Book covers

I found a range of book cover that I think are appealing. I wanted to see fi there were common features that they all shared so that I could focus in on why they appealed to me. All these covers have a limited colour palette which has the effect of making them striking and attention grabbing without being too complex and jarring. Most of the covers use two colours for the majority of the details using different tones of the colours to add shadow, texture and depth to the illustrations. The colours used could be representative of the emotion, tone or context of the book itself, These book covers use the limited colours to create negative space and compositions that alter the viewers perception of the covers dimensions making the cover much more interesting and appealing. The negative space in a book cover is very useful, the illustrator can suggest a character or object with the shape of the space and be able to add text such as the title or authors name without it becoming lost in the details of the illustration. I want the text on my book cover to stand out form the illustrations but still work as part of the design, I don't want it to look like I have just added a font over the top of my work.

These are some more good examples of incorporate text into illustrations and compositions that manipulate the dimensions of the cover. Horizontal lines are of ten used to create space for text and break the cover into sections. I like simplicity and textures in these covers, the texture gives a hand made feel and makes simple shapes more appealing. The use of solid black and white means that when a plash of colour is used for important parts of the illustration it stands out and draws attention to it. It seems that stories with darker subject matter are often illustrated using black, white and red.