Book Covers of Note, May 2023

Dan

May 31

I hope you're keeping safe and well wherever you find yourself. A couple of people sent me posts about "blob" covers this month. If you read the blog regularly, you probably already know that I am pretty skeptical that they're as much of thing as they're made out to be. The examples always seem to be the same old covers with a couple of broadly similar-ish recent ones thrown in for relevance. They kind of look the same (not really) at small sizes, less so up close. "Bold and blocky" always seemed a more accurate description to me -- blocks of bold colours combined with blocks of (blocky) bold text. At worst, it feels like a loosely defined trend for the kind of literary-ish books that frequently appear in the likes of New York Times rather than something we should be agonizing over. I don't know why fixation with it grates. Maybe it's because the commentary always seems slightly snide? Or because I just don't think it represents an accurate picture of contemporary book cover design? I mean, book covers are always going to look broadly the same. There are some obvious common limitations that most designers have to work within. Even so, there are still lots of publishers and designers doing interesting and different things if you scratch the surface. Look a bit further -- they don't all look the same!

The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer; design by Kate Sinclair (Random House Canada / May 2023)

Berlin by Bea Setton; design by Emily Mahon; cover image by Nataša Denić (Penguin Books / May 2023)

Beware the Woman by Megan Abbott; design by Tal Goretsky (G.P. Putnam's Sons / May 2023)

I feel like Megan Abbott often gets really nice covers that work both for the genre and stand out in some way.

(But does this count this as a blob cover? Or is it not quite blobby enough? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Chrysalis by Anna Metcalfe; design by Jack Smyth (Granta / May 2023)

Close to Home by Michael Magee; design by Na Kim; photograph by Oumayma B. Tanfous (Farrar, Straus & Giroux / May 2023)

I believe the movie poster-like cover of the UK edition of Close to Home, published by Penguin last month, was designed by Gray318. The cinematic photo is by Enda Bowe from his Love's Fire Song project.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese; design by Kelly Winton (Grove Press / May 2023)

The East Indian by Brinda Charry; design by Tristan Offit (Scribner / May 2023)

Endpapers by Jennifer Savran Kelly; design by Jaya Miceli (Algonquin / February 2023)

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank; design by Annie Atkins (Penguin / May 2023)

This is just one of the many great covers in the Penguin Essentials series.

The Guest by Emma Cline; design by Oliver Munday (Random House / May 2023)

A History of Burning by Janika Oza; design by Albert Tang; illustration by Simone Noronha (Grand Central / May 2023)

The cover of the UK edition of A History of Burning, published by Vintage this month, was designed by Suzanne Dean with an illustration by Muhammed Sajid.

In Vitro by Isabel Zapata; design by Zoe Norvell (Coffee House Press / May 2023)

This reminded me that I've been meaning to link to Zoe's side project I Need a Book Cover, an online directory of (English language) book cover designers. It's well worth checking out even if you don't literally need a book cover.

I think the Saul Bass-ian cover of the Mexican edition of In Vitro, published Almadía, was designed by Alejandro Magallanes, but it would be great if someone more familiar with Mexican publishing can confirm!

Landscapes by Christine Lai; design by Kate Sinclair (Doubleday Canada / May 2023)

A nice Kate Sinclair double this month bringing the up the Canadian content!

The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar; design by Hayley Warnham (Oneworld / May 2023)

Disembodied hands are a bit of a thing this month (see The Guest), but this actually reminded me of Vasilis Marmatakis's lovely minimalist posters for The Lobster:

Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar; design by Rodrigo Corral (MCD / May 2023)

Shy by Max Porter; design by Carlos Esparza (Graywolf / May 2023)

The cover of the UK edition of Shy, published last month by Faber & Faber, was designed by Jonathan Pelham. Jonny is going freelance full-time in June if you would like to hire him!