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Excellent Book Covers and Paperbacks

By Smashing Editorial, April 14th, 2008 in Inspiration | 128 Comments | Forum

Book covers are hard to design and nice to look at. An effective book cover manages to catch human’s eye and convey the idea behind the book on one single page. However, it’s getting even harder: to make a book really hard to forget, designers need to design the cover in a unique, creative and striking way. That’s not that different from Web where it’s important to build a sound information architecture upon a rather restricted design layout.

The main idea of this post is to provide you with some creative, expressive and appealing book covers. You won’t like all of them, but you’ll definitely find some designs which are worth pondering upon.

You may be interested in the following posts we’ve published earlier:

Breathtaking Typographic Posters with over 50 breathtaking typographic posters designed by artists across the globe. We feature Oriental, Iranian, Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese and Russian typographic posters as well as a number of further references.
Award-Winning Newspaper Designs with examples of outstanding newspaper designs collected from dozens of countries.
Data Visualization and Infographics showcases spectacular data visualizations and infographics which manage to combine a strong visual appeal with the effective presentation of information.
Data Visualization: Modern Approaches presents interesting modern approaches to data visualization as well as related articles, resources and tools.

Please keep in mind: there are thousands of excellent book covers; we’ve selected only few ones which are excellent in our humble opinion. Although this selection is definitely subjective, we’ve tried to do our best to find interesting designs which make the book cover hard to forget. If you have further suggestions please comment on this post. All covers posted are the copyright of their respective holders.

Book Covers

1. A Clockwork Orange
Meet Alex. Simple, but so memorable. Designed by David Pelham.

2. Brave New World
Designed by Gregg Kulick.

3. A Perfect Mess

4. Christopher Moore, “The Dirty Job”, 10/07

5. Disorders of Memory and Learning
Effective and creative. 1968. Cover Design by Martin Bassett.

6. Jordan Crane’s Book Covers
Crane’s illustrations are beautiful and memorable. That’s what makes a good book cover.

7. Paul Rand’s Book Covers
Paul Rand: one of the most influential modern graphic designers. Simple and effective.

8. The End Of Inequality
Cover design by Peter Stone.

9. 1984

10. Incomplete Manifesto
Just a sketch. This book doesn’t exist.

11. Soviet Science Fiction book cover

12. Penguin Book Covers

13. St. Cyborg’s

14. A Penguin Special - A Suitable Case for Treatment

15. “The book of the Spirits”

16. Gas Book 08: Blue Source

17. The Language of Graphics

18. 1964 Sex and Society - Alex Comfort

19. 1970 War Gaming - Andrew Wilson

20. 5ПЯТИЛЕТКА
A Soviet book cover from 1930.

21. John Gall’s Book Covers
Gall’s covers always take a look at the book content from a quite unusual perspective. Masterpieces.

22. We Can Build You

23. Magical Thinking
The book cover is attractive and conveys the idea of the book.

24. Twenty Questions

25. 1982 Know Your Own Personality.

26. ВЧЕРА И СЕГОДНЯ (1935)

27. Alvin Lustig’s Book Covers

28. Suiza Constructiva

29. “The Art of a Book”
Interesting conceptual solution.

30. “The Creative Process”

31. Understanding Media
Interesting use of symbols.

32. Exile and the Kingdom
Eye-catching. Designed by Helen Yentus.

33. House of Meetings
Designer: Peter Mendelsund.

34. Manuel Bandeira, “Poems chosen by the author”
The Brazilian designer Elaine Ramos is known for simple yet unusual book cover designs. “The wonderful thing about this cover is that the paper has thin horizontal lines in relief that complement the horizontal design. Again, tactile. White dots you can see are numbers from one to fifty - the title is “fifty poems selected by the author”. The sky and stars reference one of the author’s most famous poems, translated “Morning Star”.”

35. Cigarette Century

36. Dutch paperback book cover design

37. Hans Kleefeld book cover design

38. Livre perdu1 / Lost book 1

39. Toby Litt

40. Grabink Book Covers Decoration
Book bindings by gner-artists Chris Enock and David Enock.

Minimalism

41. The Music of Chance

42. One Red Paperclip

43. Supercapitalism

44. A Clockwork Orange
You remember, right? Alex liked milk spiked with various stimulants (”milk plus”) or hallucinogens (”synthemesc”).

45. Worst Years Of Your Life

Typography

46. Expo 58, book cover

47. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Book Covers - The Illustrated Novel

48. Last Days Of Publishing

49. The Trouble With Physics

50. Small Crimes in an Age of Abundance

51. The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual

52. Emil Ruder, “Typographie”

53. Nikelleo Rellana’s work

54. House of Leaves Book Cover
Designed by Joe Paul.

55. Change the Way You See Everything: Through Asset-Based Thinking

56. Kidney For Sale By Owner
Designed by David Drummond.

57. Ace of Spades: A Memoir

58. About Face: Reviving the Rules of Typography

59. The Mayor’s Tongue

60. All the Sad Young Literary Men

61. swissmiss: Books

Sources and Resources

Published in Inspiration, April 14th, 2008
Tags: books, covers, inspiration, paperback

1.

