoro sporco, 10/07
5. Disorders of Memory and Learning
Effective and creative. 1968. Cover Design by Martin Bassett.
6. Jordan Crane’s Book Covers
Crane’s illustrations are beautiful and memorable. That’s what makes a good book cover.
7. Paul Rand’s Book Covers
Paul Rand: one of the most influential modern graphic designers. Simple and effective.
8. The End Of Inequality
Cover design by Peter Stone.
9. 1984
10. Incomplete Manifesto
Just a sketch. This book doesn’t exist.
11. Soviet Science Fiction book cover
12. Penguin Book Covers
13. St. Cyborg’s
14. A Penguin Special - A Suitable Case for Treatment
15. “The book of the Spirits”
16. Gas Book 08: Blue Source
17. The Language of Graphics
18. 1964 Sex and Society - Alex Comfort
19. 1970 War Gaming - Andrew Wilson
20. 5ПЯТИЛЕТКА
A Soviet book cover from 1930.
21. John Gall’s Book Covers
Gall’s covers always take a look at the book content from a quite unusual perspective. Masterpieces.
22. We Can Build You
23. Magical Thinking
The book cover is attractive and conveys the idea of the book.
24. Twenty Questions
25. 1982 Know Your Own Personality.
26. ВЧЕРА И СЕГОДНЯ (1935)
27. Alvin Lustig’s Book Covers
28. Suiza Constructiva
29. “The Art of a Book”
Interesting conceptual solution.
30. “The Creative Process”
31. Understanding Media
Interesting use of symbols.
32. Exile and the Kingdom
Eye-catching. Designed by Helen Yentus.
33. House of Meetings
Designer: Peter Mendelsund.
34. Cosac Naify - Detalhes do Livro
Cosac Naify is known for his simple yet unusual book cover designs. “The wonderful thing about this cover is that the paper has thin horizontal lines in relief that complement the horizontal design. Again, tactile. White dots you can see are numbers from one to fifty - the title is “fifty poems selected by the author”. The sky and stars reference one of the author’s most famous poems, translated “Morning Star”.”
35. Cigarette Century
36. Dutch paperback book cover design
37. Hans Kleefeld book cover design
38. Livre perdu1 / Lost book 1
39. Toby Litt
40. Grabink Book Covers Decoration
Book bindings by gner-artists Chris Enock and David Enock.
Minimalism
41. The Music of Chance
42. One Red Paperclip
43. Supercapitalism
44. A Clockwork Orange
You remember, right? Alex liked milk spiked with various stimulants (”milk plus”) or hallucinogens (”synthemesc”).
45. Worst Years Of Your Life
Typography
46. Expo 58, book cover
47. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
48. Last Days Of Publishing
49. The Trouble With Physics
50. Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance
51. The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual
52. Emil Ruder’s works
53. Nikelleo Rellana’s work
54. House of Leaves Book Cover
Designed by Joe Paul.
55. Change the Way You See Everything: Through Asset-Based Thinking
56. Kidney For Sale By Owner
Designed by David Drummond.
57. Ace of Spades: A Memoir
58. About Face: Reviving the Rules of Typography
59. The Mayor’s Tongue
60. All the Sad Young Literary Men
61. swissmiss: Books
Sources and Resources
