Books I won’t buy because I judge the cover

July 15, 2011

Not really, but what is going on with book cover design? It is regrettable that some book covers just do not accurately reflect the time and money spent on the contents. I won’t ask my brother, aunt, friend or my neighbour to design a book cover for me. It is a job best left to the professionals.

I come from an advertising background, before computers, and we had to letraset (use Letraset transfers) all the headlines of ads and logo names, making sure that the spacing between the letters was perfect. The rule is that the negative space between the letters should be equal. Also, copy on the front or back covers in books, and the colophon, (normally located on the reverse of the title page) should read one long, one short line, or one short, one long, to guide the eye. Not like a pyramid, inverted or otherwise, or like a beachball.

These are basic graphic design principles that for some or other reason are being ignored. And the typefaces! Designing book covers obviously isn’t a paying job because very few publishers seem to be employing trained graphic designers. I know how long it takes to experiment with different fonts to get the best results, but it is always worth it. Instead, I get the impression that type is sometimes just an afterthought. I can imagine the dialogue: “dit lyk nou oulik …” or “make it fun …” or “I want you to use the photo of Long Street I took over the weekend and use that typeface they use on the Coca-Cola can …” and “ … it just doesn’t look butch enough. Use a bold font.”

Fonts that look like handwriting, if that is the look the publisher and writer is looking for, should be balanced with the weight of the image. More often than not I see thin pencil-like letters that lack the same dramatic impact as the picture. Also, to have the title of the book, the writer’s name and the blurb in the same scratchy handwriting just makes it all more difficult to read. The eyes should have somewhere to focus as a starting point: lead from writer to the title to the blurb, for example, otherwise all the copy ends up on the same plane and it gets lost, as in the following examples:

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With all due respect to the talented Trantraal Brothers and poet Ronelda Kamfer, these are truly ugly typefaces just moered together and it claims no kinship with the poems or the wonderful illustrations:

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When book-covers make use of graphic art, but I can scarcely read the scratchy-arty ‘freehand’ title, I can’t take them seriously, especially if they are poetry books, and despite the fact that I know the reputation of the author:

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With the amazing effects available in most photo-editing programs nowadays, I fail to understand the unimaginative photography on the front covers below. Surely a more arresting result would have been better: