Book Covers of the Month - 8/29/19

A worn looking book cover featuring an illustration of a mansion on a hill with white tentacles coming up from the bottom edge

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

This book is a fantastic read, and I'm so glad it got a cover that did it justice. Jarrod Taylor's design truly reflects on story within, from the 50s pulp style to the spooky tentacles doubling as Klansmen which perfectly captures the book's use of racism as horror.

A book cover with the words "The Hoarders" written over and over in different fonts and stacked on top of each other

The Hoarders by Scott Herring

David Drummond's cover manages to convey the cluttered, claustrophobic feel of hoarding while still remaining clean and structured enough to be readable and attractive.

A cover divided into sections, most with illustrations of sheep in a grassy field. The center images are of a wolf bearing its teeth

All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld

By dividing the images into irregular shapes Joan Wong creates a sort of organized chaos on this cover, giving potential readers an idea of the tense narrative and fragmented style of the book. None of the images of the sheep or field line up, while those of the wolf do, which, along with the wolf imagery's larger size and plain background, gives the cover a strong focus and visual hierarchy.

A bright yellow book cover with a cityscape at the bottom. The cityscape form the bottom edges of a giant A, with a set of small spaceships forming the A's cutout

Armada by Ernest Cline

Will Staehle is one of my favorite designers, and this cover is a great example of why. There's so many smart things going on with this design, from the creation of the A using the armada and the carefully structured cityscape, to how the A's composition directs the viewer's eye and creates an oppressive barrier around the city.

A cover witht the silhouette of a tiger. Within its shape isa bright orange sky background, with black tree branches that form the tiger's stripes

The Boy With the Tiger's Heart by Linda Coggin

This cover is one of the best examples of a "double exposure" look that I've come across. Levente Szabó makes use of this format a lot, and all his work is beautiful, but this one benefits the most from it. Rather than simply placing a background with another image's shape, it uses that background to help create the shape and coloring of the tiger, further connecting the two images.