I recently ran across this video of Chip Kidd and James Ellroy. Though the video centers mostly on James Ellroy’s style and writing (he is one intense dude, no doubt) there are some spots where they discuss how the writing influences Kidd’s approach to designing a cover for the same author over and over. (Sidenote: [...]

The folks over at the Abebooks blog have published their picks for 30 Books Worth Buying For the Cover Alone. Only seven of the 30 use photographs. So illustration seems to be the way to go if you want to get noticed in the cover design crowd (of course, these are all fiction titles).
I REALLY [...]

Yet another edition of Cover Revisionist History, a designer has redesigned the Harry Potter books as Penguin Classics editions. I have a confession to make: I have not read the Harry Potter books (but I have seen almost all the movies, if that counts). But from what I remember, the images chosen for the covers are [...]

Here’s a collection of popular movies reworked as retro book covers. The illustrations on these fanboy covers are fantastic and all look like something I would not be surprised to run across in a used book store.

Now, I’m no Alvin Lustig or Paul Rand, but does anyone at Amazon REALLY think these are the “10 Best Covers of 2008″ in all of the tens of thousands of books that were printed this year? Really?
I mean, there were some GORGEOUS covers done this year. Maybe Amazon’s editors just let some random number [...]

Here’s a neat little time killer. JudgeBy.com displays cover images from Amazon and you have to guess what their 5-star rating is. I played for 20 covers and never got one right. I think it’d be more fun to play with just fiction covers or some sub-set, because once you get to a cover like

You [...]

The Book Design Review Blog has a good post on Chip Kidd’s Bat-Manga!, which features Batman as he’s been portrayed in Japan since the 60’s. The post also has videos as well as shots of the covers. I don’t speak Japanese, but I love the way that the characters in the Bat-symbol have the cowl [...]

Matt Taylor won the Penguin cover design competition we mentioned last week, for Sam Taylor’s The Island at the End of the World. Congratulations to him! It is, no doubt, one of the cleanest and well executed designs submitted, with some very complex imagery…

It’s almost too much. The synopsis just seemed to call for a [...]

I ran across Judge a Book By Its Cover this weekend. It’s a public librarian’s blog that features the worst book covers in the library. Pure torture, if you ask me. There are some really bad covers out there. Ugh! Not sure I can check in too often. After visiting that one I always have [...]

Across the pond, The Financial Times is running a periodic “check in” with current book covers. They’ve only picked 4 so far, but the insight from the news staff as been fairly good. They actually take the time to discuss some of the designers influences and frames of reference for each of the covers. I [...]