The advent of digital book publishing and online selling means that graphic designers can take a more experimental approach to book cover design, adopting more minimalist and abstract designs that are simpler and free of the clutter of typography.
THE SPEED AND CONVENIENCE OF PRINT-ON-DEMAND digital publishing has allowed our publishing start-up, White Labels Books, to innovate within the graphic design of our front covers. Our books are seen first online and within social media, rather than in traditional book stores. They are also sold digitally, and so the author and title information for each publication are already displayed within Amazon’s page layout, and so there is no need for it to be included on the book jacket cover as well.
MINIMALIST SIMPLE ABSTRACT BOOK FRONT COVER DESIGN
At White Labels Book we have therefore adopted a more minimalist, simple and abstract approach to book front cover design, deleting all front page typography, and allowing the cover photograph or illustration to sit unobscured within the space, projecting with greater impact. Each cover is identified by its graphic language rather than by its cover lines.
INNOVATIONS IN PRINT PUBLISHING
This approach picks up on trends already established within magazines. In recent years, newsweeklies such as ‘TIME’ and ‘Newsweek’ have altered the art direction of their front covers to include minimalist text and simple impactful graphic designs. This is because the front pages of each new edition are now seen first on Twitter and Instagram, and often never in print, and so the images have to project at small scale on the screens of the smartphones in which they are mostly viewed. Popular monthly magazines have also adopted a simpler, more minimalist and abstract approach to front cover design. Their subscriber editions are often printed without cover text of the newsstand editions, as these versions are mailed direct to consumers rather than having to fight for attention on the newsagents shelves.
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