Gerd Wippich (April 14th, 2008, 2:19 am)

Great stuff. Thanx for collecting.
2.

davester (April 14th, 2008, 2:47 am)

awesome inspiration source! thanks
3.

Mostafa Mourad (April 14th, 2008, 2:48 am)

isn’t “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” book, number 47, the SAME as HP campaign, the computer is personal again??
4.

Rodrigo (April 14th, 2008, 3:13 am)

About the book with the stars in its cover – “Cosac Naify - Detalhes do Livro” – it’s wrong! Cosac Naify is the publisher’s name, and “detalhes do livro” means “books’s details”. The book’s real author is Manuel bandeira and it’s named “poemas escolhidos pelo autor”, or “poems chosen by the author”. He’s also a lovely writer, one of the most famous writers here in Brazil. Cheers!
5.

L.E. (April 14th, 2008, 3:16 am)

How about reading the Bible a bit more?
6.

S.V (April 14th, 2008, 3:27 am)

Really nice collection. Its not usable for me, but still nice to look at.
7.

naveed ahmad (April 14th, 2008, 3:27 am)

really nice collection of book covers i must say..
and a very nice and informative post :) thanks alot for sharing..
best of luck :)
8.

Andrew Randazzo (April 14th, 2008, 3:29 am)

Happy Blogger Appreciation Day! I appreciation your site and all the good stuff you guys put out. Keep it up, and God bless!

Link [www.problogger.net]
9.

TIMMAY (April 14th, 2008, 3:47 am)

AMAZING COVERS! I got all the inspiration I need for my next book. As you can see, my current book over is not the greatest - Link [timothysykes.com]

Thanks again!
10.

Jbcarey (April 14th, 2008, 4:05 am)

not really my line of work, but some amazing work there.
11.

canute (April 14th, 2008, 4:08 am)

really good
12.

Brian (April 14th, 2008, 4:22 am)

I’ve always been a huge fan of the typographic work on Penguin Classic’s design for Thomas à Kempis’s The Inner Life.
Link [us.penguingroup.com]
13.

Daniel (April 14th, 2008, 4:35 am)

More Paul Rand here: Link [www.paul-rand.com]
14.

Ed (April 14th, 2008, 5:12 am)

That’s where HP got the idea from. the book was first…
15.

Rizwan (April 14th, 2008, 5:51 am)

I love creative and eye catching book covers. They inspire me to pick up the book and read through it. Unfortunately many times they are great book covers but not great books. The examples above are very good and creative.

They inspire me to write a book so I can design the cover. I’ve got the design part down, now I just need to find a good story too.

Great collection!
16.

madriaza (April 14th, 2008, 7:43 am)

number 47 is exactly the same graphic idea of the HP campaign. HP- BUSTED!!
17.

Steve Ranford (April 14th, 2008, 8:02 am)

Never judge a book by its cover… except in this instance.

Great collection.

Link [www.steveranford.co.uk]
18.

Jared (April 14th, 2008, 8:03 am)

You should consider adding Stefan Stagmeister’s newest book Things I Have Learned in My Life So Far. Link [www.thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com] It’s an amazing example of a very inventive book design.
19.

Griff (April 14th, 2008, 8:08 am)

Excellent collection. I have always been struck by the cover of Link [covers.fwis.com]
20.

Ben (April 14th, 2008, 9:11 am)

Wonderfull book covers.
Now in the same spirit you could have a post on Record Cover Artwork, which is one of my favorite thing to design. There’s a few good book about it… starting of course with the Blue Notes covers of Reid Miles.
21.

Danny (April 14th, 2008, 9:48 am)

Hey guys, I visit smashing quite a bit, and it really nice to see beautiful print work on here!
especially such a brutal post of it, thanks a million
I’m all for 37. Hans Kleefield and the mayor’s tounge at 59.
22.

All-X (April 14th, 2008, 12:00 pm)

Good call, book covers are a strong point for illustration.
But the # 18. hummm, I prefer my rug… bergh!
23.

Chirag (April 14th, 2008, 12:31 pm)

excellent!
24.

elmow (April 14th, 2008, 1:28 pm)

Must add S. Neil Fujita - The Godfather and In Cold Blood book covers are classics.
25.

shasta (April 14th, 2008, 1:29 pm)

there are some excellent designs here, but to be honest, all that bauhaus-like stuff (for example 15-20 and later, thank god almost only on older books) is gross. makes me feel like i’m back at art school with that 60 year old design teacher still stuck in the way of designing in that age showing us his 2 hour slideshows of oldschool bauhaus posters. these early graphic designers definitely provided some important influences to today’s design, but considering them as “excellent book covers” today sounds to me like saying “the neanderthals were very smart” - at the time it might have been true, but it’s just nothing compared to what’s being done today.
26.

Ben (April 14th, 2008, 6:57 pm)

@ L.E. how about not spamming the comments with your OT messages of “faith”. (see “Icons” post before)
27.

suvarna (April 14th, 2008, 11:44 pm)

Excellent list!!
28.

Devin (April 15th, 2008, 12:44 am)

Nice stuff, I urge you to check out Kirk Duoponce and his book covers. He has designed more than 1,000 covers nationwide.

