Following on from my recent post, "Beware: book covers ahead!", I was alerted to Meg Reid's blog post on book cover design trends for 2019. Do read it HERE, before absorbing my take on it. Here follows some of Reid's 'on trend selection of covers'...
Reid's post reminded me of the late '90s TV show, 'Changing Rooms', where couples swapped houses with friends with each pair decorating one room in each other's homes, with design advice from Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, a self-styled 'interior designer' who imposed Liberace styled makeovers onto these willing victims rooms, often with the most horrific results.
Reid, like Llewelyn-Bowen is instructing us, in a 'paint by numbers' directive, on how to design successful book covers for 2019. She tells us that consumers are looking for 'bolder and bolder covers' - BIG type to you and me. She calls this 'Big book' design. She goes on to explain how the 'Big book' style can be personalised e.g. new sans-serif typefaces (probably, not that new, Gotham), use orange and yellow, floral and overlapping elements, crossing out (been done a hundred times since the '60s) or use 'mid-century modern illustration' (sorry?).
She then shows us a run of covers of such similarity and noise that I found deeply depressing. She ends her piece saying, "Some designers will continue to push boundaries and move to edgier places...". Well, I bloody well hope so, otherwise, designers may just as well programme all the above information into a laptop and go back to bed, while the printer spews out the results.
Reid's article plays right into the hands of the publishing sales departments, the very bunch (with a few exceptions) with sheep like mentality, imposing ever more directives, restrictions and worryingly, marginalising the real creative mavericks out there.
Having been criticised recently for daring to comment negatively on the state of book cover design, Reid's article doesn't fill me with great hope and, is making the point for me .
Meanwhile, part 2 of my, "Beware: book covers ahead!" will be up on my blog next week. There will now be 3 parts, as the subject has taken me into a fascinating black hole.
If you missed my post 'Beware: book covers ahead Part 1' it's HERE