Book cover design has been top of mind in the recent news cycle. Rightly so. Covers play a significant role in persuading potential readers in a very noisy marketplace, with more than $21 billion in revenue (2024) at stake for trade publishers. Before we get into this month’s designs, I want to highlight two book cover features worth your time.
First, Olivia Hingley, associate editor at It’s Nice That, recently wrote an article asking whether we’ve gone too far in judging books by their covers. In the piece, Hingley interviews Na Kim and David Pearson, designers who’ve both graced PRINT’s book cover column. They discuss the current state of book cover design: art directors disappearing from publishing teams, marketing-driven decisions, shrinking budgets that also shrink the artistic vision, and publishing’s aversion to any kind of friction, leading to derivative everything. In one particularly compelling line of discussion, Kim and Pearson wonder whether social media has diminished the meaning of books and reading, reducing them to props or trophies. And, if so, is design culpable?
The second is an interesting survey of the last quarter-century of book cover design, which also addresses social media’s role as a market force. Creative platform 99designs analyzed 701 covers from New York Times bestsellers from 2000 to 2024 to examine how major news, cultural events, and technology shaped cover design trends. Among the insights: why the post-9/11 period ushered in a spike in white covers; the most enduring trends in covers, given our precarious geopolitical situation; and how the social media age and the BookTok boom changed publishing (and cover design) forever. Read the full report here.
Our favorite book cover designs for books that hit the shelves this month include an arresting painting by Darwinian artist Minna Leunig for Olga Tokarczuk’s House of Day, House of Night, and a whimsical cover by Jaya Miceli for Tamar Adler’s Feast on Your Life, featuring the work of paper artist Anna Brones.
Check them out below.
Art and cover design by Minna Leunig
Cover design by Monograph / Matt Avery, featuring a detail of Chancay culture, Peru. Loincloth, twelfth–fourteenth century.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Jacket design by Nils Sundberg and David Andréas, Flo förlag, Sweden, adapted by Becca Fox Design. Typography adapted from Nick Misani; Jacket artwork © Martin Jacobson
Book cover design by Jaya Miceli, featuring artwork by Anna Brones
Jacket design by Maddy Angstreich featuring art by Kento IIDA; Art direction by Jackie Seow
Cover design by Frances DiGiovanni / Rodrigo Corral Studio
Cover design by Nicolette Seeback Ruggierro
Cover design by Alban Fischer
Cover design by Emma Ewbank
Cover design by Emily Mahar
Cover design by Vivian Lopez Rowe, with art direction & photography by the author, Lauren Rothery
Cover design by Victoria Maxfield
One Signal/Atria
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