Tuesday, September 30, 2014

On the topic of book covers...

Recently I browsed the AIGA 50 picks for best cover of 2013, at this link http://www.aiga.org/news-20140918/.  Though I enjoyed a some of them, a few of the covers were poor choices. 




I feel that No One is Here Except All of Us is a striking image.  It alludes to aspects of hiding, and not hiding, through both the meaning of the words and the ways the letters of the words are presented.  



Similarly, Indre Klimaite's On Continuous and Systematic Nutrition Improvement, feels like a cleaver cover design. By mimicking a flow chart, the cover has a simple cause and effect design.  I would think Klimaite would be establishing situations and giving recommendations within the book, reflecting the inspiration of the cover.


However, the cover for the Stephen King novel seems tired and uninspired to me. The dark, red hued, background is a woman, or simply a floating head (in a hat?), somewhat asleep, decapitated (alluring the viewer?), as smoke pours out of her lips to write out the books' name and author.  

Having a good familiarity with King's works I'm sure that the book has many mysteries that should not be explained in the cover. But the image does not feel creative enough to fit.  Who, what is the story about? Does the woman inhale smoke from doctor sleep, is she doctor sleep? What context is the story? Does it take place in a modern-urban context? Remote, country setting? There is so much imagery without context that a stark, black background would have been better than setting up an interesting image that has no relationship to any implied context to the story.










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