The Look of the Book

Judging a Book by Its Cover


We’re not supposed to do it, but we do it anyway. The book cover is the outward face of the text, the all-important first impression of the text, but it’s also incidental and easily replaced. The same text can take many different covers without losing its identity.

These contradictions started to intrigue us the more we thought about them. Eventually, they got us
thinking about the book cover as a specific medium of communication, graphic expression, design, and perhaps even art. There really is no other medium quite like it, but as is the case with all media in the twenty-first century, the book cover is being transformed by the digital revolution. Until recently, talking about book covers meant talking about physical books: either hardbacks (with or without paper jackets) or paperbacks. In the era of e-books and audiobooks, however, book covers exist as digital images that can float free of the texts that they cover. These days, we are likely to see a new book in the form of a publicity image before we can purchase it. As visual designs, book covers must accomplish a nearly impossible task: they have to be as effective at 1 1/2 inches tall, which is the size of an Amazon thumbnail image, as they are at 9 inches tall, displayed in the window of the brick-and-mortar bookstore. For this reason and others, the look of the book matters now as never before.