Book Covers

This post is a bit late but I wanted to show some of the book covers I looked at while working on my book cover brief. I spent the first part of the brief trying to cram in as much information into the cover as possible to communicate all elements of the book. I think this was a mistake and I didn't like any of the work I produced. I decided to look through some covers that I liked and try to figure out what it was that I liked about them and how they worked as a successful book cover.

I like this cover as it clearly communicates the title of the book with a relatively simple image. The cover does not look cluttered and the simple bold colours mean the characters (especially the ghost) stand out. the colours are used in a wat that allows the illustrator to highlight elements of the image they want to be noticed by the viewer without them seeming unnatural in their surroundings. I like this design but it seems a litle simple and to the point without requiring any kind of thought process from the viewer, although this demonstrates good communication I don't think it engages enough with the audience.

I really like this cover, the concept and composition are very clever and manage to communicate a lot of information while still being an interesting image even without any context. The use of negative space for the title and authors name are well thought and and stop the text having a negative effect on the illustration. I have not read the book but the way the tiger seems to be portrayed as an elemental creatures ties into the title of the book. I like the soft warm colours of the backdrop contrasting with the silhouette of the foreground and think that the use of brown instead of black complements the composition. Black would have been too bold and separate from the background making the image feel disjointed but the dark brown complements it while still performing the purpose of a solid bold silhouette.

This cover is the most subtle of the three but still manages to capture the idea of the book and draw in the viewer. With this design I really like the wrap around illustration coupled with simple bold text that has been sectioned off with block colour and borders. This helped me a lot as i wanted to create a wrap around design but needed to figure out how to maintain the structure of a book cover. This cover displays all the information necessary while maintaining a continuous illustration. 

After researching these covers I decided that subtlety is very important when creating book covers (and many forms of illustration) the difficulty is communicating the information you need to in a way that engages the audience rather than spelling blatantly.