- What colour seemed to jump out off the book shelf?
- What colour's weren't in use on the book shelf.
- What makes a book covers fit together as a series.
I took as many photo's as I could before I got kicked out of Borders, the number ended up at around about 40, which took about 10 minutes to get together. I asked for shots at Smiths bookstore and they were nice enough to let me photograph their collections.
What I learnt:
- Book genre will greatly effect the colour of a book cover.
- Solid colours tend to stand out the most.
- Sans-serif grabs more attention than serif fonts.
- Compositions should lead the viewer's eye to the center of the cover, to retain their attention.
- Books will grab more attention when the viewer can see the cover, as opposed to just the spine.
- Faces grabbed my attention most.
Specifics.
First collection:
Teen and Young Adult.
- Darker covers
- Ambiguous imagery
Admittedly I only got a very small proportion of the young adult shelves. Since the rise to fame that Twilight has achieved there seems to be more of a trend to adopt a darker book cover.
Second Collection:
Sport.
- Tends to be more of a baggy green theme occurring in these shots. Even on the covers that feature footballers there is more of a green theme. Often this is accompanied by gold text.
- On the boxing cover that you see off center of the shelf we see a black and white photo image of a boxer standing over his opponent.
- Lots of white and darker colours on the book shelves of the sporting world.
I'm going to assume that the colours change on the sports books depending on which nationality the sports men (or women) represent. The classic green and gold theme is constant throughout the Australian sporting covers. These colours are used to evoke a sense of nationality and to associate the individual to a greater extent with his team.
Third Collection
Crime:
- Lots of black
- Sans-serif fonts
Again there is a strong theme throughout the crime section of dark hues. The books that stood out most to me on the shelves were the covers that went against this mold and produced white covers.
Fourth Collection
Fiction:
- A complete gamut of colours occurs here.
- Most attention grabbing are the book covers that either feature solid colours or faces.
Book Collections.
Penguin books (75 popular penguins):
- Rule of thirds stands out strongly on the covers.
- Two orange stripes at top and bottom surrounding a white centered strip
- Sans-serif center aligned font is used on the covers.
Whilst being extremely consistent I get the feeling if placed on a shelf this collection would recede against all the vibrant stand out's in the other photo's. The problem being that there is no extraordinary contrasts. Whilst the sans-serif fonts are easy to read, the lack of any imagery to reinforce the books title would make wading through the books to find a specific name would be difficult.
Twilight
- Consistent and unusual typographic treatment of the title
- Consistent (ambiguous) imagery presented
- Predominant use of the same black throughout the titles.
The twilight series features ambiguous covers, which personally I am not fond of. However it hits it's demographic well, immediately identifying the tone of the book (angst ridden and probably rubbish [there I said it]). The branding aspect of the series is consistent, typographically the titles are all written in the same font and all treated to the same silver overprint.
Underbelly
The underbelly book series provides us with the perfect example of what not to do when trying to unify a book covers identity. There are three culprits on the top and second shelves, inconsistent typefaces and layouts all seem to point to a totally unlinked series of books. Even imagery and colour is not used consistently on these book covers.
Penguin Classics
- Consistent layout.
- Consistent colour used within various positions of the layout
- Consistent style within the imagery
Well produced series of covers that create a unified identity
Sorry this read has probably been incredibly arduous and long. These are my own findings from an excursion into a couple of book stores in my city. The only data I have to back up my findings are from the photo's that have been linked to. I went on this excursion after reading a chapter of Tschicolds "The New Typography" within which he advised to stand out we must go against the norm of what is in the books environment. I intend to do just that with my book covers.
I hope you like my findings from this excursion,
Thanks for reading
Andrew
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