book cover archive
Remember when I posted about Gurafiku a few weeks ago, the inspiration rabbit hole of Japanese Graphic Design goods? Well I have a new rabbit hole for you to crawl into! It’s called Book Cover Archive and is pretty much that, an archive full of book cover designs and designers. You can search by title, author, designer, art director, genre, publisher and more. My favourite feature is the randomizer on the homepage which quickly loads up plenty of visual candy.
When I was younger I grew up in Portugal so I was mostly exposed to European/UK versions of books, however I did have family overseas who would often send me over US copies. I always loved looking at the different covers by different publishers and very opinionatedly deciding which I preferred. I clearly was meant to be a graphic designer from a young age on and can confirm that I still very much judge a books by their covers, it’s so hard not to!
I’m currently reading Tina Fey’s hilarious book “bossypants” and was curious to see how other designs incorporate human elements on covers. Below is a (slightly large) collection of a few of my favourites.
These are fantastic! I’m always drawn to art that uses portraits in interesting ways (cover the faces, only showing partial faces), so I love your picks. Plus, now I want to read all of these!
Haha I want to read them all too! Book cover design is not easy so it’s always interesting to see how designers capture a whole concept of a story on a cover.