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 like these two:
But have to wonder about this choice:
The image just seems to literal and obvious to be chosen as worth “buying for the cover alone”.
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 iconic enough to work. What’s really fun is that the designer says”Due to multiple requests I am making these images available as prints”. So that’s cool. I wish more of what I find when trolling the interwebs could be mounted on my wall.
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 generator pick these. Even with the Chip Kidd cover included, this list is just weird, at best. Feel free to disagree and if you do, please explain why. I just don’t get it.
