It’s been a good long while, but the time has finally come for another Utopirama post! For those unfamiliar with the concept of my Utopirama posts, the idea is to present some reading options for those times when you just need a book that will inspire feelings of calm and relaxation. Cosy reads, if you will, in which nothing bad happens and only the good things intrinsic to living in this crazy world are highlighted. Today’s book is one for all of you, I can just tell: Book Cover Designs by Matthew Goodman. Yes indeedy, this is a book about book covers. Brilliant!
We received a copy from the publisher via Netgalley and here’s the blurb from Goodreads:
Browse more than 500 book cover designs and listen to more than 50 of today’s top designers discuss their process for creating the perfect book cover. Award-winning creative professionals fromaround the world have applied astonishingly clever cover concepts that playslyly on titles and themes of international bestsellers, both classic andmodern, adding new dimensions to the books and breathing new lifeinto bright ideas. Literature lovers and graphic illustrators of all types, aswell as book design students and professionals, will relish thisinspiring collection of covers of fiction and nonfiction, history and sciencebooks, novels and short stories, from old favorites to popular 21st-centurytitles. For future designers looking for inspiration, as well as hopeless coverlovers, Book Cover Designs is a must-have design reference for any collection. Feelfree to judge these books by their covers.
Quick Overview:
Essentially, this book does what it says on the proverbial tin, providing pages and pages and pages of mesmerising book covers for your viewing pleasure. The book is divided by designer, with each featured designer having an introductory page in which their background and design approach is listed, followed by a number of pages of their designs. The perfect coffee table book, Book Cover Designs offers a wonderful selection of covers of which some will be familiar and some will be so fresh and intriguing that you’ll rush off to pop the title on your TBR list.
The only niggle that I could find in these pages is the fact that the majority of the designers featured are young and Caucasian. This may not be a bother to you in the slightest if you are focusing on the covers themselves, but I thought it a shame that there wasn’t a greater diversity of designers – in age and race particularly – and their work, presented. Perhaps that could be something for the publishers to consider when signing off on Book Cover Designs: The Second Edition! Similarly, the books featured here are generally adult titles (with a few YA thrown in) and I would dearly love to see the same concept developed using children’s books.
Whatever though, if you are a fan of reading and you enjoy a good browse, you will definitely derive pleasure from flicking through this tome.
Utopian themes:
Guilt-free judgement
A Reader’s Paradise
Aesthetic Pleasure
Cover Love
Protective Bubble-o-Meter:
3 out of 5 protective bubbles for the reverent first touch of a brand new book cover
Until next time,
Bruce
The Bookshelf Gargoyle 
It’s good to know that book covers aren’t a dying art as so many bestsellers seem to be cheap rehashes of another book of that ilk, usually the first one to get famous of the year. Just stick books on a book cover and I will paw at it for hours.
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Reblogged this on zackred1's Blog.
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