Book Design

Book covers are a unique and wonderful art form. It’s no simple task to boil down hundreds of pages of well-considered words into a single image or design and still make it compelling enough for people to want to pick it up. Book design can sometimes make or break the success of a book. It requires wit, knowledge of design fundamentals, and an overwhelming amount of creativity. The task is even more daunting when you are given the assignment to design a best-selling book.

I wanted to see how designers have handled such a task so I looked through the cover designs of the 10 best-selling books of all time. I found hundreds of covers ranging from the mundane to the corny to the excellent. Here are some of the most interesting cover designs I found:

1. The Bible

Literally thousands of editions of this book have been printed, with designs spanning a huge variety of styles. Here are a few representative samples.

2. Quotations from Chairman Mao – Mao Zedong

Mao’s quotations are hugely read in China, and also hugely red in design. Simple, but effective.

3. The Qur’an – Muhammad

Here are a few beautifully ornamented Arabic covers, with some English-translations trying to keep the same flavor.

4. Xinhua Dictionary – Wei Jiangong

Not a lot of originality with this best-selling dictionary.

5. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

Dicken’s great novel is represented with very dramatic illustrations.

6. Scouting for Boys: A Handbook for Instruction in Good Citizenship – Robert Baden-Powell

Interestingly this book is designed using a consistent illustration style across many editions.

7. Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan

Pilgrim’s Progress has been around awhile and it’s cover has been designed in the period’s popular style many times.

8. The Book of Common Prayer – Thomas Cranmer

Lots more red for this simple book of prayer.

9. The Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien

Great illustrations and ring/eye references. Some especially fun covers from the 60′s and 70′s.

10. And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie

This fairly-recently written novel has had fewer editions than most of the others, but still some great designs.

And there you have it: book covers from the 10 best-selling books of all time. What did you think (anyone notice an huge use of the color red)? Which ones were your favorites? Do you have any more examples you’d like to share?

Top Ten list compiled from Destican, MentalFloss, Wikipedia and then edited by me.

I finally bought a book that I have been wanting since I first saw its cover jumping out at me from a library shelf. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a quiet, mysterious book about magic returning to England in the early 1800′s. However, it was certainly for the cover that I paid for the hardcover edition.

William Webb, the jacket designer, boldly throws color and clutter to the wind and boils this book down to a design that connotes a certain mystique. The dark cover is evocative of the gloom and dreariness found inside the rain-soaked pages. That much black on the cover certainly helps the book stand out from others around it.

The type is well done I think, with a misshapen edges that are reminiscent of real letter-pressed fonts. Spacing is nice vertically, the ampersand given and taking nice room and showing the importance of the connection between the two characters. The kerning on the J in Jonathan seems to be a little too much though.

Lastly, although it has recieved its share of critiques, I think that the single small image of the crow is well done in this case. The crow carries with it heavy symbolism, and reversing its color here is a nice twist.

Overall, this is one of my favorite book covers in the past few years. Simple and elegant, yet dark and foreboding at the same time. No matter how the book turns out to be I’m glad to have this piece sitting on the shelf.

Apt Design

Cover Designs of the 10 Best-Selling Books of All Time