If most book cover designs are conceived as quick-to-metabolize marketing tools, a great one can make the reader do a double take in slow motion. A good first impression is, of course, the goal: to elicit curiosity and excitement before you’ve even picked the book off a shelf. But a great cover can fortify itself in our consciousness, resonating more deeply as we absorb the text within, ideally prompting a second impression after we finish reading.
In a hyper-accelerated culture that rewards scrolling over pausing, that second impression — like the most compelling narratives — becomes a brake pedal, inviting us to stop and breathe, to reconsider the story and its characters on fresh terms. If, after the last page, the world looks more expansive and nuanced, and the cover takes on added significance in our relationship with the planet, it’s likely because that investment of time and concentration created space between our ears to imagine new possibilities. Which is why, despite the more than 150 million unique books in existence today, we still need more of them.
Alphabetical Diaries, by Sheila Heti
Designed by Na Kim
This cover is both an instruction manual for how to read the book and an audacious language experiment. Interlocking the author’s name with her title in the style of a word search, the design demonstrates how the cover’s behavior rhymes with the author’s alphabetical project by singling out an “A,” “B” and “C” with pops of different color. And the type choice clearly signals that this is an experiment we’re meant to have fun with. It’s easy for such distinct tasks to conflict on the face of a book. It’s hard to harmonize them this playfully.
Rooted, by Brea Baker
Designed by Chris Allen
It’s natural for a designer to bemoan having to work with a long subtitle, and inspiring to see one deployed with elegant, civic-minded intent here. In pairing black-and-white photography with a Day-Glo green that feels like it’s jumping off a screen, this cover announces its ambition to use its historical focus as a road map for a possible future.
Defectors, by Paola Ramos
Designed by Chantal Jahchan
The cleverness of this cover — using a playful typographical maneuver to illustrate the book’s central concern — is balanced by the stark contrast of the colors, which suggest the gravity of Ramos’s reportage. Handled differently, the cover might have performed like an overly clever joke. Treated in this way, it’s serious.
Knife, by Salman Rushdie
Designed by Arsh Raziuddin
Had any single choice here — the type, the color, the depth of the paper’s tear — been approached differently, this design, for a memoir about a horrific attempted murder, might have veered toward something more lurid or, worse, maudlin. Instead, the cover is as composed and calmly defiant as its author, both less interested in settling scores than in illuminating the stakes of political violence.
Paradise Bronx, by Ian Frazier
Designed by Thomas Colligan
If the top half of this cover is all party, the bottom half is all infrastructure. For a celebratory sociopolitical history of one of New York’s most storied boroughs, these tonal opposites of bursting type and sober photography are alive with contradictions, except for one piece of connective tissue: The style of the graffiti tags in the background of the photo is echoed in the top right corner as a graphic element. An extended squint reveals that this element is the author’s name.
The Body in the Library, by Graham Caveney
Designed by David Pearson
If it weren’t for the oblique clue in the subtitle, you would have no idea that cancer is the driving agent of this memoir. In all other respects, the design smartly widens its aperture, using one of mankind’s cohabitants in the natural world — a swan — to hit an existential note about anticipating the end of a life and how one might (literally, in the swan’s case) bow out with grace.
Absolution, by Jeff VanderMeer
Designed by Pablo Delcan
The first-edition paperbacks of VanderMeer’s Southern Reach series were loud, punchy and intentionally bright. For this late-addition tale, which expands the would-be trilogy into a quartet, swamp and marsh dwellers are still the order of the day, but the palette pivots hard toward darkness without losing an ounce of the environmental hazard that courses through each story. Devotees of botanically warped alligators and drugs have now met their champion.
I’m F*cking Amazing, by Anoushka Warden
Designed by Emily Mahon, painting by Nancy McKie, lettering by Lynn Buckley
Some people laugh hardest when a joke speaks directly to their lived experience; others crack up when confronted with something absurd and unfamiliar. I often fall into the latter category. I have not yet read this book, and I cannot explain why this supremely confident title is paired with a painting of these decidedly unimpressed fish. But every time I look at it, I laugh, and I celebrate its audacity.
Parasol Against the Axe, by Helen Oyeyemi
Designed by Grace Han
In many instances, displaying the same object that’s already announced in a book’s title comes off as repetitive or lazy. Here, the parasol is used to parry with a word other than its official counterpart. Rendered with clashing colors against patterns that seem deliberately designed to produce headaches, the parasol drawing joins its written counterpart as the point of entry into the story’s hall of mirrors.
Ghostroots, by ’Pemi Aguda
Designed by Sarahmay Wilkinson, illustrated by Day Brièrre
In waking life, confronting multiple questions at once is often deeply unpleasant. In art, it’s thrilling. This cover provides no clues to why this lamb is bleeding from the neck, or to whether its gaze is an invitation, an indictment or something more sinister. If the book’s title and the purposeful contraction and expansion of its typography suggest that supernatural forces may be grounded in real-life horrors, we’re encouraged to embrace that discomfort. The thoughtfulness of the whole package ensures that we do.
There’s Always This Year, by Hanif Abdurraqib
Designed by Tyler Comrie and Greg Mollica; photo by Matt Eich
The conversation that this photo is having with this book’s title and subtitle covers considerable ground with economy and speed. While capturing an afternoon pickup game and a kid who could just as likely be a player as a spectator, the design toys with the “ascension” in the book’s subtitle in more ways than one.
Love Junkie, by Robert Plunket
Designed by Oliver Munday
In which a single, unmistakable part of the body becomes the whole of the party. The choice to strip away any other identifiable human components allows this cover to democratize the possibility of loving yourself, regardless of who you are or what kind of affirmation you need to feel like a human, albeit one stranded on a compromised planet. In accomplishing this task, the design invites an arguably niche novel to engage with anyone and everyone — a trick that most humans still struggle to pull off.
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