Take a look around his website at Link [www.dogeareddesign.com]
29.

Kealan Patrick Burke (April 15th, 2008, 5:19 am)

It would appear that someone has a thing for anachronistic photorealistic minimalism…;p
30.

sunil shenoy (April 15th, 2008, 5:52 am)

really neat… superb…
31.

Jan Diaz (April 15th, 2008, 8:45 am)

Cool Book Covers.

Might add this. Link [www.octonauts.com]
32.

Talha (April 15th, 2008, 10:05 am)

I agree with shasta , “excellent”, “top 10″ kind of adjectives don’t really manifest it’s meaning anymore.
I would change the headline to “A variety of old and new book covers.”
33.

imsraaia (April 15th, 2008, 1:31 pm)

very nice…
34.

Odin Chen (April 15th, 2008, 2:51 pm)

Really creative book cover designs! As a student in media, I have to say that some book cover can worth dozens of credits from print media courses. Thanks for sharing. It would be nice to know more about the deep meanings behind those covers.
35.

Sean (April 15th, 2008, 3:23 pm)

The “1984″ cover was designed by Shepard Fairey, of OBEY GIANT fame, he also produced a cover for “Animal Farm,” also by Orwell.
36.

Jeff Golenski (April 15th, 2008, 4:01 pm)

I think you may be right!
37.

heather (April 17th, 2008, 2:10 am)

i bought and read the general theory of love, and had never heard of it beforehand… (unusual for me) … i was especially struck with the cover, and i knew at the time it was partly what drew me to the book. great choice to include that!
38.

rafael alves (April 17th, 2008, 1:10 pm)

number 34: the name of the designer is elaine ramos. cosacnaify is the publishing house. elaine and raul loureiro (another famous brazilian designer) do almost all their covers/books.

Link [www.cosacnaify.com.br]
39.

Vishal Goyal (April 29th, 2008, 1:26 am)

Some more smart book covers are

Link [www.vishalgoyal.co.in]

Please comment after read this blog
40.

Dave (May 19th, 2008, 6:17 am)

Link [www.coverboom.com] has a great gallery of book covers as well.
Pretty cool collection, with some cross-over with what’s shown here.
41.

helloMuller (June 19th, 2008, 9:53 am)

13. St. Cyborg’s is designed by myself – Link [www.hellomuller.com]

Thanks for including it in the list!
42.

xindi (June 23rd, 2008, 10:25 am)

Freakonomics!
43.

Frank (August 15th, 2008, 7:51 am)

Great Collection

Frank
Link [www.allbusinesslistingsinusa.com]
44.

Frank (September 23rd, 2008, 2:18 pm)

Nice collection…

Frank
Link [www.welcometoinsurance.com]
45.

isaac (September 23rd, 2008, 2:20 pm)

how much do book covers cost?

isaac

Link [www.welcometoapartments.com]
46.

Računovodstvo (October 1st, 2008, 3:20 am)

Amazing work. I can’t believe how innovative some of the covers are!
47.

sb (October 13th, 2008, 7:39 am)

Don’t forget about Link [www.usatoday.com] He’s designed over 1,500 book covers since the mid-80s.
48.

jb (October 15th, 2008, 12:18 pm)

Nice list - really interesting designs and layouts. In a word - Inspirational! :)
This isn’t absolutely relevant, but here’s a link to a site that sells software which’ll convert 2D Book covers into 3D eBook covers. Just thought some might be interested. Link [www.ecoversuiteelite.com]
49.

erica (October 19th, 2008, 6:55 pm)

i’ll add something.
“stainless longganisa”

the book cover was composed of all the pen the author used through out his life. :D
50.

heather van de mark (October 30th, 2008, 7:36 am)

this is still probably one of my favorite SM posts of all time. absolutely fantastic.
51.

Kieran (December 16th, 2008, 9:13 pm)

Where is a ‘Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius’ by Dave Eggers??!! Great cover, great book, a masterpiece!
52.

Kim Al (December 17th, 2008, 12:56 am)

“the worst years of your life” - maybe the best cover
it just sticks in my head!
53.

Gordon (December 24th, 2008, 1:12 am)

Hi. Good news.
54.

Alek (December 29th, 2008, 7:54 pm)

Hi. Good site.
55.

Faiyaz (January 8th, 2009, 2:46 am)

Great Collection
56.

Karen (January 9th, 2009, 8:43 am)

For great book covers, see also Readerville’s Link [www.readerville.com] series.
57.

imtiaz.ul.haq (February 10th, 2009, 2:25 am)

i learn a lot.of this and getting.more historical references.GREAT
58.

Andria (February 21st, 2009, 7:28 am)

The cover of “not as crazy as i seem’ is a good one.
59.

steve freidus (May 12th, 2009, 3:46 am)

can you recommend a club or organization in the united states whose members are interested in colllecting book covers?

also, attractive book covers with manhattan based themes?

thanks
60.

Ashish singh (May 21st, 2009, 11:32 am)

Excellent collection……
61.

Jim (June 6th, 2009, 12:20 pm)

Cool covers.