OK, so technically, if PRINT had its own version of Community Notes, I’d get Community Noted on the title of this article. That’s because after I published last month’s column, the end of February brought a bevy of book cover brilliance that left me cursing the publishing gods. So I did a bit of editorial time travel and snuck in some picks from late February, giving us in actuality what amounts to “22 of the Best Book Covers of the Month(-ish).”
A few highlights and (non Community) notes:
- Cover design has been thriving in vintage type treatments, layouts, and all visual terrain in between. What I’ve loved lately: Those fascinating covers where past bleeds into present (if not future)—such as in Kishan Rajani’s work on Little Rot.
- I’ve spoken to different designers over the years about the challenges presented by short story collections (in particular: How does one craft a single image to represent a dozen or more disparate parts?). Especially when, say, the collection goes like this: “An influencer attempts to derail a viral TV marketing campaign with her violent cult following. A marriage between two ghost hunters is threatened when one of them loses her ability to see spirits. The lives of a famous painter in the twilight of her career and a teenage UFO enthusiast converge when a mysterious glowing orb appears in their small desert town. And a slasher-flick screenwriter looking for inspiration escapes a pack of wild dogs only to find herself locked in an SUV with a strange man beside her. Set primarily in deserts throughout the American Southwest, Lena Valencia’s Mystery Lights is a debut collection of stories about women and girls at the crossroads of mundane daily life and existential dread.” Beth Steidle somehow flawlessly pulled everything together in a surreal and enigmatic jacket accented by an utterly perfect typeface.
- And finally, March brought some striking backlist work from Malika Favre and Coralie Bickford-Smith (that tooth!).
Here are the rest of our favorite book covers revealed or released this month(-ish).
