In this research task, I had to select a range of books and/or magazines that use illustration, taking in and comparing how they use typography and images together. Whether their relationships work in context (or not!) and why. To kick things off, I spent time trying to get a broad range of books rather than sticking to a singular genre.
Town Is by the Sea - Sydney Smith
My first selection is Town Is by the Sea, illustrated by Sydney Smith. Smith is one of my favourite children's illustrators and I love the way that he evokes light through his use of watercolour and ink. This cover illustration is successful because it is beautifully composed.
The reflections of the sun on the sea leave space for the title text. The horizon creates a natural partition for the creators' names and the roofline provides a mirroring border. The typography is hand-lettered but done with consideration, with enough kerning and contrast with the background illustration to allow the title and names to be readable at a distance.
The other thing I particularly appreciate about the cover design is the way the title also leaves space on either side for book award seals (it may be presumptuous to factor these in, but they take up a lot of book real estate!).
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Roman Muradov
This illustration by Muradov stood out to me as another example of allowing space for the text to have its own dedicated area as part of the illustration. The composition places all the text at the bottom, allowing the reader to take in all of the wonderful colourful imagery before reading the text.
The text itself is less successful, and it feels like it is a little cramped in that space. There is enough space in the black under the rocky outcrop to contain all of the information, however, they have opted to have everything centrally aligned.
I feel that the less critical information about the foreward and the publisher could have been split into two blocks aligned to the left and right respectively.
Haynes Owners Workshop Manuals
I decided to also look at examples of non-fiction books with illustrations. The Haynes series of manuals lept to mind, as they have traditionally been the exemplar of communicating visual information efficiently and effectively through their diagrammatic illustrations.
Here clarity is everything, and almost half of the cover is dedicated to conveying the edition of vehicle covered in the manual. This is incredibly important, as these manuals have a common cover layout, so distinguishing editions from one another efficiently is essential.
In this composition, everything has its place and a job to do. The Haynes logo takes up a decent amount of real estate, as the brand is synonymous with quality information and ease of use. They give it the space it needs as it also has a job to do. The layout is comforting in its predictability, which projects confidence to veteran and new readers alike that the book is simple to navigate.
One Story - Gipi
This powerful graphic novel has an interesting cover. There is a lot of negative space but that serves the cover well. The large typography of the title seems initially to dominate the cover, which is unusual for a graphic novel.
However, this is done with intention, as the title is not coloured, but instead acts as a window into some of the story's artwork. It gives a hint of information about what the story is about.
When this is combined with the small letterbox illustration of a febrile male character, it plays to the title. In one sense they look like two very different stories, yet the title tells us that this is one story. The obfuscation draws you in, enticing you to open the book and read.
The Thursday Murder Club - Richard Bravery
This novel's cover is very reliant on its typography. Rather than commission an illustrator for this cover, Penguin kept it in-house with Art Director and former literary designer Richard Bravery responsible for the final cover.
It uses typography to try and convey the tone of the story, with only a small fox illustration to provide any intrigue or context to the story itself.
What strikes me is how much space is given over to directly sell the book, the design seems to be laid out specifically to have room for review quotes. Given that Penguin won an open auction for the licence rights to Osman's story by paying a seven-figure sum [10]. This leads me to believe that a lot of the design choices for this novel were made to maximise Penguin's return on investment. The design was criticised for imitating that of Dawn French's novel [7], and while I don't think there was any direct plagiarism I do think it speaks to a book design that relies more on design zeitgeist than an intelligent representation of the story.
The Princess Bride - Ted Coconis
When looking for examples of bad book cover design, in an age of online self-publishing it's an embarrassment of riches. There is even a website dedicated to 'lousy book covers' [9]!
I wanted to find examples of books that had gone through mainstream publishing with questionable art and design direction. That's when I found this example by Ted Coconis. In 1974, off the back of the very successful 1973 hardback release of the novel, Ballantine Books commissioned Coconis to create a cover illustration for a paperback run of the story.
The overall layout of the cover is simple and the relationship between the text and the space for illustration works well. However, where the 1973 hardback cover featured a quaint castle, the illustration of the paperback edition has nothing to do with the fairy tale story! It's hard to understand the art direction of this edition, but if their target market was to be adolescent boys then it might go some way in explaining the salacious illustration!
Imagine FX - Future Publishing
I subscribe to this magazine, where I receive a version of the magazine that has little to no text, giving full space to the cover art (which is specifically commissioned each month).
Generally speaking, I think that they do a decent job of making the artwork prominent. They often overlay the main illustration on top of the magazine title, and even (as in this case) over the main article title.
I do find that while the use of text is made with the economy of space very much in mind, the overall effect of the magazine often feels very 'busy.' Again, in an age of dwindling paper sales, this may be to try and maximise sales and the strength of the articles may be seen to be a bigger draw than the quality of the cover art.
All images © their respective owners, and used under the educational fair-use policy.
References
Gipi and Richards, J. (2020) One story. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics Books.
Goldman, W. (1974) The Princess Bride. New York, NY: Ballantine.
Haynes, J.H. and Stead, D.H. (2013) VW Transporter 1600 Owners Workshop Manual. Sparkford, U.K.: Haynes Publishing.
Joyce, J. et al. (2016) A portrait of the artist as a young man. New York, NY: Penguin Books.
Osman, R. (2020) The Thursday murder club. London, U.K.: Viking.
Redman, R. (ed.) (2023) ‘Magazine Cover’, Imagine FX.
Sayce, R. (2023) Dawn French fires back at Richard Osman over copycat book cover comments, Metro. Available at: https://metro.co.uk/2023/09/11/dawn-french-richard-osman-clash-copycat-book-cover-comments-19478382/ (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
Schwartz, J. and Smith, S. (2018) Town is by the sea. London: Walker Books.
Shumate, N. (ed.) (2023) Lousy book covers, Lousy Book Covers. Available at: https://lousybookcovers.com/ (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
Wood, H. (2019) Richard Osman’s fiction debut scooped by Viking for seven figures in 10-way auction, The Bookseller. Available at: https://www.thebookseller.com/rights/richard-osmans-fiction-debut-scooped-viking-seven-figures-10-way-auction-1011011 (Accessed: 22 October 2023).
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