Top 5 Book Covers

Another Top 5 as hosted by the Bionic Bookworm. If you’re not already in on this, what are you waiting for?

This week, Top 5 Favourite Book Covers. The hardest topics ever. Ever-changing, completely objective, like choosing your favourite child, torture. Even I’ll probably end up disagreeing with my final list. This one is just slightly easier than saying, “5 favourite books ever.” How? HOW??

Instead, my list will be “5 of the 100s of cover I think are really, really cool” I know, it’s not as catchy.

Illuminae

It’s bright. It’s a little chaotic. It draws the eye. It’s also the book I’m reading as a write this post. So every time I see it, it means I’m sitting down to read, and who doesn’t like that? It uses design elements that, once you get into the story, make it part of one complete package instead of mere ‘lipstick on a pig.’

Armada

If you’ve ever heard someone use the word ‘minimalist’ to describe some kind of design and you thought to yourself, “what the hell does that mean? Plain white with black letters?” Not really. But Armada is a good example. Shapes that give you a specific impression of a picture, but lacking a lot of detail. This cover gets a lot across without getting too convoluted.

We Are The Ants

I like the distance between the title and the ground. It subconsciously communicates some of the details of this book. They don’t show aliens, even though the blurb on the back will tell you that part, but you immediately get the impression that it has something to do with space, or at the very least, something very high up. The use of the colours is really nice, and there’s a lot to look at. It’d be easy to fall into a staring hole and waste a bunch of time.

All Rights Reserved

I like it. I’m also really excited to read this book, so that probably has something to do with it. Just the fact that all the words, which based on the synopsis are a big part of the universe built in the book, make up the background is super cool. As I said before, the cover being part of the book goes a long way with me, instead of just being a picture on the front of a book.

Sea of Rust

Every time I see this book cover, I stop and stare. It’s incredible! First the colour. It’s basically metal and rusty metal. Yet those colours are so bright and appealing. The title and author name are a part of the image, instead of just being text over top. I’m a big fan of that. And I’m a fan of the size of the text as well. Nothing turns me away faster than a massive title and a massive author name taking up the way too much of the cover space. And finally, you’ve got a robot arm sticking out of a pile of what looks like other rusty robots and parts. That’s the hook. You want to know who that arm is attached to and what it’s gotten itself into.

Fun fact about this post: Graphic designers often use the term ‘lipstick on a pig’ when they’re trying to improve a mostly useless project.

Another fun fact about this post: I accidentally posted it last Tuesday and took it down.