Three things book cover design states about books themselves
Three things book cover design states about books themselves
Blog Article
Books might be comprised of words in plain old black and white, but they are also the colour covers that they are embellished with.
We enjoy reading books because they are extremely stunning things. This holds true, however the nature of beauty that we might be speaking about is certainly different to what we might be talking about if we were speaking about, say, the visual arts. Or is it? For as long as we have had books we have actually embellished them with beautiful book cover designs that attempt to mirror the beauty of what is inside. This dates back for as long as the codex itself has been around, with medieval monks, those charged with the security and replication of the scarce texts that might still be found, ornamenting each hand written text with astonishingly rich and gorgeous designs. In fact, such was the charm held within these books that a lot of these creative book cover designs were carved into ivory or solid gold, studded with gems, and inlaid with rivers of precious metals. People like the co-CEO of the hedge fund that owns Waterstones can probably value the manner in which the beauty of these book covers was developed to match the beauty within the book.
When you truly consider it, it is rather remarkable that a book's cover, no matter how stunning it is, is able to stand so eloquently for something that is practically the total antithesis of its art form-- writing in black and white. In fact, book covers have been designed to reflect the emotional state of a book and attract its designated audience since the dawn of large scale publishing in the Victorian Era. Artists were entrusted with finding what makes a good book cover for particular individuals, or to put it simply, marketing. Individuals like the CEO of the asset manager that has a stake in Amazon can most likely value the function of marketing in developing book covers.
When we buy a book it becomes something really very personal to us. It can often be odd seeing a book you like with a different book cover, just because it is not your book. This personalisation, and indeed ownership, of books was at a completely various level at the dawning of the era of printing, with book covers being developed by the owners themselves, and what they thought would be the best books covers for the text. They would buy the book itself from the printer covered in paper, then bring it to a binder who would bring in the covers to the client's specifications. This usually suggested being outfitted in leather and then engraved with the name of the book, and, more often than not, the name of the book's owner. Individuals like the co-founder of the impact investor with a stake in World of Books can most likely appreciate the ownership that people come to feel in relation to their books.