Other examples of book covers

Mr Peanut

This is a great example of a book cover using gestalt principles, proximity and similarity to make the design look captivating. The design features loads of brown circles close together that form a large shape resembling of a face, skull or a pea nut.  This design characteristic may causes people to associate the image with a classic video game from the 1980's The main character of the story, Mr Peanut, is a graphic game designer. The use of a symbolic signifiers, the circles, connotes that the story is set in the later 1980's or early 1990's. 

The typography on this page looks very dynamic due to the colour scheme. Each word features a different shade of brown to make the colour scheme consistent and natural to the reader. To compel the audience to the read the text, there should be one white letter to create an anomaly.  The arbitrary sign with this characteristic is the title. This book cover features a surname as the title.  


The use of the iconic, the skull, conveys a motionless feel. People from across the world recognise this sign as death. This  on a connotation level suggests that this is a crime story includes a murder. The darker shades of brown make this a memorial image because the dark brown makes the eyes look empty. 

The Cruel Radiance

This is another book cover that uses a very emotional image to entice readers to explore the book. The writer aims to help understand political violence in order to prevent it from occurring.  This book mainly relies on the iconic signifier, the sad looking girl and the arbitrary signs, the text, to create a book cover featuring a sad girl looking at the audience. The use of a emotional girl makes the reader feel sad, therefore, it causes the reader to have purpose to read the political book. The arbitrary sign, 'photography and political violence', are formal text tells the user what the is book offers. The book's photos shows people victims of crimes committed by governments.

Black and white emphasises the feeling of hopelessness. The overall colour scheme enhances the impact of the girl looking sad because these colours usually make us feel depressed. The strong light white source reflecting on the skin makes the face the main focal point.   

The slab serif typeface creates a formal theme for the book cover. The thickness of the  font makes the kerning causes the text look unnatural for the reader to look at. To improve its legibility, the characters should be separated a little bit. 

Eight Weeks of Bruce

This is a book cover thats shows wine being spilt onto a service. The interior section of the red wine features text, which is the title. The large contrast between the background and the wine, and the emboss effect to make the wine look 3D makes the text area the main focal point. The iconic signifiers, the glass and the wine, connotes a character in the story who is a alcoholic.  The arbitrary sign, 'eight weeks', symbolises the amount of time that the female character had a relationship with the alcoholic. 

In term of typography, this is post modern style text because it breaks some design rules. The baseline is broken because some letters are not positioned on a straight line. In a way, the scaling of some characters makes the typeface design look disorientating.




















References 

http://bookcoverarchive.com/book/mr_peanut
http://bookcoverarchive.com/book/the_cruel_radiance
http://bookcoverarchive.com/book/eight_weeks_of_bruce
http://bookcoverarchive.com/book/an_ethics_of_interrogation