“A book jacket or cover is a selling device, close to advertising in its form and purpose, but also specific to a product that plays a teasing game of hide and seek with commerce.”
—Alan Power, Front Cover: Great Book Jacket and Cover Design
As readers and consumers, we’re all familiar with the pleasures and pitfalls of judging a book by its cover. The cover is a crucial aspect of book marketing and can significantly impact a book’s success and brand recognition. This involves creating a visual representation of the book that attracts readers and conveys the essence of the content. Strong covers rely on compositional excellence, balance, appropriate implementation of negative space, alignment, typographic hierarchy, legibility, and clarity of symbolism. Great covers are simple, intentional, genre-appropriate, and instantly communicative.
While readers and publishing professional alike consider a book to be a timeless, precious form that purveys knowledge and bleeds art—and I believe it is all those things—we cannot divorce it from the capitalistic structures of our society. It is also a product meant to be sold, and as such, it’s subject to the same branding principles as any other product you’d buy at a store.
From the rise of modernism in the 1920s which defined classic novels like F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby1 to the playful typographic explosion of the 1960s that appears in the cover designs of titles like Joseph Heller’s Catch-222 and Saul Bellow’s Herzon,3 one can trace the trends in book cover design that have ebbed and flowed over the past century.
Since the book jacket’s first appearance in 19th century England, they’ve evolved from throwaway protective sheaths into elaborate marketing tools. The study of advertising in the early 1920s led publishers to the realization that they could not only “establish a brand” through cover design, some brands so iconic now that their books are “like catnip to literary collectors,”4 but also “make different genres of book more easily identifiable for the convenience of the customer.”5
As publishers patterned covers across genre, trends began to appear on the shelves. At times, design similarities have been the result of a lack of imagination or risk aversion, but other times, designers (like musicians) are just sampling elements they like from other designers. Design and print vendors contribute to these trends as well, like Pantone’s annual declaration for Color of the Year. This year it’s Cloud Dancer.
All of these real-world triggers tend to influence a graphic designer, with their finger on the pulse of what readers are currently drawn to. Being a strong visual communicator is no small feat. It’s a special skill, and it’s one that we are lucky to have in abundance at Brown Books Publishing Group. Our two-man, in-house design team consists of Senior Designer, Danny Whitworth, who has been with the company for over 13 years and has played a pivotal role in shaping the visual identity for a large part of our backlist, and Junior Designer, Jonathan Alcott, who started with us a year and half ago and has infused new acquisitions with his own unique flair.
Cover designs at Brown Books are born out of collaborative creative conversations between our editorial, PR, and design departments, as well as genre and market research, and the author’s input.
At Brown Books, our design process typically begins during the line edit stage and starts with a request of “cover homework” from the author. This is where we collect their ideas, inspirations, and preferences. To help guide the process, we ask authors to share three covers they really like and three that they don’t, along with any specific elements they may prefer, whether that be a favorite color or font.
Our designers then take this cover homework and will begin developing concepts over the course of a few weeks. The designer will pair the author’s vision with market research in the book’s genre to create a range of cover concepts, and once we have several covers designed, we will review the designs with our leadership team.
During the leadership review, senior staff from our design, editorial, and PR departments gather around a table to discuss all of the design concepts and narrow them down to two solid options for the author to consider. Depending on the book, we may start with anywhere from three to ten concepts before making a selection.
In hybrid publishing, author input matters deeply and our authors have the final say on their cover design. Both options we ultimately present to the author are not only symbolically aligned with their content and vision, but they are high-caliber designs that we believe will have a strong presence in the marketplace and that we, as the publisher, would be happy to put our name on.
When asked to reflect on his personal approach to developing book covers, Senior Designer, Danny Whitworth, explained his process from both conceptual and practical standpoints:
“When I start a cover, I first review the author’s cover homework. We ask authors to visit a bookstore or look online and send us three covers they like and three they dislike. I always try to create at least one cover that incorporates design trends from the covers they like. I also review summaries and editorial notes to get a sense of the book’s focus, including key characters, subjects, and ideas. I’ll research comparable titles online or in a physical bookstore and often read the introduction or first chapter of the manuscript to identify imagery that might spark an idea. I also search the manuscript for key terms and create quick thumbnail sketches to test whether a concept might work compositionally.
Once I have two or three solid ideas, I search online for imagery, elements, and fonts to support them. While gathering images, new ideas often emerge, so I save everything into folders and later organize them by concept. I then begin designing in Photoshop, starting with the trim size and placing the title, subtitle, and author name. Concepts can range from simple to highly complex, sometimes involving dozens of images and layers.
