An ad popped up in my email yesterday: This is what it said...
Thousands of free book cover templates. No design skills needed!
Followed by “Are you stuck trying to make a book cover design for your fantastic thriller, romantic comedy, science fiction, or any other genre? Choose from a huge range of eye-catching book cover templates and get your creative juices flowing.”
I then looked at some results from these “cover templates”. They all had that predictable formulaic blandness; like many of the book cover snaps I’ve taken on my regular visits to the Waterstones bookstore, with their table displays.
So, to all those publishing sales department dictators, who love telling the poor freelance jacket designers exactly what they want on a cover, can now dispense with them altogether and just download the, ‘create it yourself ‘app for a monthly fee of $24.
But seriously it is worrying for designers who inhabit the publishing world for their living. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the increasingly less discerning publishing houses are already using these kind of oven ready cover apps.
But thank goodness there are still designers producing delightful and original work without the usual demands of BIG type, a plethora of quotes and shout lines, shoved into the design brief by the sales department bods.
Along with an increasingly diminishing group of 'thinking' designers, Kelly Blair is one of them whose work is beautiful, intelligent and thought-provoking, and seems, on many occasions, to be able to circumnavigate the usual demands. Take a look...