Book covers are hard to design and nice to look at. An effective book cover manages to catch human’s eye and convey the idea behind the book on one single page. However, it’s getting even harder: to make a book really hard to forget, designers need to design the cover in a unique, creative and striking way. That’s not that different from Web where it’s important to build a sound information architecture upon a rather restricted design layout.
The main idea of this post is to provide you with some creative, expressive and appealing book covers. You won’t like all of them, but you’ll definitely find some designs which are worth pondering upon.
Further Reading on SmashingMag:
- Beautiful Covers: An Interview With Chip Kidd
- Beautiful Brochures and Booklets
- Breathtaking Typographic Posters
- Award-Winning Newspaper Designs
Please keep in mind: there are thousands of excellent book covers; we’ve selected only few ones which are excellent in our humble opinion. Although this selection is definitely subjective, we’ve tried to do our best to find interesting designs which make the book cover hard to forget. If you have further suggestions please comment on this post. All covers posted are the copyright of their respective holders.
Book Covers
A Clockwork Orange Meet Alex. Simple, but so memorable. Designed by David Pelham.
Brave New World Designed by Gregg Kulick.
Christopher Moore, “The Dirty Job”, 10⁄07
Disorders of Memory and Learning Effective and creative. 1968. Cover Design by Martin Bassett.
Jordan Crane’s Book Covers Crane’s illustrations are beautiful and memorable. That’s what makes a good book cover.
Paul Rand’s Book Covers Paul Rand: one of the most influential modern graphic designers. Simple and effective.
The End Of Inequality Cover design by Peter Stone.
Incomplete Manifesto Just a sketch. This book doesn’t exist.
Soviet Science Fiction book cover
A Penguin Special - A Suitable Case for Treatment
1964 Sex and Society - Alex Comfort
1970 War Gaming - Andrew Wilson
5ПЯТИЛЕТКА A Soviet book cover from 1930.
John Gall’s Book Covers Gall’s covers always take a look at the book content from a quite unusual perspective. Masterpieces.
Magical Thinking The book cover is attractive and conveys the idea of the book.
Twenty Questions
1982 Know Your Own Personality.
ВЧЕРА И СЕГОДНЯ (1935)
“The Art of a Book” Interesting conceptual solution.
Understanding Media Interesting use of symbols.
Exile and the Kingdom Eye-catching. Designed by Helen Yentus.
House of Meetings Designer: Peter Mendelsund.
Dutch paperback book cover design
Hans Kleefeld book cover design
Toby Litt
Grabink Book Covers Decoration Book bindings by gner-artists Chris Enock and David Enock.
Minimalism
Supercapitalism
Worst Years Of Your Life
Typography
Expo 58, book cover
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Last Days Of Publishing
Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance
The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual
Nikelleo Rellana’s work
House of Leaves Book Cover Designed by Joe Paul.
Change the Way You See Everything: Through Asset-Based Thinking
Kidney For Sale By Owner Designed by David Drummond.
Ace of Spades: A Memoir
About Face: Reviving the Rules of Typography
All the Sad Young Literary Men