I typically explore many variations before presenting three to ten strong concepts at our team cover meeting with leadership, editorial, PR, marketing, and design, ultimately narrowing them down to the top two to share with the author.”
Here are a few examples of covers designed by Danny. In each set shown below, both concepts were presented to the author, and in every case, the design on the left was the one ultimately chosen.
Junior designer, Jonathan Alcott, also shared his process:
“The first step is research. Always. I look at design and genre trends, early drafts of the manuscript, editorial notes, marketing copy, homework from the author about their cover preferences, and more. There are a lot of different parties who have a stake in the project, which means a lot of angles to take into account. The author, publisher, readers, librarians, bookstores, retailers, and others. Every group has their own expectations and opinions, and the design process is figuring out how they all fit together.
From there, I start sketching ideas. And I keep sketching. Over and over and over again, filling pages with little sketches until I find a good idea. There’s a magnetism to an idea when it’s functioning on multiple levels, communicating genre, tone, theme, and a message. That’s when I go to Photoshop and refine it, testing out variations and styles. The typography, colors, composition, and visual elements all stem from that core idea, like puzzle pieces that I’m assembling.
And then, once that cover is ready, I start all over again. I keep going until I’ve got several high-quality covers to show. Elegant ideas are found, not forced, and that process involves a lot of trial and error.”
Here are a few examples of covers designed by Jonathan. In each set shown below, both concepts were presented to the author, and in every case, the design on the left was the one ultimately chosen.
When we share cover concepts, they’re presented as fully realized designs, work we believe is ready for an author’s eyes. At the same time, our approach is deliberately collaborative. This is the author’s book, and their belief in the cover matters, especially since they’re the one who will ultimately champion it to readers. Our goal is for authors to feel a genuine sense of ownership and connection to the final design. I strongly believe in this kind of partnership, even though it can be complicated at times, particularly when personal taste and established design principles don’t naturally align.
Over the years, I’ve seen this tension take many forms: authors arriving with a very specific image already in mind, attempts to incorporate too many ideas at once, or well-intentioned feedback from friends and family that nudge a design away from what’s most effective. At the same time, authors are often in the rare position of bringing fresh perspective to what can become a mechanical process when designers work in a vacuum. Through that collaboration, and with the many years of professional design experience our team brings to the table, we consistently find a strong, healthy middle ground, no matter how long it takes. The covers that make up our backlist are a testament to that process.
Every recommendation we make is grounded in a single goal: helping the book succeed, both creatively and in the marketplace. That’s the benchmark we design against every day.
FEATURED IN THIS ARTICLE
The Last Rocketman: A Memoir by Dan Schlund
It’s Not the Bricks, It’s the Mortar: Optimize Your Retail Business for Lasting Success by Mike Cosentino
History in the Making: A Focus on Five U.S. Presidents by Christy Bowe
Block Island: Poems, Photos, and Letters by Daniel Berrigan
The Taste of Ambiance: Luxury Wine Cellar Designs by Al Fuentes
Killer Vintage: A West Texas Wine Thriller by Eric D. Sanchez
Hidden Hospitality: Untold Stories of Black Hotel, Motel, and Resort Owners from the Pioneer Days to the Civil Rights Era by Calvin Stovall Jr.
Ascending Species: A Novel by Rand Paulsen
The Evolution of U.S. Mortgage Securities: Lessons Learned through Four Decades of Innovation (1970-2010) by Michael D. Youngblood
Mystic Spires Post-Mortem: A Cold-Case Legal Thriller by Stacey Jernigan
Radiant Longevity: A Physician’s Protocol for Living Your Best Life by Dr. Julianna Lindsey
Formidable Attire: The Creative World of Fyberdyne Laboratories by Edward Richard Endres, Jr.
ENDNOTES
Jacket design by Francis Cugat (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925). Celestial Eyes, which was the original design, was oil on canvas and commissioned specifically for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby.
Jacket design by Paul Bacon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961). One of many book jackets by Bacon. Other notable dust jackets by him include Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), William Styron's Confessions of Nat Turner (1967), and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962).
Jacket design by John Griffiths. (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964). Griffiths was a Penguin book cover designer throughout the mid-20th century and played an integral role in defining the Penguin brand.
Bucky Sinister, “Black Sparrow Press: An Anecdotal History,” Bucky Sinister (Substack), June 22, 2024.
Alan Powers, Front Cover: Great Book Jackets and Cover Design (London: Octopus Publishing Group, 2001).